Misting lightened base color?

That is what I did on my latest project , only I used very thinned out Tamiya buff to get a kind of dry brush and fade to the lower tank , and drybrush to the upper , works well , you have to use very low pressure however , I use 5lbs on the compressor . Keep the brush kind of far from the tank , about a foot or so and hit it off angle , not directly , to get the mist effect .

Hmm, I wonder if air-compressors act differently. Seems as though I can't really airbrush below 30 PSI. A foot seems like a long way away. Hey if works for you, that's all that matters. Good question JMarshall and welcome to the forums.

WOW ! I can't airbrush anything above 20 psi here myself , perhaps my guage is off , who knows ?

Out of curiosity Shawn, what is your compressor? Mine is a standard 2 gallon with regulator.

husky 2 gallon , it has served me well for over a year now , I use it for all kinds of stuff , not just airbrushwork !

Maybe my airbrush has something to do with ti then? Wierd.

Tigerman,

Different airbrushes have different tolerances for psi in terms of carrying paint, no matter how thinned. I use an Aztek and depending on the nozzle, I can't drop the psi below 10 and get any paint to flow. I use a small airbrush compressor, that may be a factor as well.

jmarshall,

welcome to the forums! Misting can provide a great filter, especially with multi-color schemes. The keys are already mentioned: low pressure, distance, and thinned paint to acheive the desired result.

That might explain it Bill. I know in the anniversary issue of FSM a couple a years ago, some experts were talking about their preferred methods of airbrushing and for the most part, all recommended different psi's. I guess each user finds a comfort zone so to speak.

That's true also eric. I don't always paint at one psi either. For primer or preshading coats, I apply at a higher psi of 20-25 with a wide spray nozzle to get it into all the crevices and use a much lower psi of 10-15 with a detail nozzle to spray on basecoats or camo depending on the desired effect. Everyone's setup is a little different with all the types of airbrush and compressors out there that experimentation is the best way to figure out what works I guess and psi is just one factor to tinker with.

Set your model up where you can rotate it. If you mist just from one side, any projections will act like a mask and you'll get this very subdued but annoying patterning. I mount my models on a lazy susan so that I can rotate and hit it from 360 degrees for misting.

If your airbrush is too far away, the paint will dry before being applied and it will look more like you have dust all over your vehicle or it will look sand painted. Use a lighter coat and a lightened mix of paint to give you the same effect and work like you would if you were panting a base coat. Better to do 2 or more applications than if you rushed it and over did it.

Some ar more comfortable doing it other ways, this is just mine. Good luck and lets see some pics of your finished project.

I usually mist a coat as a wethering process, and as described above, I use a very low pressure setting and very thinned down paint. However, I find that this technique has not worked that well for me. What I actually tend to do is thin the basecoat then verly lightly airbrush in the center of the various vehicle panels. The mist coat with buff paint I use as a 'dustcoat' rather than to replicate fading paint.

mine compressor is set at 100 psi redused trough a waterseperator(moisturetap) with seperate pressure control to 20-25 psi or even lower to 5psi (lot of playingspace )

Thanks for the advice guys. I just finished priming the Italieri Puma kit, and I'm looking forward to painting it. I'll see if I can get some decent pics to post when its done, which may be a while as I have to get a compressor, and a free weekend!