Tip: Squeeze bottle airbrush paint
Posted by Unknown | Posted in Painting , Tips
Sometimes it's the little things that takes a "duh!" moment to realize. So after mixing my own custom batch of Reaper Pro-Paint Sunlight Yellow and airbrush medium (in my case "classic blue Windex" in 50:50 for the umpteen billionth time I thought.... there's got to be a better way.
Enter 80 cent squeeze bottle from Hobby Lobby. This is a 50ml bottle. I used a graduated cylinder (my wife has some old baby bottles with milliliters marked on them) to measure my ratio (in this case 50:50) and marked 25ml with permanent marker. I then wrapped the bottle in clear packing tape (to protect the marking). Luckily 50ml is the top of the bottle otherwise I would have marked the top of the fill line as well. If you're using 3:2 for a non-thick paint (Reaper Master Series, regular GW or Vallejo... 3 parts paint: 2 parts airbrush medium) I would mark the 30ml line instead. The 50:50 is for thicker paints (Reaper Pro Paint and GW Foundation).
Now, when I need to refill my airbrush paint cup, I just squeeze in what I need. Soooooo much easier.
I don't airbrush, so take this question simply as coming from someone who doesn't know: doesn't the blue windex change the color of the paint?
Also, you mentioned using a 3:2 ratio for thinning GW paints for airbrushing. Which part of that ratio is thinner and which part is paint?
I was going to ask the same questions as Jonathan did above, same statement-- this coming from a non-airbrush user.
Good tip by the way-- thanks very much.
3 parts paint to 2 parts airbrush medium.
Does it change the color... yes and no. Only when you've applied too thin a layer of paint, the thin paint and the interaction with the primer underneath will allow you to detect a faint change of color with the naked eye. This isn't the blue in the Windex so much as a combination of things traced back to "thin paint applied to thinly."
However, I've used Windex with many colors (obviously the yellow above as well as white) for a long time and after a good coating of paint, I've never been able to detect any color shift with the naked eye. Darker colors of course don't have this problem at all; but I figure if pure white won't color shift, all other colors are A-OK. 40% Windex just isn't enough dye to do anything to good paint with good pigments (Reaper, Vallejo, GW, etc.)
Hope that helps.
Awesome. I have a cheapo airbrush for basecoating large models, so I'll give the Windex thinner a try. Thanks for the tip!