Airbrush Basics: I Made Every Mistake So You Don't Have To

ooh a new miniature skirmish game where i command a squad of demons fighting for the control over hell so many choices of customizing my cabal of wicked devils and they shall slaughter in my name oh yeah this model's gonna be great as my lord of the pit oh yes he shall let me baptize him in my mists to prepare him for battle all right let's get him primed so we can get on to painting what hand those false prophets believe not their lies there's only one true heir to the throne of hell and his name is spray mordius ah the airbrush in our miniature painting hobby it is one of the most beautiful tools that we have at our disposal and yet it is also the one that can cause the most frustration and confusion and while i've made just about every mistake with an airbrush and ruined a few along the way i've learned just enough through trial and error and from other amazing miniature painters that i'm ready to share what i do to really make these tools shine and take out all the headaches so whether you've never picked up an airbrush before in your life or maybe you just want to spend more time painting with one and less time trying to fix it or maybe you're a seasoned painter and you just want to know what kinds of special tricks i have up my airbrushing sleeve then there is a video for you it's this video i'm talking about this watch this video keep watching it so let's start out with the airbrushes themselves now they have all different kinds of brands and models out there and some are as cheap as this 25 master airbrush that i bought on amazon up to those that can cost to 200 and more one good thing is though all the parts and how they function is basically universal so if you get started you'll actually be learning and how they work the same way whether you get an expensive one or a cheap one so if they all mostly look and act the same what's the difference between a 25 dollar airbrush and a 200 airbrush well really what it comes down to is a couple of things first and foremost is the quality of the construction and the parts that they use this is important because it's not going to break down as often it's not going to clog as often and by and large it's just going to work more smoothly also one area that i've found for a nicer airbrush where you notice it is actually in this dual action trigger how precise is it and how much control do you have the nicer airbrushes are gonna give you a lot more control and a nicer pullback on that trigger and of course we're going to paint a model today showcasing our airbrushing techniques and what better model to use than this beautifully voluptuous demon by this week's sponsor creaturecaster if you're anything like me then you love dragons and demons and devils and in general models that make you moderately uncomfortable and that's where creaturecaster comes in beautifully sculpted models with amazing details and top tier resin casting are what creature caster has been known for for years i love to paint these models and they're awesome in all sorts of games including the new game that creature caster just recently launched with their kickstarter judgment eternal champions creaturecaster has an amazing website showcasing their amazing models so you can buy them anywhere in the world they also come out with new models regularly so what i did was sign up for their newsletter and they give me an email whenever they've got a new model that's about to release so a big thank you to creaturecaster for sponsoring today's video i am truly a big fan of their models and i think if you pick one up you will be as well people often ask me which airbrush is my favorite as i have a number and i've tested other ones my current favorite is the iwata eclipse hpcs this is great because it's an all-around airbrush i can use it to accomplish just about anything i need to do and it's reliable the trigger action is great and i don't have it break down or clog very often oh and i'll have links to all the stuff that i use today as well as in other hobbying in the links below so if you are out shopping you can check some of these things out now there's a lot of really good resources online both through youtube and through the manufacturers of the airbrushes on how to thoroughly clean them so we're not going to get into that today instead my focus is going to be on how to prevent us needing to totally disassemble our airbrush to clean it as much as possible one little tip i will share as long as we're in this realm though is this little plastic container labeled alcohol when i need to take my airbrush apart and let it really thoroughly get cleaned i'll put in some isopropyl alcohol in here take apart my airbrush and put all the parts to soak in this for about an hour then i take an old toothbrush scrub them off all that dried paint will just melt away i also like to use these tiny little things and they are called dental inter-dental cleaners they look like tiny little pipe cleaners and they have a nice little flexible tip and they're great at getting inside all the little tiny nooks and crannies in your airbrush and you get a big old pack of them for just a couple bucks there's all sorts of products out there marketed for us airbrush users but the thing that i've found that works best for preventing clogs and keeping paint from drawing in and around the tip of my airbrush is a homemade recipe and it's one that i learned from a good buddy vincy v vincy v uses 90 airbrush thinner that you can just buy anywhere like on amazon and then he uses 10 percent flow aid you put this in a little squirty bottle like this you have it handy and you can squirt in a bit of this every time you're gonna paint with your airbrush most of us buy our first airbrush or plan on getting one for the fact that we can prime our models with it and it's a very important step in the mini painting process but there are a few important things to keep in mind when we're priming with an airbrush even though the primer bottles say they don't require thinning that you still put at least a couple of drops of our homemade thinner in the cup before you put that primer in once our thinner and primer is in the cup i take a little makeup sponge and pinch the tip of the airbrush i push down and pull back on the airbrush trigger and as i do so the needle will pull itself into the body of the brush and i push the sponge to close the hole that the needle comes out of this will cause the paint and thinner to bubble and mix right in the cup this is a great trick that we'll use to mix paints thinners waters whatever and shortly we'll even use this technique to clean out our airbrush effectively as well whenever i'm using an airbrush whether it's priming or literally anything else i'm making sure i'm painting in nice short bursts this means i'm pushing down the trigger i'm pulling back and then i'm letting it go back to the resting position what this does is it prevents us from flooding the model with too much paint if we do that we're going to clog up the details of our beautiful little models what we need to do is just create these nice little bursts of paint that will dry really quick and have a nice thin layer so we don't obscure any of our details across the model slight spoiler here but what we're about to cover next is the single most important thing in my eyes in this entire video after many times being frustrated with a clogged airbrush or taking too long to get a project done from all the colors i had to swap out and from asking many other painters around the world i've come up with my favorite way to clean out and maintain my airbrush every time i use it when i'm done with my primer or any other color i need to clean out my brush let's take an old plastic container with a lid which i keep next to my airbrushing area i call that the slot bucket i open it up i squirt some water into my airbrush cup and i repeat the bubbling technique that i showed you earlier i dump that dirty paint water into my slot bucket and immediately wipe out the inside of my paint cup if you don't get that out dirty paint water will get all over the outside of your brush if you're clumsy like me repeat this process two to three more times watch for the water to look clean as you squirt it into the cup if it's not fully clean after a few times you can carefully unscrew your needle wipe that down put that back in and then put in a handful of drops of isopropyl alcohol into the airbrush cup and you mash and swirl that around in the bottom of the cup with an old brush really mash it in there to make sure we work free any slightly dried paint once we're done mashing our brush down in there with the alcohol we gurgle that just like we did with the water dump it into our slop bucket and then i take a little bit of water in the airbrush cup and i spray it out through the end and make sure it's clear in just a couple minutes we are ready to switch to a new color or be done with our airbrushing session for the day with thinning priming and cleaning all out of the way we only have one more of our top four most important aspects of airbrushing to cover but don't worry i have some other really cool and easy steps we're going to cover later in the video when we paint the model and our last one is of course base coating in general we want our paint thinner for base coating than we do for priming so in addition to my thinner i typically add a little bit of water to the cup as well and then once the paint is gurgled i check to make sure it's about as thin as skim milk not too watery but it also flows quickly down the side of the cup if we push it up with a brush if your paint is coming out too speckling or splattery it's probably too thick just add a little bit more thinner gurgle again and test again and speaking of testing it's always a good practice to test your paint through an airbrush on a sheet of paper or paper towel or the back of your glove or anything else really before you start spraying it directly on the model and if your base color is coming out not looking like it's covering very well be aware of the color primer that you used i used a black primer so it's really going to take quite a bit of that paint to go over to cover that black if you want a really bright model i suggest priming it in white we're going to go with something a little more demonic and evil here so we're going to start with a little bit more of a grim and darker color at the beginning one of my favorite things to do with airbrushes is to use inks they are very strong in pigmentation they're already thinned and they're easy to mix in the airbrush cup with a bit of our thinner in water if we want to dilute them today i'm going to mix up a skin tone to shoot from the top down angle on the miniature to show how the light from above would naturally hit the object this is often referred to as xenothel highlighting and it's an awesome use for our airbrush and really simple to pull off the important thing is to keep the airbrush relatively stationary and while shooting from directly above the model i just rotate the model slightly to show that i'm hitting all the highlight colors on the upward facing details in fact whenever i'm airbrushing i try to make sure that i'm keeping my airbrush hand stationary and i'm instead moving the model i can't count how many times when i was first starting airbrushing that i would tilt the airbrush to get it a different angle and all the paint would dribble out of the cup i'm then going to go over the top of my skin tone highlight all over the skin with a pure white ink i'm going to try to boost the vibrancy even more and it has to do with a step i'm going to try out later but this is how we do a basic xenothil highlight it could be over black it could be over any other of your primer or base tone colors we'd go with pure white ink from above although this is a video focusing on airbrushing i think it's important to show how airbrushing and brushwork can work together so after we've gotten our mahogany base coat down for all of our future rusty armor we're going to paint all over the other parts of the model with contrast paint to best take advantage of that awesome highlight we created with our xenothil [Music] airbrushing [Music] all right yeah these are uh oil paints in an airbrushing video not airbrush paints but uh hear me out it's all part of the master plan no you don't need to use oil washes if you airbrush your model i just have some fun ideas for the final touches with an airbrush and oil washes get us closer to that step really fast so i can show you more cool things and if you want a full rundown on how i make and use oil washes from a miniature painting you can check out the video on whichever corner of the screen is the right corner right now that one on that one 50 50. [Music] once our oil wash is dried i'm gonna come back in with some nice thick bright colors from the scale color artist range and build up some highlights i'm just going to create some bright dots lines and scratches here i'm not worried about having nice blends we're going to do a little trick in a little bit that is actually going to create a nice smooth blending of colors with our airbrush instead of the paintbrush [Music] the last technique i love to do with an airbrush is something i just call tinting it's super simple and you can add so much depth of color and interest in your models and for this trick i like to use inks washes contrast paints or any kind of naturally thinned transparent color you could certainly use regular paint if you wanted to as well for this i mix thinner water and a bit of my ink or wash of choice so it's quite diluted and then i gently squeeze back the airbrush trigger so not much comes out of the airbrush if you spray this out too quickly it's going to go everywhere and be a mess i often prefer to spray thin colored tints from below building the color depth and interest from the shadows as they move up onto the mid-tone in the highlights i can always bring the tint further into the mid-tone and highlights later if i like but i don't want to start there in case it's too overpowering you can also use tints to bring vibrancy to colors that can otherwise be very hard to get bright like a bright green or yellow or orange just make sure you do nice thin bursts and build up the tone over time another great use for tinting is to create quick and easy object source lighting or osl osl is when an object actually looks like it is emitting light from within and what i do is i just paint the object in pure white paint with a brush and then i tint over the object and around it to show that glow to create that illusion you can even build this up over multiple layers with tinting and then another layer of white paint with a brush then tinting again to make it even more stand outish stand out ish not a real term i love to use fluorescent paints for this kind of work to finish off our lovely demon friend here we are going to make his hands look blackened and dead with this tinting technique i use drakenhoff nightshade by games workshop to start with a darker blue and then add a little bit of black ink to that to really sell the effect now be careful when you're doing tinting like this i didn't mask off behind the model to make sure i didn't over spray and i could have caused a lot of heartache on myself spraying everything black behind the hands just be careful of that and with one final pass of highlights with my brush i'm going to call our demon buddy here done i can't wait to get him on the table and trying him out in my new demon cabal in reign in hell which is a new game just released by my buddies vincy v and uncle adam from tabletop minions i had a blast playing this game and i'll put a link to it in the video description if you want to check it out so whether you've never tried airbrushing before you're new to it or you've been frustrated with it or maybe you're an airbrushing veteran and you just wanted to see if i had any new tips for you i hope you found something valuable in this video i know that since i've found a good way to clean and maintain my airbrush and keep the paint thinned correctly i've had a lot more fun i spent a lot more time painting with this and a lot less time dealing with its problems thank you for hanging out today but say can you help me out real quick and just just smash all the buttons on the screen you see right now that way youtube will let other hobbyists know that this is a good video that they should check out and they'll notify you when my next videos come out because you'll be subscribed and if you want to support me a little bit more you can always check out my affiliate links below so my number one primer right now is by monument hobbies pro acryl line and get 10 off anything you buy there paint primer brushes brush case whatever and i get a little kickback same with michigan toy soldier if in the united states there's any hobby gear you want even if it's hard to get stuff you can get it there and use my coupon code for 15 off your total order there and of course we always have the amazon links down there as well you could always also buy a sweet ninja on t-shirt as well as consider joining me on patreon my main way of supporting this channel for just a couple bucks a month you get a bunch of fun rewards like joining my discord server we chat about whatever it is hobbying and painting related critiquing each other's work and you get access to my weekly vlog until next time be good to one another and get out there and slay that gray with spray of spray blah blah blah blah

Channel: Ninjon

Views: 108,115

Keywords: mini painting, miniature painting, painting warhammer, painting 40k, warhammer 40k, age of sigmar, painting age of sigmar, airbrushing, air brush, airbrush, airbrush minis, airbrush miniatures, airbrush beginner, airbrush tips, airbrush basics, airbrush 101, airbrush warhammer, beginner mini painting, beginner miniature painting, mini painting 101, basic miniature painting, airbrush hacks, airbrush 40k, how to airbrush, miniac, squidmar, midwinter minis

Id: 9OFo98LFvnk

Length: 20min 4sec (1204 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021