Thread: G'day all, new airbrusher

G'day guys, been lurking for a few weeks and joined up a few days ago. I'm in Brisbane Australia and have always wanted to learn airbrushing. I bought myself an airbrush setup and the compressor and paint arrived this morning so being super eager to try it out I hooked her all up and poured some paint into the cup. Now I know I am going to need heaps of practice but due to visitors today I only had about an hour playing around with pressures and getting the feel of the brush.

I got an Iwata HP-C + brush, Iwata IS-925HT compressor, a selection of AA paint and a pack of 20 water based airbrush paint. The cheapy paint is for practice on paper for the next six or so weeks until I do a 2 day course on the Gold Coast with Wayne Harrison which I am really looking forward to. I figure some practice on brush control before the course should help me during the course.

This little airbrush is amazing, with 10psi I managed to get my lines down to a hair line and was fairly accurate putting dots on a grid. When our visiters are gone I can get to practicing in earnest and start trying dagger strokes and straighter lines.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and how informative I find this site, I am sure I will be pestering you guys in the months to come picking your brains for info. I'll add some pics of my kit and the practice I did, not great I know but hey .... I only had an hour to play with my new toy.

Nice to see some new members like me. I've done such training papers about hundred or so and I've learnt a lot about my tool. I spent around 2 full days to get a grip about thinning paint, that's the first key to success I think. When I'm doing some paintings and I change colors, I use overleft color to practice more daggers, dots and overpainting old lines on some practice sheet. So don't throw that paint away from your cup, but take it as a free practice.

I'd like to take some course too, but closest ones are in UK, so I have to try to learn as much as I can from sites like this.

Hey Claws & Glimmer, Welcome. I only paint fishing lures, Been here a few months, The people here are Great, Very Helpful & the work they do leaves me speechless. Claws you will Love the HP-C +, I have one myself, if you have questions just post them, and you will get feedback....Mike

Sorry Grimmer for the name mess up...Mike

Welcome Claws, looks like your off to a great start. Welcome to you also Grimmer.

Welcome guys...Now i'm not the newest newbie
Bompa

Hehe, couldn't help myself today while our visitors went to the markets and traced out a pic to try my hand at. All I can say is I need to practice, practice, practice. I was a little shakey at following the outline but managed to keep my lines to a fairly even thickness which was the main purpose to this. Decided I may as well have a go at colour and shading it .... that's where it all went down hill.

I suppose for my first attempt I can't expect much and my main purpose for filling it in was brush control and staying within the lines which I did ok at. Shading and even paint coverage will have to wait for a later time. I think I'll also just stick with black paint for the time being.

Dots and daggers .... those dots aren't too hard but those daggers are tricky little buggars. Slightly better at them with my left hand than I am with my right hand. A bit embarrased to post this pic but at least I can look back on it one day and think.... was I really that bad?

Welcome claws and grimmer. Claws don't ever be embarassed to post something up on here. We are all here because of the common interest of airbrushing and to help each other out.I don't think anyone here will make fun of anything you post. The pic you did does not look as bad as you think it does. Try starting off lighter next time and build up from there. In airbrushing less is more. It took me a little bit to get use to that concept.You are off to a good start , read all the great help articles that are on this site they will help you a great deal. Once again welcome and have fun with the new toys.

Grimmer, I don't know where you are, but you might hook up with Gordon Corrins in Scotland, he does tuition/lessons and is extremely talented at painting and teaching.

It's great that you guys are being serious about the practice ethic, too many seem to think that if they just by a certain brush or compressor that it will all happen by magic overnight.

I would strongly suggest that you do your learning using just plain black paint, not transparents or candies. Colors and effects paints are great, but to really learn to use the brush, you need to learn control, and to be able to see clear, honest results when you practice. Trying to see if tiny dots are right and consistant is hard enough when you are using black, but when you try them in yellow, blue, etc., it is extremely hard to see the detail because the contrast between the paint and paper is so minimal, and it gets even tougher when you are trying to learn to spray using a light touch. Trying to judge your shading when you are starting out with a light color is impossible, Even at full density or coverage, the darkest that yellow will ever be is... well... yellow, and again, because of the low contrast between the colors of the paint and the paper, trying to make a rational decission on whether the shading is too light or too heavy is impossible.

Those drills; dots, daggers, lines, and shading, are what ALL the rest of airbrushing is built upon. So learning those skills is paramount!

Get yourself a coloring book or two, you can copy out the pages if you wish, the coloring books can help give you visual guides, and give you something to practice your painting skills on, so even if your drawing skills aren't up to snuff, you can still work on your motor skills and your drills in a learning atmosphere that you may find more fun. Try to do the shading and painting using just one color, and making the object look 3-dimensional.

Good luck, and practice, practice, practice!

g`day fellas welcome ,u will find this sight helpful as,another aussie to the spray and prey list
i use the same gun as u i like it ,its comfortable in the hand and has a goos variation of line thickness etc

Welcome Welcome Welcome. Practice Practice Practice.

Originally Posted by fontgeek

Grimmer, I don't know where you are, but you might hook up with Gordon Corrins in Scotland, he does tuition/lessons and is extremely talented at painting and teaching.

I'm from Finland, so here ain't any known teachers/ classes. Sweden might be the closest country, but obviously they speak mostly swedish and I ain't too good at that ( I can speak somehow, and understand somehow).

Other problem is that I still have some studies and I have a job, so my schedule is quite full but maybe I might find some time after I get my studies complete.

And thank you all for your suggestions. I have done few pictures and might post someday.

Hi guys,
Thanks all for the welcome and great support and advice. Been busy at work this last week so couldn't get any practice in but been reading a lot on this site. Got up Sat. morning and hooked up the AB for some practice, after an hour or so dots and daggers got rather boring and I had bought some AA candies to paint a mates di-cast model car with so thought I would see how they paint before attempting his model.

Practice skid lid.

1st thing I learn't is a HP-C+ AB is not the best thing to be painting candies on a larger surface area, 2nd thing I learn't is candy black is too translucent for mural work. 3rd thing I learn't is I am a little heavy handed with the knife.

I have now purchased an Auto Air .5mm suction feed AB, a selection of AA translucent paints and a selection of Createx paints which should arrive next week. I will probably also get a Iwata W400 gravity feed spray gun for larger painting jobs.

Anyway, I started off by sanding back an old hard hat I had with 600 W&D.



I then sprayed it with base aluminium fine.



Layed out some old school flames with 1/8 3M tape.



Then masked it all up.



I sprayed yellow candy down first and went over it with candy apple red, a bit heavy with the red and I didn't get the desired effect but it's not too bad.



Unmasked, I left the 1/8 tape on as I want the silver outline around the flames.



I decided to have a go at doing a skull so taped up the area and drew an outline to be cut out for a stencil. Candy black is not a real good paint for mural work and I also made the mistake of blacking out the nose and eye sockets far too much while still masked making it impossible to soften the outline with shading and leaving a raised paint edge. 4th thing learn't.....



Gold candy applied over the skull and non flamed area.



The candy over the skull helps in covering up my short comings as an AB artist to a slight degree. Still a long way to go and a lot more practice needed but I feel I have improved a little over my first attempt. Most importantly however is the fact I had a ball doing this and can't wait for more free time to try something else when dots and daggers again get too boring.



5th thing learn't ..... This is just the best fun ......

Still trying to get used to this forum setup, I am getting a little lost in all of them and not sure where to post my progress. Guess I'll work it out eventually.

Hey Redneck thanks for the vote of confidence, I haven't read the contest forum yet but I doubt this would be contest worthy. Graphics are not too difficult and my skull leaves a lot to be desired, the upper gums are terrible and shading needs improving also.

I am happy with my progress though, particularly when I can't draw to save myself.

This just goes to show what a great educational site this is ,well done Claws!!