Once, when I saw a picture of a car with beautiful airbrushing in a magazine, I could not even imagine that I could do it myself. Even the word “airbrush” did not immediately stick in my memory.
I quit my job (I had been working there for almost a year) to prepare for graduation, and I received the rest of my earnings in the amount of $500. This money is paltry for today’s life.
After scrolling in my head for a week, I imagined how this money quietly drain out of my pocket to nowhere, on the other hand put the money somewhere to develop generally considered nonsense. But here I happened to come across a couple of pages long article about car tuning called “Airbrush” in another magazine. I reread the article about ten times, admired the pictures like an infected man. It became clear, where my last penny from the moneybox would be spent.
Despite the fact that I had only a weak mobile Internet at hand, I have found enough information about airbrushes, their features and applications. At the time of the choice of airbrush, I was completely confident (I do not know why) in my abilities and the choice fell on the airbrush of dual-action with a nozzle diameter of 0.3 mm and the internal mixing with the top location of the tank for the paint. It is the type of airbrush I recommend to buy for everyone who wants to try themselves in airbrushing.
During the day I called all the auto stores with paint products, having previously written out a list on a sheet of paper from the electronic directory of the city. This list consisted of about 20 stores. Only a couple of sales clerks in the list had any idea about airbrushes. The rest confidently told me that they did not sell “hieroglyphs” :).
Grabbing money from the pocket, I rushed towards the dream… At that time there were three different airbrush guns in the store. The vendors could not even guess what they were for 🙂 Only one met the features described in the text above. The price of the airbrush was 1800 rubles. (turned out to be the most expensive of those available in the store).
The airbrush
In this store also sold car paint called Colomix and the seller skillfully sold it to me that this paint all take for the cherished airbrush. I ordered three colors of 100 grams each: white, yellow and blue. Why these colors – remains a mystery 🙂 They cost about $10. Plus I took a few abrasive sponges 3M ultrafine and superfine, why I needed them I do not remember … perhaps I liked their names 🙂 + a bottle of 647 solvent (which soon corroded all the rubber gaskets airbrush).
Spent the stash, my joy had no bounds, but what to do with it all I had no idea. At the time I did not even have a compressor and did not know which one I needed.
For about a month, every night I twiddled in the hands of a miracle tool, about the possibilities of which I could only guess. Carefully disassembled and reassembled it five times, imagining how I would clean it of paint.
One day, when I came to visit a friend, I said I wanted to do airbrushing and that I needed a compressor for that. To my luck he had a Chinese compressor “Kraton” with adjustable pressure and an air tank, which was sitting idle. So I got a compressor. I bought the hoses at a hardware store. They were ordinary transparent PVC hoses for irrigation, but very small diameter of 5 mm and 6 mm. They are not expensive – one meter of about $ 0.3.
Having previously read on the Internet about the recommended pressure to supply the airbrush, set it to a compressor and connected the hose. I also did not know how paint is diluted, and the first time I poured it very thick. I chose an old piece of cotton paper as the surface to be painted on. The first few strokes were intermittent and the airbrush was spitting paint. I immediately blamed the chinese airbrush, not knowing what I did wrong.
The experiments went on for about a week, until I found the right consistency of paint and air pressure. I must say at once that I suffered a lot: the constant paint drips over the top of the container, because I poured it to the brim, prevented painting. At first my hand was hurting because I wasn’t holding the airbrush correctly. I did not know that the line size can be adjusted by changing the distance between the airbrush and the surface.
Cleaning the airbrush was a real punishment for me and lasted about 25-30 minutes at first. In general I wanted to quit this endeavor, because it did not work very well. Despite this, never lost hope that over time I will learn everything, which I wish all readers!
Everyone should be as lucky as this dude 🙂