Busts

[deadpool66]

I need to start airbrushing.....
[img]http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a182/deadpool2099/Mobile%20Uploads/IMG_59881_zpsbzaehwag.jpg[/img]

[Eaglezsoar]

Cool looking prints! Great job.

[h4lt]

Those are great!

Have you researched airbrushing at all? I'm definitely interested in purchasing one as well. Anyone know if it's an expensive endeavor and difficult to master?

[deadpool66]

The busts are actually in my mini airbrush booth in the picture. Airbrushing is pretty easy I prefer to prime with the airbrush and hand paint the rest in acrylic unless the object is mainly one color.

[Xenocrates]

Those are great!

Have you researched airbrushing at all? I'm definitely interested in purchasing one as well. Anyone know if it's an expensive endeavor and difficult to master?

Yes and yes, at least at the higher end.

I do a lot of airbrushing of scale models and wargaming terrain. I have 4 airbrushes, three of which see normal use. One, which I only really use for priming, is a cheap 20$ or so Harbor freight siphon feed airbrush. Honestly, the fitting to connect it to my air line with a quick connect and the paint in it are usually worth more than the airbrush itself. If what you're after is a lot of area and relatively even coverage, it works pretty well.

My second airbrush that sees a lot of use is a Badger Patriot. That's about an 80$ airbrush, and with a full set of needles (Much like getting a full set of nozzles for a hotend), the price can rise dramatically. I've probably got ~150$ into it and needles for it. So not exactly cheap, but not terrible. It's a a lot better for shading and slightly more detailed work, and I typically use it for blocking out, and base colors on a medium needle (it can do fine detail OK, but I have a dedicated brush for that, and usually prefer to handpaint). It's a gravity feed internal mixing one, so cleaning is more involved and makes a big difference performance wise. I typically strip it down completely after 3-9 rounds of painting with it, and soak it in a cleaner while using a brass brush to remove excess paint. Of note is that that it's a dual action design, push down for air and pull back for more paint. That allows a lot more control than a single action design of the paint load.

The third airbrush I use is a Sotar 20/20. That's more like a 200$ base airbrush, and probably another 70$ for needs for it. However, with the fine needle, it can do details down to pencil line and lower thickness, and is a dual action internal mix gravity feed with an adjustable lockout on the action, so that if you're doing really fine work and sneeze, it bottoms out on the lock before you just dump paint on what you're working on.

Here are some things to note about airbrushes and airbrushing in general.

Compressed air supply: You can either get canned propellant (expensive per unit, but cheap relative to a compressor for low volume, consistent, and quiet), or have a compressor supplying it. You don't need a lot of flow or pressure. I would generally recommend that you use a tanked diaphragm compressor or scroll compressor, as they are quiet and efficient. Scrolls are better, but more expensive and a good bit rarer. A large tank is largely wasted, you just want some to smooth out the air pressure being supplied. Even a sub-gallon tank would do some good. You want on the air you're providing to it to have a filter, regulator, and drier, probably arraigned FDR, to keep water, oil, and other crud from being mixed with your paints.

Airbrush types:
Siphon: uses airflow and the Bernoulli effect to generate a vacuum to raise paint from a lower cup. Usually external mix, and often requires a higher flow rate and pressure of air, but still rather small.
Gravity feed: uses gravity, as the name implies, to feed paint into the mechanism. Internal mixing only. It can have either an external cup, or a built in one, of varying volumes. It can use a lower pressure and flow rate, but as the air is more mixed with the paint stream, moisture and particles in the air can have more effect. It has a benefit of being able to remix the color in the cup to achieve more shading, but usually cannot be switched for rapid color change like a siphon feed can be.

Single action: Push button, get paint. These are much less adjustable than their double action counterparts, but are usually cheaper. Some may have a mechanism to translate a single trigger pull of varied depth into different amounts of paint, but this is unusual and a premium option, often found on Iwata and Grex airbrushes.
Double action: different movements or mechanisms for paint versus air volumes. These are more controlled and adjustable, and are usually found on medium to high end airbrushes.

The biggest expense (after a compressor if you have to buy one) in getting started will probably be paint. Airbrush paints are usually specially formulated to have lower particle sizes and lower consistencies. A relatively full set from a single manufacturer for a single role (such as base color, or transparents), can be more than 200$s, while some paints, most notably lacquer transparents, are expensive on a per bottle basis. Learn with something cheap and effective, such as Minitaire or color Air, from Badger and Vallejo respectively.

[deadpool66]

I have the patriot and its by far my favorite brush and Vallejo is my favorite paint looks really nice and hand brushes very well.

[h4lt]

Wow! Thanks for the detailed info. That is exactly what I was looking for. So do you do a lot of tabletop gaming? I'm thinking of printing some stuff for D&D.

Those are great!

Have you researched airbrushing at all? I'm definitely interested in purchasing one as well. Anyone know if it's an expensive endeavor and difficult to master?

Yes and yes, at least at the higher end.

I do a lot of airbrushing of scale models and wargaming terrain. I have 4 airbrushes, three of which see normal use. One, which I only really use for priming, is a cheap 20$ or so Harbor freight siphon feed airbrush. Honestly, the fitting to connect it to my air line with a quick connect and the paint in it are usually worth more than the airbrush itself. If what you're after is a lot of area and relatively even coverage, it works pretty well.

My second airbrush that sees a lot of use is a Badger Patriot. That's about an 80$ airbrush, and with a full set of needles (Much like getting a full set of nozzles for a hotend), the price can rise dramatically. I've probably got ~150$ into it and needles for it. So not exactly cheap, but not terrible. It's a a lot better for shading and slightly more detailed work, and I typically use it for blocking out, and base colors on a medium needle (it can do fine detail OK, but I have a dedicated brush for that, and usually prefer to handpaint). It's a gravity feed internal mixing one, so cleaning is more involved and makes a big difference performance wise. I typically strip it down completely after 3-9 rounds of painting with it, and soak it in a cleaner while using a brass brush to remove excess paint. Of note is that that it's a dual action design, push down for air and pull back for more paint. That allows a lot more control than a single action design of the paint load.

The third airbrush I use is a Sotar 20/20. That's more like a 200$ base airbrush, and probably another 70$ for needs for it. However, with the fine needle, it can do details down to pencil line and lower thickness, and is a dual action internal mix gravity feed with an adjustable lockout on the action, so that if you're doing really fine work and sneeze, it bottoms out on the lock before you just dump paint on what you're working on.

Here are some things to note about airbrushes and airbrushing in general.

Compressed air supply: You can either get canned propellant (expensive per unit, but cheap relative to a compressor for low volume, consistent, and quiet), or have a compressor supplying it. You don't need a lot of flow or pressure. I would generally recommend that you use a tanked diaphragm compressor or scroll compressor, as they are quiet and efficient. Scrolls are better, but more expensive and a good bit rarer. A large tank is largely wasted, you just want some to smooth out the air pressure being supplied. Even a sub-gallon tank would do some good. You want on the air you're providing to it to have a filter, regulator, and drier, probably arraigned FDR, to keep water, oil, and other crud from being mixed with your paints.

Airbrush types:
Siphon: uses airflow and the Bernoulli effect to generate a vacuum to raise paint from a lower cup. Usually external mix, and often requires a higher flow rate and pressure of air, but still rather small.
Gravity feed: uses gravity, as the name implies, to feed paint into the mechanism. Internal mixing only. It can have either an external cup, or a built in one, of varying volumes. It can use a lower pressure and flow rate, but as the air is more mixed with the paint stream, moisture and particles in the air can have more effect. It has a benefit of being able to remix the color in the cup to achieve more shading, but usually cannot be switched for rapid color change like a siphon feed can be.

Single action: Push button, get paint. These are much less adjustable than their double action counterparts, but are usually cheaper. Some may have a mechanism to translate a single trigger pull of varied depth into different amounts of paint, but this is unusual and a premium option, often found on Iwata and Grex airbrushes.
Double action: different movements or mechanisms for paint versus air volumes. These are more controlled and adjustable, and are usually found on medium to high end airbrushes.

The biggest expense (after a compressor if you have to buy one) in getting started will probably be paint. Airbrush paints are usually specially formulated to have lower particle sizes and lower consistencies. A relatively full set from a single manufacturer for a single role (such as base color, or transparents), can be more than 200$s, while some paints, most notably lacquer transparents, are expensive on a per bottle basis. Learn with something cheap and effective, such as Minitaire or color Air, from Badger and Vallejo respectively.

[Xenocrates]

Wow! Thanks for the detailed info. That is exactly what I was looking for. So do you do a lot of tabletop gaming? I'm thinking of printing some stuff for D&D.

No, I really don't. I wish I had time for it, but real life, and the fact that I ended up in charge of maintenance and construction on one of the larger mobile scenery collections in the region, has eaten all the time I used to have to play the games I support. For D&D, I would say the furniture and scenery is printable, but for the most part, it's easier to get models off the shelf, and if needed, convert them a little.