Today we’re gonna take a beginner look at the air brush what many families air brushes are a double edged sword on one hand they can expedite your miniature painting process quite a bit and on the other hand it’s a new tool to learn and mess up with not sure about you guys professional airbrush makeup system kit photo finish cosmetic brush compressor, but my learning journey with an air brush was not as advertised I struggled quite a bit, so where do we even begin well I think we should talk about the typical Anatomy of an air brush that you find in the miniature painting hobby, the most recognizable part of the air brushes the needle an air brush needle comes in a variety of diameters, the general thought process is that the smaller the diameter of the nido, the more I find the control but I’ve personally found there to be diminishing returns, the smaller you get with your airbrush makeup starter kit.Needle diameter somewhere on the point three millimeter diameter is the perfect size for your needle anything smaller than that seems to be a little bit too fragile, which is a real problem when handling tiny little needles like this after the needle, probably the most obvious next part is the cup which is not something found on all air brushes the typical style of air brush, you will see in the miniature painting hobby is a gravity Fed air brush which places the cup above the main body, this allows gravity to do the work of feeding the paint to the front of the air brush where it will be distributed from there, the alternative to this design isn’t seen as often is called the siphon feed in this design paint is siphoned up from below into the air brush the main value of a siphon Fed air brushes, the vessel allows you to use a larger quantity of paint which makes it great to paint a large amount of models or something very big, the downside of the siphon feed is that it’s harder to change the paint out.I often find that while air brushing I’m mixing paint in the pot or changing colors and not painting a huge quantity of models too often so I tend to stick to gravity Fed air brushes, generally speaking a siphon Fed air brush requires more air pressure to operate because you need air pressure to siphon paint out of the reservoir, and also air pressure to propel that paint onto whatever it is you’re painting with a gravity Fed air brush gravity is helping you so you can use lower pressure which means you have more control you’ll see why later having lower pressure allows for more control as an alternative to both of these designs, you have side feed air brushes which have the value of also not blocking the view and operating like a gravity Fed air brush for beginners, however side feed air brushes tend to have a lot of attachments and add ons and things to buy, so for a beginner, it makes sense to use the more simple gravity Fed air brush after the cup, the other component of the.Air brush that gets the most recognition is the trigger which has various functions depending on what type of air brush, you get at the basic level you have a single action air brush this trigger functions like a light switch when you push it down, it’s either blowing paint or it isn’t the more you push trigger down the more airflow you get, but I find that most air brushes not all have such short travel that it’s very difficult to get that degree of control after single action air brushes, we have dual action air brushes the same idea with pushing the trigger down but as you pull the trigger back, you get more and more paint, lastly there is such a thing as a pistol trigger air brush instead of having the trigger on top of the body, this sits below for some people, this is more comfortable an experience, the cool part of a pistol grip air brushes that it manages to still have the dual action of functionality, while only having one actionable button to interface with the air.Brush when you first pull back on the trigger, you only get air, but if you keep pulling you’ll start to get paints only some at first but more the more you start to pull and then when you let go the pain stops and then the air stops this means that you can modulate the amount of air pressure and paints independently, but it does teach you good air brushing practices which we’ll get into later, now that we’ve described some of the most recognizable components of an air brush, let’s go over how an air brush actually functions and talk about some of the less notable components of the internals of an air brush for the rest of the video will be talking about a dual action gravity Fed air brush because that’s the most ubiquitous design that you see in the miniature painting hobby, so what actually happens when you push down on the air brush trigger and you hear that hissing sound well pressurized air travels up from where the hoses to the front of the air brush and because it’s traveling in a corridor that’s getting more. More and more narrow, it causes a localized low air pressure in this portion now at this point the noodles resting perfectly inside of the needle nozzle, not letting any paints get out into this front element, but as you pull back on the trigger you pull this tapered needle back into the air brush causing a little gap here now all of a sudden pain can get into this front area, but why would it want to well it doesn’t VIA a thing called the venturi effect, the air here is at a low air pressure and the air here is that a normal air pressure, and because of that a vacuum occurs sucking paint out of the air brush and out of the front and a fine spray mist now not all air brushes mixed paint internal like the ones that we use for the hobby do the hpc’s the so tyre 2020, some mix paint and air externally.This often results in a wider and coarser spray pattern, so for painting miniatures, it isn’t the most useful unless you’re like base coding a priming terrain or a large volume of minis, but what about all those extra tools you need to start air brushing well that’s a good question, let’s talk about some of the most helpful accessories that you can have while air brushing probably the most obvious of them all is a compressor, some people have really strong opinions about compressors I am not one of them, just get on with a tank a moisture trap, in a way to regulate the pressure and you’re done another pretty obvious successor e that I recommend using is a prefabricated thinner of some kind you can make your own but you can also go with a no fuss solution of just having one that’s already done and I’m a fan of vallejos air brush thinner you’ll need teflon tape or pipe dope or bees, wax or some way to seal up the connections to a limit air leakage, oftentimes a roll of tape comes with your compressor.Spray bottle a cleaner of some kind a wrench or vise grips to UN stick pesky air brush parts, some oil to grease the threads of your components and your needle gloves, if you don’t want to get any paint on your hands and a respirator even though most of the paints that we use are non-toxic it’s probably not a bad idea to avoid getting any kind of paint particles in your lungs and it’s also a good practice to develop when you actually do start using things more toxic like enamels etc, you can find all these parts linked in the description below, so now you know all the fancy words and all the fancy tools as mature painting air brushes, we use an internally mixed dual action gravity Fed air brush now with that out of the way let’s get into some real practical advice in order to unlock the full potential of an air brush the most important concept for you to understand is the relationship between the viscosity of the paint inside the air brush and also the air pressure of your.A compressor, so let’s start there, some of the first questions people ask when they start air brushing is what PS I should I use or how much should I thin, my paint for the air brush just like with paint brushes, there is no one answer for either of these questions, let me help you figure out how to answer this question for yourself depending on what you’re doing so let’s start with the most basic usage of the air brush based coding and priming for these applications where you want coverage quickly you’re going to use a thicker paint because the more you thin, your paint, the more translucent it becomes because your pain is thicker, you need to use a higher PS I something like 25 or even upwards of thirty so now we understand the first part of the relationship, if I want to use thicker paint, I need to use a higher PS I this makes sense because thicker paint is harder to propel because it’s harder we need a stronger vacuum because we need a stronger vacuum, we need more air pressure, now there’s a problem with high pressure and that’s why we want to get close and.Detailed with our air brush if your base coating, this isn’t really a problem, the further you are from your miniature, the wider your spray pattern, the bigger your coverage, this is actually desirable when your base coating, what if you want to be more accurate with your air brush well if you get in close with your air brush on high-pressure bad things happen, the pressure from the brush makes the paint spread which is not at all what you want okay so the pressure is too high and we need to lower it so let’s do that if we lower the pressure and start spraying what you’ll notice is that now we’re getting more of a speckled application, this happens when your pain is too thick or your air pressure is too low so that means if we want a low pressure so we can be closer with our air brush, we need to thin our paint more now we can be close get nice tight lines with minimal speckling, so through this little demonstration, we’ve explored the entire equation you want to base coat stuff really fast use thick paint and high-pressure and back away from the miniature to limit spider webbing, you want to be more control to have more accuracy. And tighter areas use thinner paint lower pressure and get physically closer to the miniature obviously there’s a spectrum in between these two extremes, you can go with a medium opacity and a medium air pressure, it’s all depending on what you want to do I’ve linked a little graph and the description that will help you troubleshoot your air brush PS I and dilution problems until you fully grasp the relationship now before we start applying paint with our air brush, let’s make sure that it actually is in a working state right now, nothing sucks quite like getting a bunch of nicely mixed paint into your air brush only to figure out that your trigger or your needle is stuck in some way, this is pretty simple to try to run some water through your air brush to make sure everything is okay if you air brushed in the past which you may discover is that you didn’t do the greatest job cleaning and something is gunk up, it’s a good idea to take care of these problems now before proceeding now let’s mix up some paint and actually do some air brushing from my personal experience.I’ve never found a paint range to not work at all for the air brush but certain ranges work better than others, most notably ranges that have a very matte finish aren’t the easiest to air brush stuff like scale 75, regardless of what paint range you use, however the process looks mostly the same before putting any pain in your air brushes cup is generally considered a best practice to mix and thin your paints outside of your paint cup, this allows you to ensure that the paint is fully mixed as well as easily remove any dried bits of paint or unmixed chunks that would likely cause clogs, once you got the consistency of paint where you want it based on what you’re trying to do it’s time to start actually air brushing, oftentimes I will test the paint in my air brush on something other than my model before applying it to see if the air brushes behaving in the way that I expect it to like a gloved hand or some piece of plastic laying around you, pour the paint into the cup and begin to gently pulse.The pain consider a rhythm like this air pressure fully coming out gently start to apply the paint gently stop applying the pain stop the air pressure, all of your paint applications should be buffered by just straight air coming out of your air brush, you do this for a few reasons, generally you want to dry the paint you’re applying as soon as it comes out, this reduces the odds of spider webbing, apply a little bit dry with the air of the air brush rinse and repeat another reason you apply paint in this rhythm is if you cut the air and the paint at the exact same time you sometimes get a little dribble on the end of your needle, this little droplet is your worst enemy, when you go back start painting again and apply air pressure that little droplet is shot off the end of your air brush into whatever you’re painting likely ruining it, it sucks.Yes.Youtube, what are you doing in my refrigerator, you sneaky little Chad well, while I have your attention, let me tease a little release that’s coming out on black friday that’s a little bit vampiric za.You have to wait until black friday to figure out what is going to be but it’s something I am super excited about alright back to the video, all right, you understand what I consider being the fundamentals of using an air brush at a beginner level, but I think there’s some value in talking through typical air brush applications based coding and priming is easy enough to understand what if I want to get a blend from one part to the next on a miniature let’s talk through that alright today’s live demonstration, we’re going to be painting a space Marine because you all know how much I love mouth, bite marines were going to paint a ultra Marine shoulder pad and we’re starting with regal blue which is an old citadel color from games workshop again using that range because citadels more satin, the other guys were doing a base code here I’m going to make this dilution a little bit thicker than I normally would, and this particular segment is playing back in real time, you can kind of see how slowly and gradually I build up the layers now as a reminder.I am doing mostly air and less paint than you probably think I’m trying to dry each layer of paint before I apply the next one by pulsing air in between my applications of paint another layer because I want to get brighter of a blue color alright, now we’re gonna mix in some hawk turquoise which is a turquoise as its name suggests into the regal blue to get a little bit of a brighter color, and because we mixed in thicker paint, we need to mix in more of the vallejo air brushed enter to diluted a little bit doing some back blow mixing to mix it up, we’re going to test it on a little holder there make sure all the regal blue is out of the front of the air brush and now will start to slowly apply a highlight I want you to really notice how.Little my finger is pulling the trigger back really just doing little bursts of paints and trying to dry it with air in between one thing I want to address that I am mixing paint in the cup and I do fully admit that it’s not a good practice and I just do it because I’m lazy and I don’t have anything around me to mix paint in so if you want to be lazy like me, you can do that, or if you want to do a best practice mix it in a little cup or a little dish or something, and then pour into your air brushes cup alright we’re going to mix in some F W white acrylic ink to develop a highlight I use acrylic ink to make my highlights because it’s higher flow you want to find out more information about that, you can watch the video linked to the top right hand corner of the screen, same process sending a little bit testing on the handle, and then slowly pulsing it towards the top of the shoulder pad making sure not to get too much down in the Mid tone in the shadow area.Really, slowly move my finger a tiny amount making sure to dry each layer before applying more to avoid spider web a little bit more little bit more thinner as well to get even brighter of a highlight and even some more and some more thinner, apparently Jason come back below mixing.And targeting a very small area, super close to the miniature at this point I did turn down my PS I like fifteen so I can get closer without risking too much spider webbing and the problem with highlighting with an air brush is that you often go a little bit too crazy with your highlights are going to bring back the shadows a little bit with some thin down chaos blacker avodon black as it’s now called I’ll take some black paint thin it down quite a bit with vallejo air brush thinner and then apply it toward the bottoms of the shoulder pads to kind of bring back some of that darkness I tend to do my highlights first and then my shadows second whenever doing the air brush, I’m targeting the bottom corners of the air brush here to bring some more contrast, you could have stopped at the first highlight we did but I like to do a little bit of extra credit, he really kind of stretch the air brushes leg. Now, the problem with this step is that I kind of have the two areas subdivided a little bit I have a lot of highlights and a lot of dark shadow and sort of bring back some of that Mid tone, I’m gonna take Goldman blue which is a glaze to bring back some rich Mid tone, now if you were a better air brush than me, you could probably skip this step because you wouldn’t have gone so ham with your highlight your shadow but I’m bad, so I’m bringing back some of that rich Mid tone with a little bit of golden glaze, you can replace ink or just normal paint too, but I like to demonstrate all the different products that you can use through an air brush and there are even more than this, once this is done, that’s the last step and you can see the blend from bright to dark it’s not flawless by any means you can see some speckles but it’s pretty dang good, this has been live painting brought to you by mini ack the miniature maniac signing out alright we’ve got a lot of air brushing today before we fully quit it’s time to clean our air brush nice and thoroughly.I often start by taking a spray bottle and removing the excess paint from the pot into a cup, another option would be to spray it all out of my thoughts here with the spray bottle, the less paint that comes out through the front of my air brush the less paint that can get dried and stick in little areas internally once that’s suitably clean I then start to rinse the air brush with a 5050 mixture of ammonia free glass cleaner and water spraying through the front until it’s clean ammonia free glass cleaner allows me to clean the internals of my air brush without running the risk of harming some of the rubber or teflon gaskets like Ice appropriate and ammonia are capable of doing I also mixed in some back flowing by covering the front element with a finger on a sponge and blowing cleaner back in where the needle see Liz and agitating it a little bit, the needle seal is what blocks all of the liquid from entering into the back portion of your air brush where your trigger is some folks may say this is dangerous and it may be, but if you’re.Therefore, you won’t damage the tip of your needle, my particular air brush the wada hpc’s don’t even come into contact with the tip of the needle, all I do is my finger around the Rim of the crown, and it works great specific cleaning steps vary from air brush to air brush, for instance my hpc’s paint gets stuck in between the needle seal and the cup and it’s hard to get out because of this part of my cleaning process is to have cleaner in the cup and then various how they push the needle in and out to tease that paint out of that area know that I’m not pulling the needle out, so far that it starts to taper if I did that I beginning paint in my trigger area with something you definitely want to avoid once you’re all clean and rinsed it’s always a good idea to take the needle fully out and give it a very thin film of oil for next time I use badger’s Neil juice, there is a lot to talk about when it comes to air brushing and I undoubtedly did not answer all of your beginner questions, so I asked some of my patrons for some common. Beginner questions that I’ll answer right here right now do you still need a thin paints designed for air brushing certain brands like vallejo and citadel have paints that are pre thinned for air brushing usage, but it really depends on what you want to do as to whether or not you should thin them or not, these are likely ready to go for applying base coats and things similar to that, but if you want to do more subtle work like layering or blending or a combination of those you will likely need to thin them a little bit more how much should I clean in between colors, it really depends on what colors you’re swapping in between, if I’m going from a light brown to a lighter brown I’m not too concerned with how much I clean in between those two tones, but if I’m going from something like black to white now do a much more thorough clean job like previously described, can you thin paint with water, you definitely can in a pinch, but you discover over time is that a thinner does a better job.Running clogs from happening and also applying paint more smoothly, these are all questions from my patrons as previously discussed because this is a new video series that I’m doing for patron I have a new reward for my acolyte tier which says that you have the ability to supply suggestions for video topics and also vote on your favorite ones, and this is the first one I’m doing a beginner air brushing one these videos will always be sponsor free which allows me to shout out some of my new patrons, so in this video we’re shouting out overdrive active Austin be iron giant Ryan t hoon your Manuel Munoz dylan bane hunter autumn eliot Adam topless corey Smith Philip eckert honeycomb dreadnought e Jonathan cool A J ello John Justin Steven mozer kit hayden minis by applesauce Taylor Robin alt.Ian Boyd the dungeon master Josh sharp killer lurch Kevin whack kelsey Graham Mark a Susan Michael age ru re-map, better check Manchester, thank you guys for being my patrons for this month and also thanks to all of my current and past patrons for supporting this absolutely ridiculous job that I have making videos about painting tiny plastic toy soldiers, if you are interested in supporting the channel and supporting these super geeky videos, you can find out more about what I offer my patron link in description below, while this video may be incomplete, I hope it addressed a lot of knowledge that you’ll need when air brushing for the first time maybe in the future, we can go over more advanced information do you guys think I missed any essential beginner knowledge, let me know in the comment section below, if you’re looking for an air brush to buy for the first time, check out my air brush comparison video I did, if you guys like videos about air brushes I have a few watch, you can find that I’ll.