Now airbrush air compressor, before we begin I’m no expert but I’ve been air brushing for approximately twenty years making everything from custom signs t-shirts to a few motorbikes for friends as well as incorporating it into my own network, so I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way and try to learn from master airbrush.Now, first off to begin air brushing isn’t cheap need a bit of kit to get started and once all this adds up, you can easily be looking at a couple of hundred pounds quite an investment, if you are.Only gonna use it once until I saw unsure about it, but if you have decided to make that plunge then here is what you will need a compressor or an alternative source of and this is my little compressor and it’s the second one I bought last me a good fifteen years and still going strong, they don’t need to be super fancy but you basically get what you pay for, as you will find that this will be the theme for most of this video any decent compressor from any reputable manufacturer will do the job, the air comes out of this little fitting onto which we connect a hose, now these come in all shapes and sizes, but for now I’ll show you this little rubber one as this is what you will find in most data sets, these are cheap and prone to leaks as they are not very durable, but the hose screws onto the compressor, and then you connect the other end to either directly to the air brush or advisedly to a pressure gauge.This one came with my compressor and has a built-in moisture trap air has naturally got water in it, so this removes any moisture content from your hose before giving the air brush pure air, so to speak, this gauge allows me to adjust the pressure of the air coming into my hairbrush, this is important because you will find that different types of air brushing will require different pressures to operate in an optimal way, you can lower the pressure for really fine detail work, but usually I will have my pressure set somewhere between twenty and forty PS, I the whole lot dropped into this little clamp hanger which also has two useful spaces to rest your air brush when not in use, this has another connection onto which we attach another hose for the air brush now this type of hose is the type that I use and can highly recommend these are what are called braided hose is much thicker and far more durable and they have a good weight to them, so they hang.Directly down out of the way I also found that a little quick release connection is one of the small quality of life tips that can make one’s life on just 1000% easier.I have multiple air brushes connected to my compressor, so I use a splitter connection to give me some extra hose connection points a little P T F E tape can help seal these connections and now onto the actual air brushes, there are several different types and these can really vary in price, the first type is a single action air brush which is basically a small spray can which you can change the color off you press the trigger and paint and air come out together, these are generally cheap and I wouldn’t recommend these to get the full experience and overall effect of what can be achieved with an air brush, you will really need to use a dual action air brush, this means that the trigger will blow air when pressed down and then you can pull back on the trigger which in turn will pull back a needle inside the air brush which lets you to control the amount of paint released into the air, this type of hairbrush is called a siphon feed air brush as it has a large color capacity. Making it great for larger projects and general purpose spray this one here is iota revolution, you can change color really quickly by attaching a water cup and spraying out any leftover color inside the air brush and then just swapping it out for the next you can buy bottle attachments, which can be attached directly onto the bottles of paint or special pre-made mixes they used made but the most common type of air brush and the type I would recommend to beginners is a gravity feed and brush as I said, these have a needle inside which goes back and forth to regulate the amount of paint which comes out this one here is an I water high line plus.Something that you will quickly find out and have to become familiar with is that you will need to take your air brush up on a lot.For cleaning for troubleshooting and for any other number of reasons, this has become something of a ritual and something I could probably do with my eyes closed similar to a soldier stripping their rifle, for example and in order to do this, give yourself a clean workspace and begin to remove the needle to start, remove the rear housing followed by the small locking nut at the back, this allows you to gently pull out the needle, this needle is the key to clean and even spring, the tips are extremely fragile.And can easily be bent or damaged if mishandled I’ve certainly bent my fair share of needles so having a couple of spare ones is always a good idea next you can remove the two front parts of the nozzle to reveal the tip of your brush, this part is also pretty fragile, so take care not to drop it directly onto this spot, this can also be removed with a little spanner in the case of a NY water air brush, but I have found that unless you need to replace this part I never really need to remove it for cleaning and to put it all back together, you follow the same process again, but in reverse starting with the front of the eye brush and then carefully threading the needle through the body again until you feel it stop inside the nozzle, then tighten the locking nut and you’re good to go I just wanted to also show you my frankenstein hairbrush, which shows you how the principles can stay the same, but each company will do things a little differently, this air brush started out as a hands a hairbrush but I’ve since changed out some of the.Parts with wetter parts as they just happen to fit the main difference is that the nozzle here is separate at first things can seem a little confusing as each company has their own little features, so to speak, but the overall mechanics generally stay the same, and I found an air brush hold to be extremely useful, and I have several on hand to make my life easier.Next onto paint, you can pretty much spray any paint through an air brush as long as it’s thin enough, but I can definitely recommend some specific paints which I used a lot firstly dedicated miniature paints which I’m sure some of you will be familiar with already in this case, these are made by for later and you can pretty much use this straight from the bottle, major artist paint companies will often also do their range of priests in dare brush paint in this case golden threw a great range of liquid acrylics is also coming opaque transparent versions to give you different effects, next is some specific multipurpose water based air brush paint in this case, create x., this is probably my favorite type of paint with the wicked colors range being the latest version of these paints for anyone really interested in this there are some really great demos, you can search on Youtube using wicked paints and you can see what they’re really capable of.To thin and clean my air brushes I use thinner or reduce or it’s sometimes called you can find all manner of additives from transparent bases to air brush, medium and flow, improve or inks are also great to spread through an air brushes, the naturally thin and highly pigmented how thin you want your paint is a little bit of a guessing game and sometimes down to personal preference, but as a common rule of thumb you kind of after the consistency of milk. This may vary from company to company, but with a bit of experimentation, you will soon find a ratio that seems to work for you, some people mix their paint directly in the cup of deer brush, but I prefer to mix it in these little shot glasses so my paint is consistent throughout so okay you’ve got a load of equipment, but the big question is what do you do with it, there are many different types of Mark, you can make with an air brush how close you hold the air brushed the surface, how far you pull back the trigger how fast you physically move will all have different effects on the type of Mark that you make you can use stencils and loose Marks to really define different shapes, here are a couple of quick doodles I did for practice using just one or two colors, so now you’ve found your spraying, and now you need to clean it, and this is the part that people are most afraid of but the process can be really easy, firstly I recommend it.Do this at a table or desk and not over the sink or Basin as small parts can easily disappear down the plug hole, take a small container filled with warm water, add a little thinner and begin to strip down your air brushes I demonstrated earlier give all the parts a good soak, then with a few paper towels and some cotton buds dipped in a little thinner I just clean out any remaining pain’s a carefully reassemble.These air brushes are both over ten years old and used nearly every day, sure I’ve had to replace the odd part here and there, but when cleaned up they look almost brand new new supplier of spares is also really useful and I’ve added a couple of links in the description to places where I get mine albeit these are in the UK but again a good place to start, if you don’t know where to begin great well that’s all well and good.But how does any of that apply to miniatures and dramas and at first I imagine it seems pretty complicated, so here I’ve included a few practical examples from previous videos I’ve made in order to show how the school level, you actually need for miniatures isn’t high at all, here I use an air brush basically as a substitute for a spray coat to color some trees in a star wars dire armor I made link above, if you want to watch it in full is literally just applying color I could do this with a conventional brush but it’s much faster with an air brush level of skill required one out of ten next in this example I get a little more technical by blending some colors together to create the effect of an explosion.Basically spraying random dots on the cotton wall getting darker towards the edges level of skill required three out of ten here I’m darkening, what will be my riverbed in my floating ancient ruins diorama again a link above, if you wanna watch your info simply spraying a mix of brown and black into deeper parts to give a deeper tone, very simple skill level two out of ten in this example I used the air brush to simulate light.And do this by spraying a stronger white line and then just hazing off the edges and then going over this with a transparent blue the effect works really well, but the lines that are actually making a relatively simple and only require basic control of an air brush and just a little lightness of touch overall skill level four out of ten on this jungle diorama I used an air brush to deepen some of the shadow areas and pain, what would be difficult to reach with a brush again overall skill level three out of ten and finally another example that with some basic graduating lines, you can achieve really effective coloring and blending on your models overall difficulty. Maybe a five out of ten.Spraying a three-dimensional shape is far more forgiving than spraying a flat surface, so one good tip is to build up your air brush control with exercises on paper try drawing a picture following a few Youtube tutorials or writing your name, a bunch of times.This will massively improve your overall confidence and ability when working on your prized creations, check them and make sure it sounds right void air brushes like any other tool, it will not magically make things look amazing, like any tool you need to learn its strengths and its weaknesses, learn how to use it and it will become almost an extension of your hand.