How to use an airbrush

There are many options when it comes to selecting an airbrush. As well, there are just as many options available when selecting your compressor, your paints, your canvas, your colors, and even your price.

Once you have selected your airbrush and assuming you have all the other selections made then you are ready to start your compressor and spray some color on your canvas.

Sounds easy enough, however, you would be doing yourself a favor to research the finer aspects of airbrushing before getting this far.

Let's assume you are attempting to paint the piece pictured below. Your firey red sky will be your starting point with large solid strokes in a wide attack of paint. Remember at this point you are not painting the whole scene just the red in the sky. You can easily paint as much of the canvas as you like but if you are to stay close to any semblance of a budget then you should only paint just beyond the edges of the sky that you want to be seen. Later you will bring the bright yellow sunshine onto and over the edges of the red in your sky.

The key with airbrushing is distance from the canvas as well as the pressure of air flow through your brush and onto the canvas. If you spray too heavily onto the canvas then the paint will run and potentially wreck your painting. On the other hand if you spray too lightly your canvas will take forever to gain any strength in the colors. So practice as much as possible on a practice media, preferably.

If you have arrived at the correct pressure of air flow through your brush then the distance will change things too. The further away from the canvas the more paint it takes to cover an area. Likewise, if you are too close you will require more paint as well to cover the same amount of area on your canvas. So again, spend all the time you need on your practice canvas before engaging in a finishable piece.

Next, your choice of airbrushes harbors new and exciting problems as well. There are standard single-action airbrushes and then the cadillac style with double-action.

In a single-action airbrush you will press the plunger on your airbrush only enough to allow the needed amount of air and paint to escape the brush and give you a desirable spray. In a double-action airbrush not only can you adjust the amount of paint to be sprayed but you can also change the size of the outcoming flow. This means making different decisions to obtain a fine pointed spray or a wide area spray on your canvas.

There are so many different things to learn about in airbrishing that I am afraid you'd do well to get into a class or the very least read a good book on airbrushing.

As my specialty is painting itself I am probably ill qualified in instructing you in a short essay how to best learn to use an airbrush. Hands on learning is by far the best way to learn. After some short instruction myself I spent about eight years learning to arrive at the result you see below. The potential is there. The desire is what is most important to arrive at the potential.

Thanks for reading.