Ultimate Guide to Airbrushes - Beginner guide

if I told you that there's one tool that can make you paint faster make your paint jobs look smoother and give you a better understanding of what makes a good paint job all in one tool I'm pretty sure you wouldn't believe me but at the end of this video I'm not only going to show you why the airbrush does that but also how to use it how to not break it and best of all how I use it to get the most from my airbrush let's get [Music] started to make your life easier this video will be spit up into five categories and you may want to replay some of these to really get a great understanding of how to get the most from your airbrush and to make your life easier while using it and here's the categories what is an airbrush and why would you use it what should I buy and what do I need to get started the basics of using an airbrush how to clean your airbrush and how to not break it and lastly what are your next step to get the most from your [Music] airbrush chapter a what's an airbrush and how should I use it the airbrush is essentially just another painting tool in Your Arsenal of painting tools where you add paint up here in the cup you push in air through the bottom of the airbrush and force them both to the front to get a nice smooth spray of paint and not only do they give you a really nice flow but with the right airbrush workflow you can get really nice smooth finish to your paint jobs speed up your painting process by probably three four times even more vibrant colors than you do today and using an airbrush should never fully replace the work you do with a regular paintbrush it should complement it is quite similar to how a screwdriver doesn't replace the work the hammer does it just speeds things up and can be used for a couple of things that the Hammer Can't do in its Essence it's a compliment to the brush most of the things I will talked about today will be Through The Eyes of a miniature painter because that's what I am but even as an artist painting on a canvas or maybe a tractor or a hockey helmet you'll be able to get something from this video as a ton of these tips are applicable across all Hobbies the biggest Improvement and the biggest thing that the airbrush unlocked for me is how it made painting my Warhammer armies way more bearable and cuts down my Army painting Time by at least 80% and when I do my high-end paint jobs not only does it speed up the painting process but it also helps me get a paint job that's a lot smoother and it helps me get the general shapes of the paint job way more accurate than it does when I paint everything with just a regular brush and of course at a way higher [Music] speed chapter B what should I buy and what do I need to get started there are three main things that you need to pick up to get started with your airbrushing the first and obvious one an airbrush but you also need a compressor and a hose that leads between the compressor and the airbrush so let's get started on which airbrush you should buy because as a beginner it can be quite overwhelming to pick the right one and most all airbrushes are good at at least one [Music] thing when painting miniatures and Scale Models like I do a gravity feed dual action airbrush tends to be the way to go this is the most common airbrush and just like the name in first the paint is being forced down with gravity to the front of the airbrush and then pushed out with air and dual feed means that you can control the air flow and the amount of paint released through the airbrush separately by pushing down the trigger you introduce air to the airbrush and by pulling back the trigger you release the paint and the further back you pull it the more paint is released through the front of the airbrush and this is the order you should always do things pushing down the air first and then releasing paint but we'll talk more about that in just a [Music] second there are tons of of different airbrushes to pick from from the super cheap Chinese no brand airbrushes to the decent low price airbrushes like sparm Max and Badger to the mid-range and high-end airbrushes like iata and harder in Steinbeck and all these airbrush brands are to some extent a Precision Tool but to make things easier for you I'm going to categorize them from my personal experience using all these kinds of airbrushes and then let you know which airbrush I think you should pick up depending on where you are in your airbrush Journey let's start with a cheap noname brands that you can get off wish or [Music] Amazon this is two airbrushes from wish this one cost $50 with a compressor and this one cost $15 in my personal opinion this airbrush that we picked up is not a good airbrush because it does not give you a lot of control and it's quite difficult to use this one however did give a decent spray and for $15 you might think that this is a great beginner airbrush but let's talk more about that because not only is it a 50/50 if you get a good airbrush when you buy these cheap ones because of the quality control being really subpar but my main issue with it is that it feels like it's been engineered by someone who doesn't airbrush themselves they are difficult to clean and difficult to control and will make a beginner airbrusher just as miserable as a cryptos sue investor but if you are an experienced painter and want a throwaway airbrush one that it's okay if it breaks maybe you have stuff where you spray with PVA glue or enamel paints things that easily break up your finer airbrushes that are a little bit more expensive this is a perfect airbrush for that type of use where you maybe don't need the best control you just need something that doesn't matter if it breaks so it does have a great purpose so to summarize a great tool for a very specific user at a very low cost it's time to jump onto our next category and this is the kind of low priced mid-range airbrushes from more serious airbrush manufacturers on the cheaper lower end we have sparm Maxx and Badger and then to the more mid-range we have the cheaper versions from iata and harder and steam Bay and the last one named I am quite biased about because we are sponsored by harder and steam Bay but 100% transparency this is also the brand that I used way before I started this YouTube channel and started collaborating with the Mesa brand and all of these airbrush Brands make at least decent airbrushes that will in some ways be good for beginners because they all spray well and are decently easy to clean some may be easier than others like the hard R steam they have a very easy to remove front end compared to say The Spar Max where you need a tool to remove the nozzle and normally these cheaper airbrushes are fitted with a point4 needle instead of the smaller ones that are2 or 0.15 that are really difficult for a beginner to mix paints for and having a bigger needle in an airbrush means that you have a slightly bigger air flow making them perfect for the base tasks that a beginner will use things like adding your first base coat priming your miniature or maybe painting on flat large surfaces like vehicles or big monsters and Giants and here's a little bit where my bias comes in because one of the brands hard steam have just recently redesigned a cheaper airbrush to be an even better fit for a beginner because instead of just making it with cheaper materials but they have changed the design of the airb so that to the same price as the other brands they've been able to add features that make it easier for a beginner airbrusher to learn how to use the airbrush giving you different steps showing you how far you should be from the subject depending on which Step you have on the airbrush so that you can't pull the lever too far back and other things like designing the trigger so that you can't pull it back until you pushed it down to release Air through the front meaning you'll have no paint splatter and less problems with clogged airbrushes so while all of these airbrushes probably can get you the same end result one of them will be slightly easier to use for a beginner so while this airbrush won't give you a finer atomization of the paint it is going to make it easier for the person who just got started with painting to get the most from a beginner airbrush and the good thing is even if you're a beginner now and pick one of these airbrushes up all of these different airbrushes you will be able to use even when you become more experienced and picked up one of the airbrushes we will talk about in The Next Step and I've used at least three of these iata farax and Harden steam Beck and all three have delivered me great results speaking off let's jump to the mid-range airbrushes the $1 1220 to $250 airbrushes like the harder and Ste Evolution and iata Eclipse most of the airbrushes in this range is designed to be an every man's airbrush meaning a tool that is great at everything but not a master at [Music] anything this is the harder and steenbeck evolution this have been my Workhorse for about 5 years so since way before I started this channel this specific one is the one that we released about 2 years ago as a limited edition thing and today actually we releas released another version of it together with Harden Steck with some updated features and a new design but we'll talk more about that at the end of the video I use this for about 80 to 90% of my airbrush work whenever I need an army painted fast wherever I paint a vehicle where I need a little bit bigger spray but also for some of the detail work that I do when I want to be able to do stuff fast without having big worries and because of how well designed iata and harder and steam backck airbrushes are having an airbrush needle that's 35 or4 is never going to be an issue with these quite the opposite it's going to make your life a lot easier and you will be able to paint pretty much everything even if it has a bigger needle that's technically not designed to give you the finest control so this is an airbrush that I recommend pretty much anyone even the high-end users can have a good use for this one but mainly people who need an airbrush that is good at [Music] everything [Music] now on to the high-end airbrushes like the iata Micron or harder and steam Infiniti earlier in my career I used to say that the best airbrush to buy is the one that you can afford and is within your budget but I don't really agree to that anymore because the way that these airbrushes are designed it is to give you the utmost control of the finest details and to get the this ultimate control of the finest details you need to be an experienced airbrusher and you need to already have mastered how to mix your paints for the finer details on top of that painting this type of fine detail requires a really Steady Hand and a good control of the spray of the paint think of it like a race car the same way that a Formula 1 car requires a completely different control in the gas and braking and turning to say a regular Audi this one and I what Micron does as well so the high-end airbrushes I only recommend to the people that need the finest control for the finest details and generally the more expensive the airbrush is the smaller the needle they come with this one comes with a 0.15 mm needle and I want the Micron come with a 0.18 meaning that the spray that you get from these is super narrow but when you need that super fine detail and you have that skill these airbrushes will give you such an amazing control [Music] to summarize for $15 you can get a really good airbrush for a specific use but it's going to give you a terrible time especially if you're a beginner and it might actually stop you from using an airbrush to that extent where it will help you and speed up your painting process the $80 to $120 airbrushes are great for beginners any of the brands we talked about are good enough but my personal favorite and my biy goes to the hard and Ste Bic ones that are designed for beginners the $120 to $200 airbrushes are great for everything and everyone from beginner to professional as they are easy to clean and easy to spray and have a good quality of the spray and the more expensive ones are designed for the professionals so I do not recommend them for beginners even if you can't afford [Music] it let's hop on to the compressor and there's a plethora of options to select from there are these Snap-on portable compressors oil pistons and single piston engine compressors there's a few things to consider when buying a compressor the two main ones what is my budget and what am I using it for generally it's better to first pick up the airbrush that is best for your usage and then adjust your budget for the compressor because the airbrush will be a bigger factor in the quality of the spray y yet with that though there is one thing that I feel like every compressor should have and that is control of the pressure and this one does not have that some of these have two steps you can have two different air pressures but this one has one so they're not really great for anything but if that's the only thing you can afford and you just want something to help you prime your miniature and add a base coat I guess it's okay for that we then have the single piston engines and these are kind of the low to mid-range price airbrush compressors they tend to come in a couple of different variations but because of how we as miniature painter use the airbrush most of them tend to be just fine enough some have a tank meaning that they fill up the tank and then use that as a reserve for your airbrushing and the compressor only makes a sound when it fills up the tank meaning that it's quiet for most of the time and some compressor don't have this tank and that by itself shouldn't be a bad thing it shouldn't give you a bad air flow however some of these cheaper without the tank are made with cheaper components and might not have the finest engine ering so that might be one of the reasons it doesn't give you a nice air flow and a cheaper compressor that has an air tank might give you a more Even Flow so if you're buying cheap and can afford it it might be nice to have a tank but if you're buying the more expensive single piston compressors like the ones from Hansa or iala or harder steenbeck you will never have the issue of bad air flow even if you don't have an air [Music] tank one thing to keep in mind with compressors the cheaper ones that you can buy from a hardware store might give you a good airflow but they are loud as So when you buy the compressor you should definitely look at what dcbs it outputs personally I would never buy one that has over 52 DB especially if I'm using it indoors cuz I don't want my kids to wake up in the evening when I'm painting and I don't want my wife to get mad at me while she's watching a TV series we then have the oil piston ones and they are super quiet and oh boy do I love them for it we get two different versions from Hansa in the office and these are overkill for 99.9% of you out there I don't think you will have a single performance increase when buying an oil piston compressor compared to a single piston one made with one exception and that has to do with the fact that these are designed with the same compressors that are in the refrigerators they are so quiet that you'll probably hear a mouse crawling across the floor just as much as you hear the airush compressor meaning that they are perfect for the way that we use ours when we record ourselves painting we never have problems with the audio being destroyed by the sound of the compressor or being a distraction while we're talking and painting at the same time but for 99.9% of you I would recommend you going with something cheaper maybe the Hansa Topline 100 or if you're on a budget I would get the noname compressor as 1886 that is used by pretty much every other airbrush manufacturer that just slaps their logo on top of it I used this one with a tank for probably 2 and 1 half 3 years before I got the more expensive ones and it just worked perfectly for me I had no issues whatsoever and most of these cheaper mid-range compressors range from about 47 to 52 DB so it's still within Reon and the prices ranged from between $60 to about $150 I've included links to most of these products that I'm talking about today in the video description to our newly designed airbrush from harder and steam bake to the cheaper beginner airbrushes compressors and all of the other tools we'll discuss in just a little bit following these links are of tremendous help to this channel without costing you guys a single dollar extra compared to going to these stores yourself but yeah back to the compressor some of these come with a moisture trap and that is never a bad thing it gives you a cleaner air flow as it trap some of that moist inside of the Trap so you won't have any moist contamination when you spray the airbrush however adding extra tools like another air trap to the bottom of your airbrush doesn't really do a massive difference but if you have a lot of money and you like airbrushing and you like spending money on your hobby it's not a bad thing so by all means go pick one up but for a beginner it is enough if you have the moist trap in the compressor [Music] most airbrushes and compressors come with the standard hose there are some exceptions though that have a slightly bigger opening so make sure that you have the same size for the hose as you have for your airbrush and compressor and some of these hoses and airbrushes come with a quick connector meaning that it's super easy for you to swap out the airbrush for different one or just to remove it and clean it without having to turn off the airush compressor and emptying your tank this is really neat tool that doesn't cost you a fortune but you don't really need it you will see a lot of the professionals using airbrush spray boots and they are never a bad thing to keep your air cleaner but if you're a miniature hobbyist spraying with non-toxic acrylics spraying for maybe 10 to 20 minutes per session not having one will not be a problem my solution when I got started with airbrushing was to bring out magazine papers and a big cardboard box at the the end this captured something like 98% of the dry pigments spraying around in the room when I was airbrushing and the non-toxic acrylics in small amounts will not be a big problem for your lungs you might have to dust and vacuum your room a little bit more often than you did before you got your airbrush but other than that it should be fine you don't really have to spend that extra $200 when you're just getting started to get that extra tool if you're however spraying with solvents or enamel paints or alcohol-based paints it's a completely different story and I would not recommend you spraying indoors without a really good ventilation and one of these airbrush booths CU you want to keep those lungs healthy at least until you get 30 years old so we've talked about all of the big purchases what else do you need to get started you need paints you need airbrush thinner or flow improver airbrush cleaning tools a nice bottle of water and some form of bin for cleaning the airbrush again we'll put all of the links to the stuff I'm going to talk about right now in the video descriptions so that when you get started or when you need a tool you'll know which video to go to and you can just find it all down there in the video description when it comes to paints there are probably just as many opinions as there are paint Brands personally for 99% of my regular painting I use regular acrylics and thin them down in the airbrush cup historically I've just used regular water to thin down the paint but over the last couple of years I've slowly moved over to thin my paints with a airbrush flow improver as I found it to be easier to clean out the paint from the airbrush using that as opposed to water however there are airbrush ready paints that don't require thinning and we've had great success with most of these Citadel Valu an army painter they've all worked great through the airbrush and inks and contrast paints is another lovely type of paint to have in your Arsenal as they can really make your Miniatures pop and give you vibrancy really quick but when you're just getting started it's enough money to spend on the airbrush compressor and a hose and a thinner so I would not recommend you go out and grab a complete new set of airbrush paints just when you're getting started but now it's time for chapter C the basics of using an airbrush the first thing we need to add to the airbrush is paint and let's assume you're using regular acrylics you're going to have to thin the paint down and because I'm a lazy person and I want things to go fast and I want it to be easy for me to use the tool we're going to mix the paints in the cup of the airbrush and other painters they might mix all of their paints outside of the airbrush in a cup like Marco fron for example but personally I prefer mixing it in the cup the main thing you have to remember is to never add the paints first always start with a thinner or water because if you start with a thick acrylic paint it's going to clog up your airbrush and it's going to be a hassle to pick apart and then do a deep clean so start with a thinner flow improver or water and then add a few drops of [Music] paint people have previously said mix the pains to a consistency of skimmed milk but let's be honest here 99% of us have no idea of what skin milk consistency is so my kind of personal guideline have always been if you're using a valet or citel paint I add about 50% thinner and 50% paint as my starting point I then stir it around in the airbrush cup with an old Gunk brush and then create back flow of the air in the airbrush I do this by blocking the front where comes out on the airbrush and then pulling back the lever you can see how the bubble comes out of the cup and this helps mixing the paint in the airbrush we can now check the consistency of the paint so that it's properly mixed in the Cup by using the brush again and pulling it back up the edge of the inside of the cup if you see it running back down then you're probably good to start spraying but before you spray your miniature we want to test the paint to see if it's sprayed properly on a piece of paper or maybe plastic card and how do you know if it looks good when it comes out the airbrush we'll get to that in just a bit as we mentioned in the beginning of this video and if you're using a gravity feed airbrush like we do there is two things that you need to master to get a good control of your airbrushing and that is pushing down the airbrush trigger and then pulling it back when you push down the trigger you introduce air to the airbrush and when you pull it back you pull back the needle from the front and you let some of that paint from the cup into the front of the airbrush into the nozzle and as I've said this is super important to learn this is the order that you do things pushing down first and then back because if you pull it back first you release paint into the front so that when you then introduce air you're going to start by splattering out a big amount of paint and when you're finished spraying your session you always move it back first so you stop the paint from coming into the front and then you lift your finger from the trigger so you always start and end with air cuz if you stop the air first and then stop the paint you're going to have paint lying in the front of the airbrush in the nozzle which is the most difficult to clean part of the airbrush and it's going to dry in the air causing all kinds of fun problems and how far back you pull the trigger controls how much paint you release through the front meaning if you want a fine spray with a thin amount of paint you just pull it back a little bit a tiny bit and you'll get these super finely controlled sprays of paint if you pull it all the way back you'll get a Big Blob of paint coming out through the front you can also control the area in which your airbrush sprays the paint as we mentioned previously airbrushes with a smaller needle will have a smaller spray but if you move your airbrush further back or closer you're also controlling the width of the spray the further back you are the wider the spray will be and the closer you are the smaller the spray will be and you're just about to be ready to spray the airbrush for the first time but first we have to set the pressure on the airbrush [Music] compressor there is no one truth to how high pressure you should have on your airbrush however for a beginner a good guideline is to have somewhere between 25 and 30 PSI some painters swear by pushing the pressure up to 45 or 50 psi you will have a really fast spray from your airbrush and there might be a little bit less problems with clogging because the air will push the paint out so fast and some painters might swear by using sub20 PSI pressure cuz they always paint super close to the subject and have really thin down paints but trust me when I say when you're starting out 25 to 30 maybe even up to 35 is a good starting [Music] point so now let's get on to your first ever spraying whenever you're spraying the airbrush for the first time I always recommend you to try on a piece of paper first maybe draw a couple of squares and maybe some circles to get a feel for the control of the airbrush where does the paint land how does the treat trigger work how far back do I need to pull it just to make sure you get the right size of the spray and the right amount of paint so that you have that control once you start going to your Miniatures that you don't want to ruin with a big Splat of paint we've made a template for you guys so you can download that again it's going to be in the video description just print this one out we have these small circles so you can try to see which size the spray have depending on which distance you have we have this big circle that you can follow along with to try to paint circles we also have these tiny squares so you can try to practice your aim to get it in the right square and now let's go back to the thing that I promise we'd get back to how do you actually know that you've thinned your paints properly and have a good flow from the [Music] airbrush this is something that you're going to have to learn how to master if you get a too high pressure when spraying close to the subject and when painting miniatures were often really close to the subject you'll get something called spider webbing meaning that once the paint hits the surface it is pushed around by the air before it dries this is either because you have too high of an air pressure too high PSI or because you're releasing too much paint in one go pulling it back a little bit too fast so it might take you a few times to get the right consistency the right release of paint and the right air pressure but learning the skill of mixing the paint in the cup and learning how far back you pull the trigger in relationship to the air pressure that you have is super important it's going to help you paint faster and have more fun when you're painting cuz you're not going to add a ton of different steps your painting process so you can focus on the more fun things painting but what if you don't have problems with spider webbing instead you have a problem called speckling meaning that you almost have these dry dots of paints spraying outside of your paint surface this have to do with your paint being too thick for the air pressure that you have the easiest way to solve this problem is to add a few more drops of thinner or flow improver to your paint but now say that youve thinned down the paint so it has the perfect consistency when you're spraying from this distance but all of a sudden when you move a little bit further back maybe for that big tank that you're painting and you want a wider spray and all of a sudden you have that speckling again this is because you have the opposite problem of the spider webbing you have now a too low pressure this time you have to crank up the pressure a little bit more maybe you have to go from 25 to 35 or something like that just to increase the pressure a little bit more so the paint is sprayed faster towards the subject and doesn't dry on the way to the miniature okay now you've learned the basics of painting but when painting it is really easy to break it especially when you're cleaning the airbrush which gets us to chapter D how to clean your airbrush and how to not break it there are many ways of cleaning the airbrush and probably just as many ways of ruining the airbrush while cleaning it so let's make sure these steps are as easy as possible so you don't ruin your airbrush and you can still keep your airbrush clean without any major hassles once you get a new air airbrush or even more so once you get your first airbrush I always recommend becoming best friends with your airbrush pull it apart completely at least once and put it together before you add paint the first time so you see how the airbrush is constructed what each part do where all of the parts go and what function they have for the airbrush as a whole and some airbrushes are easier than others to pull apart as an example to pull apart this super cheap airbrush I need to use tools to remove the nozzle while the Harden Steen B evolution you just screw it apart and you got the nozzle and the air valve released in just a matter of a few seconds making them easier to clean for a beginner and the reason why you want to learn how to do all of this before you add paint to it is because you are going to get a clog in the airbrush sooner or later and when you do you want to be able to know what you can pull apart without paint leaking everywhere and which steps to take to remove that [Music] clog so now you pulled apart the airbrush you put it back together again kind of know the parts how would you clean the airbrush and when do you actually clean the airbrush and what do you use when cleaning the different parts of the airbrush let's start with the tools when it comes to cleaning the airbrush there's a few different tools that I use and a few different techniques the first and foremost important things to remember is that when paint dries its main purpose is to not be removed by A Simple Touch if the paint does that it's a good paint and when you leave paint inside of your airbrush it is going to dry and it's going to be hell to get it out from there especially some of the areas of the airbrush that are close to impossible to reach even with specialist tools and even if you manage to get the paint out from there sometimes you're going to have residue that is going to affect the spray quality of your airbrush so my number one rule is to never leave paint inside of the airbrush so when whenever you put it down for whatever reason it might be get a cup of tea get another miniature to paint always rinse the airbrush before you do that and how do you rinse your airbrush well let's talk about [Music] it one of the first things you'll come across when you're spraying with your airbrush is that you're going to have to switch from one paint to the other if you're spraying say a larger Warhammer figure and you want to spray first with bright green and then you want to make a transition to a dark green having some of that bright green left in the cup and then adding that dark green is not necessarily a problem it can actually help you get a smoother transition so you then spray with a mix between the dark green and the brighter green for your next layer and then rinse it out with water and then once you've done that you can add a cleaner bright green for the final highlight with that you should get a super smooth transition from the darker to The Brighter green however if you're switching from a green color to say a red one normally what I start with is I empty whatever leftover paint I have in the cup into a bin or whatever cleaning cup you have I then bring out one of these water bottles with a long hose and this one have a really small opening that fits perfectly into the bottom of the cup I then do the backflow technique that we used in the beginning of this video blocking the air flow in the front and pulling down and back the trigger this pushes some of that clean water into the front of the air brush and pushes some of that paint back into the cup I repeat this process a couple of times until the water comes out completely cleaned when I'm spraying out through the front I then take a piece of paper that is slightly moist and clean out the inside of the cup this should be enough rinsing when going from one paint to the other you don't need to buy one of these more expensive airbrush cleaning cups with a filter on it in this office we always empty our water and our paint into the garbage bin that we have next to our painting station but if you're a little bit more resourceful you can bring out one of these ice cream buckets cut a whole hole in the top and use that to empty out your paint and spray out all of the water from the front this way you don't have any excess paint pigments spraying out into your room and you kind of save yourself a little bit of cleaning in the long run and this step is super important to keep your airbrush clean so getting a good routine for this is super important if not your airbrush is going to end up looking like the one they have a tabletop time in this office because we have these perfectly sized bottles with the hose we found an even better way of cleaning the airbrush between between our different paints because we can use the pressure from pressing this bottle really hard and the pressure from the air in the airbrush combining the both in creating some sort of hyper super pressure and just pushing out all of the leftover paint from the cup and inside of the airbrush through the front of the airbrush this is not necessary to have but it does save us a lot of time cuz we can just do this in a couple of seconds and then we're ready to move on to the next paint the second cleaning problem you're going to encounter is a clo the first one and most simple one to fix is when the paint is dried on the top of the needle this might not be a full clog and may just cause your spraying to start becoming a bit more uneven and what I tend to do is take a Q-tip dip it in some airbrush cleaner or isopropyl alcohol hereby it will be known as IPA and just clean it by moving the Q-tip following the shape of the airbrush and with that you should be ready to continue painting however you can also have a clog somewhere inside of the airbrush the most common thing is that some form of Gunk or dried paint have clogged up the front of the nozle sometimes you can fix this without having to pull the airbrush apart increasing the pressure from the compressor to 50 60 PSI opening the back of the airbrush and pulling the needle all the way back sometimes is enough to spray out that Gunk that's stuck in the front of the airbrush if not you're going to have to pull the airbrush apart and do a deep clean let's come back to that after the next cleaning step because before we do the Deep cleaning I want to cover the thing that I do after I'm done painting for the day and I do that end of day cleaning in three different steps the first one is doing the same type of rinsing that we do when we shift the paints once we've done the back flow thing and see that the IPA in hair is clean what I do is I bring out a Q-tip stir it around in the cup to make sure that we get some IPA into the Q-tip then pull back the needle and start dabbing it around in the front hair around the nozle area and the air valve area if you want to you can push down the air valve as well to create the back flow to get some more paint stirred around and maybe some IPA pushed out through the front generally tends to help to keep the front of the airbrush clean once that is done we open up the back pull out the needle and start cleaning it moisten the piece of paper with some IPA and clean the needle following the shape and the reason why we always follow the shape of the needle is because the most sensitive part of the airbrush is the needle tip and if we start moving the paper in this direction it's super easy that the needle gets stuck somewhere and gets bent and when it it's bent you should not sharpen it as it's going to worsen your performance you throw it away and then you buy a new one and once I've done that the last thing that I do is I take the Q-tip again and clean the inside of the airbrush cup with that Q-tip and this is something that airbrush manufacturers tend to cringe when we do because these Q-tips sometimes leave residue particles cotton fibers left in the airbrush and that can sometimes cause problems but YOLO I live dangerously but if you don't use a Q-tip you can use a regular brush but if you use a brush it is important to note that you need to have one that has properly glued strands so you don't have any of the brush strands left inside of the airbrush cuz otherwise you're going to have the same problem as with the Q-tip and these steps should be enough for your everyday cleaning and super easy to get a good routine of however maybe every 10 or 20 times when you paint with your airbrush you want to do a deep clean because no matter how well you do these previous steps they might be some paint residue left inside of the airbrush [Music] what I do is I remove the nozzle and the air valve and the needle and the cup I use interdental brushes or pipe cleaners and Q-tips dip them in some cleaner and clean the inside of the airbrush try to make sure that when you use pipe cleaners that none of the metal from the pipe cleaner touches anything inside of the airbrush because if it does you're going to create microscopic scratches that is going to lessen your performance the last and the most difficult thing to clean is the nozzle of the airbrush for one because it's very easy to break it because it's so thin but also because it's difficult to reach inside of it and if you push something too far inside the nozzle like the needle for example you're going to expand the front of the nozzle and with that you've ruin the performance of your airbrush there's a few ways you can clean inside of it I often start cleaning the inside of the nozzle with an interdental brush an interdental brush that doesn't have a metal core I then use use the needle to gently scrape the inside of the nozzle and when I do I only use the side of the needle and I try to remove all of the paint through the back of the nozzle you are going to have to push some of that Gunk through the front unfortunately if you're using the super thin needle like the 0.15 needle it's really really easy to bend the tip of it so to solve that problem you've got these airbrush nozzle cleaning kits that are sold by most airbrush manufacturers inside of that kit you get one of these These are really handy if you don't want to take the risk of breaking your needle and are honestly just better designed to clean the inside of your airbrush one thing to note though and one thing that I already mentioned is this is not something you should do after every painting process because every time you pick it apart you're increasing the risk of damaging the inside of the airbrush you're not increasing the lifetime you're actually decreasing it so only do this once in a blue moon maybe every 4 weeks or every 10th time you're using the airbrush and these steps should be enough to keep your airbrush clean and to keep keep you from breaking it some people swear by getting a Ultrasonic Cleaner put the all the airbrush Parts in IPA and have it run for a couple of minutes to make sure it's always super clean personally I've never used that but in my opinion it's $200 that you can save for something else and if you take care of your airbrush like we've already done in this video you shouldn't need it and now it's time for that last toppic in the beginning of this video I promised that I would show you guys the next step in your airbrushing journey and I'm a man of my words you've already learned how to spray the airbrush maybe you sprayed a base coat or just a primer on your miniature but you want to be able to do more with your airbrush and make your Miniatures look better and here's five quick tips and tricks that will make you a better painter number one blending between layers a few weeks back we made an orc fetus don't ask and I was tasked with painting the orc skin while you technically can highlight everything with an airbrush I don't see any reason why you should because that is not what the airbrush is best at so instead what I did is I base coated the entire miniature with its midtone and then airbrushed in some shadows and then instead of highlighting the miniature with the airbrush I start adding in highlights with the regular brush placing out all of the lights and all of the volumes and I can do that quite roughly and I don't have to have a perfect coverage the most important thing is to get the general lights in there and to get a strong contrast in the muscles where you example go from the light to the shadow in a very harsh step and now what we can do to make this look amazing without spending hundreds of hours of glazing with regular brush is to mix a midtone in the airbrush cup between the highlight and the shadow and then blend by spraying the midtone between the two different colors and this makes it look like I've spent 30 minutes blending the different colors while in reality I did it in probably 10 minutes and funnily enough if I had any of the areas that I painted with a brush that didn't fully cover or I didn't have the consistency that I wanted I could then add some of that color to the airbrush thin down and then just fill out those areas with a little bit of that highlight paint and skin is not the only place where you can do stuff like this doing it on non-metallic metal swords or massive access is another great way of blending between colors without having to spend ages blending with the brush number two shade don't highlight if you paint your miniature starting with the shadow color and then with the midtone and then highlight and do all of those steps with the airbrush you're going to get a lot of overspray from the highlight colors meaning that you're going to make the shadow colors look somewhat hazy almost like a filter that removes the contrast of the miniature and when you paint your miniature this way highlighting with the airbrush is the thing that people complain about when they say that they don't like the look of airbrushed Miniatures instead of with what you should do is you should start with a midtone and then airbrush in the shadows because when you do that you don't have that Hasty feel that removes the contrast of the miniature and this is massive when you're painting Vehicles like Space Marine tanks for example just remember to thin down your paints enough so you don't have a super harsh transition number three using inks and contrast to blend between your layers whatever type of miniature you're painting there are steps that can benefit from using an airbrush and in this case inks and contrast paints when I'm painting big monsters I can add the base coats by having a cly primed miniature and then spraying with a bright contrast paint from above and a dark one from below and getting some nice volumes straight out of the bat that I can super easily just highlight with one or two highlights using the brush and boom I will have a finished figure but sometimes when you're just painting a miniature with the regular brush maybe highlighted the skin with green you can bring out contrast paints like a magenta color but that's that's not the only time when I use contrast paints and inks because even when I paint a miniature with a regular brush like we did with the masterclass miniature I paint 90 5% of the figure with the brushes and then at the end of the steps I can go in with a reddish brown tone and then airbrush in Shadows to blend all of the different colors together and get a more General shading using a contrast paint as a filter another example of that is when I painted K or the orc fetus again whenever I want to have more of a transition on the skin tones and maybe add more red redish tones to them you can look at the elbow of the bus that I did just painted some white strands and then sprayed like a filter with magenta ink on that elbow or the ears of the orc fetus or just look at any of the squigs or trolls that I've painted I just Ed the airbrush to add more oom color filter so to say to just punch the colors or add more shadows in general areas or transition colors to smooth them out the airbrush is amazing for this number four don't replace your regular brush look the airbrush is amazing otherwise I wouldn't make this video because I love it and use it for pretty much every figure I paint but when you're adding the final highlight the airbrush is almost never the solution because if you look at an area where you have a sharp contrast for example at the edge of a muscle where you want the underside of the muscle to be really dark and just below that you want a sharp edge that is highlighted if you would have added this highlight using the airbrush you would have had the Highlight leak into that shadow area underneath the muscle above it where it shouldn't be any any other things than Shadow so it's going to look really airbrushed and fake so when planning your paint job of a miniature make sure that you only use the airbrush where it's needed instead of just using it for everything to save time because your Miniatures are going to look so much better if you use the brush where the brush is best and the airbrush where the airbrush does its work best number five and airbush hack of the day use small pieces of paper this is such an easy thing to keep in mind mind have a piece of paper next to you while you're airbrushing because if you're doing something that we talked about just recently in this video shading the miniature using an ink for example and this time you're specifically shading armor of the miniature you don't want that to leak into the skin of the mini because you are with 90% certainty get some of that leak into that skin but by just placing a piece of paper at the top edge of that miniature armor you're blocking off any possibility of the paint to leak on through the skin so having small pieces of paper helping you block off areas is the easiest way of making your painting experience nicer and saving you hours of clean up in the last steps of the paint job and it literally takes 2 seconds to place the paper there my dudes in the middle of this video I told you that I'd show you more about this airbrush and I'm a man of my word because out of all the emails I get from you guys about 50% of them every week are about a new version of The squidmar Evolution airbrush and this year we will not diser a point because horror Ste M have completely redesigned the entire airbrush it's pretty much nothing like the old one the trigger control has been changed the front of the airbrush have been changed the layout of the airbrush have been changed so the flow of everything is completely different and it's just been made even better and from our testing this is the smoothest air rush that I've ever tried the point4 needle gives more control and detail than 2 needles that I've tried from other brands I got literally so excited when we first got this that I couldn't put it down and I just tried spraying many different things it's just so finely detailed so initially this one has mainly been designed for ease of use and speed but with that they've also smashed the detail control out of the waters which makes me as a painter incredibly happy cuz I get everything that I want inside of one airbrush of course we are biased as we obviously are sponsored by harder and steam and have been part of making this so please take it for what it is but we really really really love of these airbrushes the airbrush will come in two different versions one in black and one in Chrome and they have a little bit different loadouts the black airbrush will be limited to 1,000 copies and it comes with an FPC valve on the airbrush which means that I can control the air pressure directly on the airbrush giving me an even better control when I'm airbrushing and just want to make a Mane change to the pressure to give me the best flow we also have the Chrome version and the main difference here is that you don't have the FPC valve this keeps the price down a little bit so if you're on a budget this one is the one to get you still have the amazing design with the gold features and on the Chrome you have the same squid engraving which makes it two amazing looking airbrushes and both of these will be linked down in the video description check them out get yours now while you can and obviously we've talked about there being an Infinity as well that one has been delayed a little bit so that one will come out in q1 next year so if you're looking for that one you have something to look forward to but these ones when you order them you'll get them before Christmas so make sure to get one now once again everything we talked about in this video is in the video description please check out the new airbrush that we released with hard and steam backck they look amazing and spray amazingly and everything else we talked about this video as mentioned is in the video description massive thanks to all of our patrons and with that said have a great day bye-bye

Channel: Squidmar Miniatures

Views: 422,326

Keywords: warhammer, miniature painting, painting warhammer, age of sigmar, squidmar, warhammer 40k, dungeons & dragons, d&d, how to paint warhammer, space marines, squidmar miniatures, emil nyström, airbrush, vallejo, citadel color

Id: BLOT1Jkq9wk

Length: 47min 18sec (2838 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2023