I suck at Airbrushing! Help!

[Zuggy]

Okay...I’m a miniatures gamer that doesn’t really game because painting is so onerous and takes forever. What do I mean by that? I bought my armied for games like 25 years ago, all largely unpainted thus I’ve never really played. I had about 50 GW/Citadel paints literally dry out that were new and unused. Same with over 100 Reaper paints. Actually painted up some stuff I thought was incredible (for me) back in the day...but I just truly don’t enjoy the modeling, converting and painting aspect of the hobby. I love HAVING the pieces and terrain though, especially custom bits hence the conflict.

Well, we bought some Imperial Assault then some Legion, lots of Walking Dead:All Out War and Call to Arms, gobs of Mars Attacks!, and still have armies from 40k and Warhammer Fantasy (now defunct!), and gobs of Blood Bowl teams that never got painted.

So I got motivated as we are loving playing All Out War, and I’m excited to play Mars Attacks and hoping to get a lot more bits come my birthday next week. So I went and researched Airbrush compressors and starter kits. Then I realized I already had a Dewalt compressor in the garage with a much bigger tank than the cheap Chinese stuff I was seeing available. So I went down to Harbor Freight and bought myself a Diablo air hose, a 10’ Airbrush air hose, a mid-line adjustable pressure regulator with moisture release, an Airbrush cleaning pot and their deluxe airbrush kit.

I hated the way the HF Airbrush paint cup attached to the airbrush, and didn’t like that the siphon was halfway up the cup. I tried to prime some minis with some hobby store artist acrylic white paint. I couldn’t get the consistency right and kept experimenting with pressures, but for a beginner realized I had the wrong tool and wrong paint!

I took the HF airbrush back...and ordered a Vallejo Model Air kit. It came with a nice Harder & Steenbeck Ultra Airbrush and like 20-30 Model Air colors and some Airbrush cleaner. I ordered some Badger white airbrush primer, sold in the states as Stynylrez. Set up my nice new airbrush. This time I had a quality airbrush and my primer was already factory mixed to the right consistency.

The first several minis came out awesome. Imperial Assault core set Stormtroopers. I then did Walking Dead: All Out War Andrea and Amy. I picked these because I had watched a speed painting video on YouTube for those pieces and wanted to try his ink wash and “denim” approach:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6XkWEuLRq7k

well after about the first five or six minis some of the Stynylrez started to dry to my gravity feed paint cup. I flushed it with distilled water, and put a couple of drops of airbrush cleaner through the brush. Then as I was trying to get the rest of the minis done, remaining Stormies, the brush started to clog and be very inconsistent. I tried to clean it out in the airbrush cleaning pot but it bubbled through the paint cup as if I had a different front end cap and someone was pinching it. Distilled water, cleaner and Paint went everywhere!

I had the window open do I just flushed through another mix of cleaner, and distilled water. The airbrush was behaving wonky and I’d have to actuate paint null to full a couple of times just to get atomization. Long story short by the last two minis my paint and air controls were much less precise due to clogging. In fact the last two stormies look like they have cracks all over them from overspraying.

Can’t blame the tools this time. The beautiful aHarder and Steenbeck Airbrush was covered in paint from the back pressure bubbling through the paint cup. I tried to rinse it off under water in the sink but it was all so dried. So I filled the airbrush cleaning pot with hot water and dunked the airbrush into it. Hopefully it will be easier to clean when we get back from sports practice.

Good kit but I suck. Advice? I’m shocked how quickly the Stynylrez dries. Almost “too quickly” in fact.

I like the Harder and Steenbeck Airbrush because it has PTFE seals. Haven’t touched any of the Model Air color paints yet.

Didn’t realize trying to learn to airbrush would be so hard!!!

Will post pics when I get home.

 

[MAXXxxx]

On the first part I have to agree, those paints and that airbrush sounded horrible to have.
Even I advocated of buying a cheap AB for beginners, but after trying a quality one I learned that: a. the experience is night and day, b. you have to relearn it, so the cheap AB is a waste of money and time

Styylrez: you could try the Vallejo primers, but even those dry faster than their paints, so I'd say the fast drying is a property of most primers (tamiya, GW, mrColor dry faster too)

As for the gradual clogging:
- yep, you have to clean it more often. Especially for primers (to be honest as a primer doesn't have to be too precise I use either the leftover cheap AB or simply remain at spraycans)
- which nozzle size did you use? around 0.3mm clogging with most paints happen rarely, with .2 or less quite often if not thinned a lot.
- For cleaning the AB I use the vallejo cleaner. It can remove stains even after weeks. don't forget to clean the nozzel throughly, what you did (cleaner in cup, flush through / bubbling through) are not enough. I'm also not a fan of bubbling it back as the paint can reach the airhose behind the cup and clog the airflow there (and is a bigger pain to clean that part of the AB/hose).

learning AB: try watching some videos/read books on AB-s (avoid videos for miniatures at this stage, they do a LOT incorrectly, books on AB+minis (for example the Angel Giraldez books) describe very little), practice a lot (for really good precision you need almost a daily practice), go through cleaning a lot (I find the largest timesink in using an AB is the cleaning process).
IF you have the possibility try to attend a workshop (10+ years ago I went to a 2 day one (general, not mini painting related), was 200euro back than, but was worth it).