My First Time Painting With An Airbrush - What I Did Wrong? 

Hi Gavin, it's a challenge at first but you won't look back once you're up and running. Make sure to bleed off the moisture trap frequently and keep the needle tip free of dried paint using a sponge dipped in cleaner. To start try locking down the trigger so as to limit the paint until you get used to the dual action unlocked. Experiment with pressures between 20 and 35 psi depending on thickness. Decant some Tamiya PS to use in airbrush, don't thin it out, it sprays great through airbrush. You can use this as a baseline to work from. Keep at it, you'll get there. ATB Darren 👍

Nice, something I have always been interested in and never got into. Thanks for this vid.

Always a challenge when you start airbrushing. I started RC recently but before I used to do aircraft and military models and dont even want to mentioned how many kits I messed up. I also initially just went for a basic set-up and what a mess. I then invested in an Iwata M1 or M2 Single action airbrush and Sparmax compressor with a regulator & moisture trap . A bit expensive, probably the amount of a high end RC kit but does an amazing job and worth the investment in the end.

For a first attempt is great Gavin. Better then what I did. I gave up in the end and went back to cans

Don't worry each body you will get better. I use exactly the same Proline pearlescent paints for my body shells. I don't mask, but use liquid mask instead, something for you to consider. The pearlescent paints, because they contain particles, spray better after a little thinning. Use Proline 6324-00 Paint Reducer rather than water, you only need 3-5 drops. In case you weren't you will need a 0.5 nozzle and the pearlescent white is particularly prone to blocking, don't know why it's worse than the other colours. Lots of thin coats, I use a hair dryer to gently dry coats to speed things up. I always finish off by backing everything off with matt white, which helps the colours to 'pop'. Remember if you go backwards and forwards you will add twice as much paint at each direction change, remember to cut the paint flow, but leave the air on when you do this, it takes practice I'm afraid.

A lot of good advice here gavin. Trying to do a uniform 'soft edge' freehand takes a ton of practice even when you have everything else spot on. Fortunatly there is a cheat you can use till you get on top of it. Get some 'white tack' and roll it into worms about 10mm in dia. You can bend it to any line or border you like and then all you have to do is mask from the top of the worm back to the side you dont want painted. I have an old piece of laminate floor that i keep for the rolling just so the worms are kept uniform. The bigger the worm, the more diffused the soft edge 👍

If I saw that correctly, you are using Vallejo Airbrush Thinner with Proline paints. It is advisable to only use thinner from the brand the paint comes from, because the chemistry is compatible. (Gunze Mr Color Thinner being probably an exception). Being a scale modeler, I must admit the so far I haven’t tried to use my airbrush that I use for 1/72 scale kits on RC bodies. I must admit that I prefer cans simply for the large area they cover compared to an airbrush. Great tip regarding the Tamiya clear to seal the masked areas. I try to remember that for my next body.

Persistence and practice makes perfect. Dont give up on the airbrush... its far better

I'm in process of painting schumacher cat l1r. I use proline paint also, they say thinning is not required. .5 needle at 30 psi. I tried it and its actually working better than previous uses. Also use mission model paints local hobby shop said it was the same as proline paint having good luck with both paints this time actually. Paint gun wide open and just going at it

When I airbrushed I used a double action brush for details and a revell starter spray gun for large areas. It was really basic but easy to spray over a wide area, and not mixing internally made it easy to clean. With paints like Propone you really need to regulate the pressure, and ideally want a compressor with a reservoir tank do you have a consistent pressure.

What i did we I first got mine was get a kids colouring book and practice with that using cheap paint. Then progress to the poly paint.

Keep showing us the progress it gives us mortals. I hope we can airbrush as well 😊

You need a water trap up by the airbrush. iwatta makes one that works well . And also get a dehumidifier in the room

Absolutely brilliant video Gavin. Don't give up on the airbrushing, it's all a learning process. ❤

Thank you Gavin, I myself went through similar frustrations and left it alone. Watching your efforts makes me go and try again. There are a lot of folks in the comments that are giving valuable tips for all of us affraid to mess it up...thank you all!

You cant beat yourself up Gav, for a 1st attempt cracking job, and your finding out what works, issues ect your going to have, i would love to learn how to airbrush, but no room. So i’ll have to keep sending body’s off, for now. Cheers for sharing your experiance 👍

Good video! Try and learn from it, and just show it. Thumbs up!!

You did so well Gav. Keep going! The vintage body on the new chassis looks the absolute money!

Get yourself a Iwata Neo airbrush and a moisture trap that goes from the airbrush to the air hose, Little tip is to get some small plastic drink glasses to help thin the proline paints out to get a milky viscosity and Humbrol Acrylic satin paint works well with the Proline & Vallejo rc paints. Alclad lexan paints are also good.

Dont be so concerned about seeing the line. Just trust its there. Keep doing sweeping passes in the same direction until desired result. I try to do one side then the other back and forth doing one pass at a time. It will be almost invisible until a bunch of passes. Something else that will help is white tape on the outside so you can SEE each pass untill you get better. Or some paper just something to make the body not clear and will come off easy

Don't be discouraged! Keep at it and with practice you will get much better, obviously. May I offer some advice? -You should not need to thin the Proline paints but if you do, use water only. -Having a compressor with a reservoir will give you a more consistent flow of air and thus more consistent paint delivery. -A pressure regulator with moisture trap is a very good thing as well. -Buying a nice airbrush will help for sure. You do not have to go crazy but an Iwata Eclipse HP-CS (or similar) is a good choice. -Keep your airbrush clean. Do not allow paint to dry inside the airbrush. -When cleaning, pull the needle out the front so as not to drag the paint through all the workings. -And of course, be very careful with the tip of the needle. Don't drop it or put any unnecessary pressure on the tip as it can bend/break relatively easily. -Use tape or stick-tack or lightly clamp the body but ensure the body does not move around when blowing the paint in. Remember, the higher the pressure, the more air movement, the more the body is going to act like a sail and move around. -Use lots of light coats but remember to keep the air flowing at all times while painting. If your airbrush is dual-action; keep the trigger depressed and pull back the trigger to control when paint is flowing only. Do not start and stop the air flow with the trigger pulled back. -As you found out, do not use non-waterbased paints/sealers over the Proline paints. I hope that helps and did not come across as a lecture! Good luck on your airbrushing journey! You will love it.

I did what your doing a year ago. FWIW I found water based versus Tamiya solvent based - very different. Dries slow. Stays wet when it hits the body. Light coats from further away- have to go very light on the coats of water based. Finally - compressor on floor lower than work height stops any water. It’s all practice. Made harder that it’s so very different to Tamiya cans

Thinner layers, hit it with a hairdryer, then do another. Paint polls at corners, and when you place it to dry, you get runs. :) But, you don't often see people who would pick up an airbrush, and get good results right away. It generally takes a few tests to get it going.

I thought I might try airbrushing lexan someday but watching this cured me of that! Thank you for sharing your struggles, this was still a very good video.

Don't worry. It takes ages to get it right. Don't give up. The more you do the more intuitive it gets. You need to use different thinners for different paint types. I would really recommend tamiya paint pots thinned with x20a thinner .

You prob know by know, but if you have the lighting at the right angle, you can see your spray from the airbrush. Helps me lots too, seeing the angle and amount coming out.

My laughter bursted when I saw the clear body third time. But It was nice to see you try new things. We are together with you and I am sure you will master airbrush in a short time as you did with racing.

On block areas youll want to do 4 coats with proline

Id recommend trying liquid mask...bittydesign the best and mark out your design on the top protective cover...then just use a sharp knife and cut away the bits your want to spray...its lot easier than masking out..😁

Get yourself an A3 book and practice, practice, practice 👌

I’m about to give airbrushing my 1st go and found this a great help I think you did a great job. 👍👍

Hey Gavin. It can be frustrating, I know. Be patient and like the previous post said, first coat is a dusting. Also when I paint a poly, I alway finish with white. In the past I’ve had brighter colors “bleed” through the white. So I wold recommend painting the Red and blue first the finish with the white. Pluse using the with to back everything makes the body more opaque. Love the videos, keep ‘em comin’.

The first thing i did when I got my airbrush was to use water only to "paint" my bathroom mirror. It taught me alot about controlling the airbrush

Look into "Zero" paints. Its all I use and they are pre thinned. I have never had to thin them and the go on absolutely brilliant.

I was disappointed with my first racing shell and also used paint remover to strip it back and re-paint. Then I took it racing a crashed. And crashed again. Once it's bounced off a few barriers and competitors you care more about not braking the chassis than what the body looks like. Keep practicing. I'm still practicing, I don't claim to be any good (just like my racing). Painting and racing are similar, you need to practice and you'll improve. At least that's what I tell myself.

It just takes practise mate, getting the flow and spread right takes muscle memory. Also a compressor with a tank will give more consistent air flow and have less chance of moisture, I've got a cheapo chinese one from ebay that looks the same as yours but with a tank under it, was about £50 and I've never seen any moisture coming through it.

I painted my ftx 1/24 Suzuki crawler only difference in my line up of paint ,I spray canned the primer and lacquer, airbrushed the base colour with revell aqua colour light blue

Great effort , perhaps in hindsight starting to learn with standard colours would have been easier, Pearl paints are much harder. Also to make the Pearl pop back with chrome then black .. so pearls are 3 layers , gives better depth

Hi Gavin ,I use a very old Tamiya Spray-Work from a shop that was called Beatties. It's ok for basic work.😷💩

♥ that pro line blue is gorgeous, give it another go Gav I would really like to see the cougar 2 body in the Rochester livery

Just takes practice. Owen, at Revive sent me a bunch of junk bodies to practice on. It is like golf, all comes down to consistency and that just takes time. Light coats and mechanical dry in between. Keep it up. It will get better.

I have admire your tenacity here Gavin. How many times did you strip that paint! :D It would have been in the bin after the first go with me. It does go to show how much practice is needed. But I think you will get there. I guess the first hurdle is understanding all the little pitfalls. But with each go you will learn and get better. Thanks for sharing your experience it was interesting and eye opening to the realities of airbrushing.

Here's a good practice tip, save your clear plastic soda bottles to practice on, it's a lot cheaper to get practice on those instead of a body. From there you can get your technique down. You can also get sheets of clear plastic at craft stores and cut them down into squares. Additionally, for this paint job, tape will work fine but for more technical paint jobs use liquid mask (also quick tip on that, lay it on thick and use a fresh knife blade every time you do a paint job). One last tip, and it seems your may have already discovered this, but do not go back and forth when creating a line. Use one sweep to make a line and if you bobble or have a mistake you can always go back over it and make the line thicker by moving the air brush further away

Throw that paint in the trash. I would rather use old testors enamel paints on lexan than water based paint. You also have to scuff the lexan if you are going to spray that water based stuff on it to even have hope of it sticking, You are basically trying to paint glass with it that slick. The paint has no chemical bond with the lexan that you get with lacquer based paint.

I found tamiya paints the best thinned out using tamiya thinners and just experiment with the psi and air gun trigger. I found it best just to start spraying on thick paper first to get the right amount of spray/paint etc and my first body turned out fantastic on a hard body which is probably easier to do. great video thanks

Maybe start with a single action airbrush till you get more experience . I have been using a Badger 200 for years

What may be happening is that the paint is pooling in the edges, when spraying. May be many light coats.

Proline paint is water based paint. Tamiya is solvent based. Yes they don’t work together. Water based paints in high humidity is a pain in the arse. Imagine you have high humidity (moisture) and you’re painting water based paint in that environment. The air is saturated, the paint won’t flash off due to the humidity. Solvent based paints are much more forgiving because it’s solvents flashing off not water. A solvent base paint would have similar characteristics to tamiya PS. I use tamiya cans mostly due to painting small pieces like RC body they work well. In America we still have lots of solvent automotive paints that gives us a wide selection. As you noticed the airbrush doesn’t put down much paint due to tip size. Larger needle and tip will allow you to put more volume down. One trick for water base paint is using isopropyl alcohol as a reducer. Isopropyl mixes with water and it flashes off more like a solvent. It will reduce your droplets in the paint also. I have decades of experience painting with many types and methods. If you need assistance I’d be happy to advise more so.

I bought all this gear in lockdown but never been brave enough to use it. Always used to use pectra brush on , but now all i find in tamiya rattle cans. Be interesting to see how it holds up

I have stripped down a couple of bodies after airbrushing turned into disaster. Some body companies have seconds bodies that are real cheap and are good to practice on. Just practice I think. A compressor with a reservoir is a great help.

Definitely not as easy as it looks is it Gav 😢 Iv only done maybe 3 bodies with mine and I think the biggest issues i had were the liquid mask which I gave up on and getting the paint the right thickness along with the psi level 🫣 I must admit I scoured ebay and bought a couple of cheap shells for practice 👍 its also a bonus that its waterbased paint so you can just wash it off. Enjoyed that video mate thank you 👌

Thinning ratio's, needle size , airbrush type makes tons of difference

Definitely need a regulator. I use an inline regulator that attaches between the hose and the airbrush. Bought from hobbylink japan. I use a Mr Hobby airbrush with a small cheap compressor without tank. Works fine.

Hi Gavin does the Airbrush have a two stage trigger? Also a lot of people say that the diaphragm compressors spit when they spray if that makes sence

Those lexan air brush paints I think are crap. I airbrush models and had such a tough time with those paints on my lexan rc body. I could not get the paint to not speckle and spit and elliminate runs. I have no issues with any other type of paints.

What vintage style body is that on your B6.4? Looks so much better than the cab forward design!

I thought u would have left the tape mask for the white and just cut out and spray the red after the blue then pull the mask off and do the white last. But I think it looked pretty good for what u had. Also u should be able to buy an air regulater to put on ur compressor then add ur air line to that.

Links to some clear buggy bodies? On the cheapo? (ship to Canada - Vancouver would be swell...)

I changed my regulator, I use the same compressor and it works much better now, I build scale models, gundam and miniatures

Get an inline water trap, it connects directly to the brush and line. It will help to trap any moisture before it gets into the brush.

Gav...all bodies are usable. It just depends on the use. i cant spray for toffee. Even with cans. So mine look ok from a distance. I know u. You'll get soon.

Is there no adjustment for the spray pattern or is it it is what it is until you change the needle.

Can you use airbrush indoors (unlike a can?) I see some great airbrushed bodies but I'll stick with cans

I feel better now after watching this 😅. I’m still having trouble with large areas.

Check your PSI on your compressor try turning it up and down to see how it works for you it's tricky but you'll get used to it

Try liquid mask. It will save time as you won't have to constantly mask and re-mask.

Hi! its not your fault! i think the paints too thick, (i could see you releasing air and the paint took awhile to start, normally means too thick) they always say its ready to spray, and it probably is when it leaves the factory! try 40% paint 60% thinner and if they have it for that paint get some retarder and only ever use the same brand thinners as the brand of paint. (never expect instant coverage, 3 thin built up coats is best)I've never had water inline before, if you have a moisture trap that shouldn't happen, what brush are you using and the needle size, and compressor if the needle is too small you can get with Certain paints tip drying very quickly (bunging up your hole....) And lube your needle!, no i'm not being rude 😉😉 normal tamiya paint is lacquer based, not sure about the polycarb car body paint, but the stuff you were airbrushing looks acrylic, they wont like each other, and it would blow my mind painting everything backwards! so kudos to you! if your blowing air through at more than 20psi the paints too thick, it should flow at 18psi. (just looked them up, you need 30psi!! thats nuts! over spray heaven and runs galore , spraying into the body the air will naturally create moisture because of blow back, so id check your tip is 0.5mm, any smaller and it will dry in the nozzle, and that would explained the moisture, the curly hose on the compressor is your air reserve to stop serge's and drops in the airflow, at 30psi i think that compressor is constantly on, and it will create tones of moisture) they state on the small print May be reduced with #6324-00 Paint Reducer (Sold Separately) for smaller tips and other specific applications i think that means detail painting and any tip that isn't an elephant gun!!! (which is 0.5!) hope it doesn't sound like i'm being an arse, when you get the balance your absolutely love it, you can do so much and your lose yourself for hours. biggest thing i learned is always air first then paint. so id check needle size, get a compressor with a tank if your going to constantly boink 30psi through the brush, thats where the water is coming from (sparmax compressors and air brushed are cheap and reliable, there basically lidi department of iawata), or thin that paint more and spray it at a lower pressure, or use tamiya paint, cant imagine that is sprayed at 30psi, but i could be talking complete bollocks as i'm a RC tank modeler. Really love the content, makes me nostalgic for my childhood, don't give up, go and thin the paint more, lower the pressure and practice spraying lines, air first, then paint, and the paint should flow as soon as you pull the trigger back, the pulling back motion pulls the needle back opening the space between the nozzle hole and the needle tip. right i'm going to sod off now, because i bet your thinking 'who is this twat!! 😁 have a great bank holiday p.s the runs are lots of pressure, too thin paint for the pressure, or too close to the surface at high pressure. drop the pressure and it will balance with the paint consistency.

Man I’ve airbrushed 1000’s of warhammer miniatures to a very high standard, plus loads of different mediums and effects through the airbrush.. I bought that proline paint thinking I’d be able to do an RC body no worries and it was really such a huge pain to work with. Steep learning curve for a very difficult product.

Great vid, would you recommend the proline Paints,I'm thinking about using them.

Stick with Tamiya paints as well that proline paint doesnt look great to use you shouldnt get runs in it

😂feel your pain😂

Hi Gavin looks very difficult I know if I tried would not be easy for me

Am I right that you are good to use an airbrush inside as I rarely use my Tamiya tins inside only if the weather is bad?

I'm on the same learning curve although I started with slightly better kit, a Hyundai Silent Compressor and Hobbynox airbrush, not sure about the airbrush but the compressor is fab. Quick question if where did you source the paint remover from in the UK? First time ive seen this and looks like it could come in handy but I can't find it.

where did get the cougar 2 bodies from?

If you don't try it, you'll never know if you can do it! Good luck with it.

Syphon feed airbrush are better to use , single action, .5 needle size and distance from the piece

Use a 0.5 needle don't need to thin it down

is the paint thin enough? should be the consistancy of milk? You must must have the correct thinners for the paint you have. Tamiya thinners and tamiya paint DO NOT MIX WELL with any other brands. Also do you have enough air pressure the paint should almost be instantly dry when it hits the body. If you have a thin enough needle you should be to write your name with the airbrush. also I think you are to far away from the body for a fine line effect. You need fine needle for detail, and larger needle for coverage. I used to have two airbrushes on the go at the same time when I used to paint bodies

What body are you using?

You've definitely got the wrong airbrush & compressor. The paint you've got is good but you're thining it too much(I never thin my proline paints) You're too heavy on the coats of paint, you don't need much when airbrushing. You also need to think about the order you're putting the colours down, you should go from darkest to the lightest colour, black first white last if possible. It's all just practice, but better gear will help, look at a better compressor that will allow you to change the pressure and a better airbrush, something like a iwata eclipse or iwata neo.

Proline paint is already thinned and ready to use from the pot. I think was some of your trouble

Mercedes F1 Fan?

dont start airbrushing with polycarb paint, it is awfulto learn with.

Your arm movement is tooooooo slow. And you should not have to use both hands to hold an airbrush. 1st: Get yourself some art paints for your airbrush (from the art store) 2nd: Grab some cardboard or used paper and practice painting on these surfaces. If you have a double action airbrush you're off to a good start. Go practice. Starting from the outside of the paintable area, sweep your arm from one side all the way past the other at a faster speed. You vid shows you paint to slow. Also, polycarbonate bottle paints are transparent, so it takes several layers to become opaque. Compared to the rattle cans. Once you get used to it, then start shopping around for better equipment. You can do it! It's easy to airbrush. Don't be afraid of it. No excuses. Proline paints are pre-thinned, so don't use any thinners. That's why your paint job look horrible. Have fun.