How do you switch paints so fast?

[mi89325]

I have a paasche VL and I see you guys painting those crazy nice pieces of art in a short amount of time or making nice T's in short time. I was wondering how you switch paints so fast all I know of is the bottle (the glass ones that come with the brush) is there any other quick switch way of switching paints?

hello mininumbers, welcome to the forum.. There's only 2 ways to do it to my knowledge..
#1- you can have an airbrush for each bottle of color..
#2-You can have a bottle of each color & after flushing your airbrush from one color, switch over to the next..
I've seen beautiful tshirt setups where the artist had up to 15-20 airbrushes--while that may be nice it's a hefty investment, when I would rather buy product..(shirts, hats, etc.) I use 3-4 airbrushes at a time--one for black, one for white & the others switch wherever I need them..I always have a pallet set nearby that after I flush cleanser through the airbrush into a can or receptical, I spray paint onto the pallet before progressing to the article I'm painting..it only takes a moment to do this & it's one of 2 perfect ways to regulate your speed & allow you a moments thought before you procede to do one shirt after another..My helper lightly throws the shirt on a shirt board along with the instructions, but I always insist on clothes pinning the shirt to the board myself..this allows me a moment or 2 to think of the instructions & I can proceed thinking I know what I'm doing..good question..

[Cameron Arts]

I have 8 Paasches hooked up to my compressor at a time: black, white & my 6 main colors for that project. If I'm using both regular paints (opaque/transparent) & pearls or metallics, I reserve a couple brushes for the pearl/metallic colors, otherwise it's too easy to have some of the flake show up in your regular colors. On top of that, I've probably got 3 dozen bottles of different sizes so I can premix my colors & just GO!

[mi89325]

why thank you darla I have seen alot of your shirts online ^_^. haha and the numbers are my birth date 3/25/89 =D, haha thats also my AIM screen name I have had it since like middle school. I did see a video on youtube of a guy who was spraying a shirt hod had a bottle plugged straight into his brush like a 2 or 1 oz. bottle of createx etc etc. but it was a bottom feed paasche I think.

[gixster92]

MI... is that Michigan?

Anyway I am assuming since you are inthe practice mode you only have one brush (like I do, well technically I have ONE primary brush). once you get better or you do more shirts, worry about this then. You should stick with one color to do your practicing, black, learn about the tip dry and all the other fun stuff....

but to answer your question... I use a gravity fed brush myself. I found the siphon fed wasted a lot of my paint since I don't spray many shirts. There are caps you can put on your bottles so you can minimize that waste, In that case. Have another bottle of water and you spray out the old color then switch.

But I encourage you to forget about time unless you start making a living at it. I went through what you are going thru and realized that it doesn't matter, I am doing this for fun and who wants to rush fun? If you are doing it for a living like darla, jammer and a few others, then time is money and you need to worry about it. Otherwise HAVE FUN.