Just Starting Out

K

Kamaka

Guest
Howdy, all. For relaxation I color mandalas from adult coloring books using Faber-Castell Watercolor Pencils. I've purchased an airbrush to be better able to do more consistent fades from one color to another and to not be limited to the set pallet of colors that are available in watercolor pencils. Eventually, I'd like to be able to work my way into painting pictures. For right now, I mainly just want to have a more versatile tool. I do plan on getting a projector at some point and making my own mandalas in Adobe Illustrator that I can paint in a larger format to add additional details. I have a HP-CS and and am starting with E'tac EFX paint.
 
Welcome from New Zealand - fading is so what airbrushes do so well!
 
I just moved to Lewiston, Idaho in the US this week. I'm from Portland, Oregon originally, but moved to go to the University of Idaho for Mechanical Engineering. I'll be taking a year off from school to work at Home Depot full time for a year to qualify for in-state tuition. Since I don't have any homework for a year, I want to focus on learning the skills to airbrush during that time.

I actually got my airbrush for Christmas after watching airbrushtutor videos on YouTube. Tried it a couple of times and realized that it was going to be a hobby that I would need to devote some serious effort into, unlike most of my other expensive hobbies which I've excelled in rather easily. At the time, with school starting up in a couple of weeks, I put it on hold until the summer. Then this move happened and now that I have my office/studio space set up I'm going to start working on it.

I'm running a California Air Tools 5510A compressor. Which, after I figure out how to fix the rattle under the cover plate attached to the tank, will be awsomely quiet.
 
Hi welcome to the forum! Hmm Lewiston Idaho sounds very familiar- I think I remember a big college up there. (Im a truck driver so I go all over) I cant wait to see your work.
 
Welcome to our little Piece of Heaven,Enjoy yourself and have fun learning( the fun part comes and go.s at first so Don't give up!) As with anything the more you work at it the better you get with fewer prob. to contend with!
 
Welcome. You've got excellent equipment and paint. You will not have any issues that newcomers normally experience due to cheap tools. Your mandalas in the books are doable with an airbrush. Just make several copies of the one you are busy with. On the copies, cut out the shapes you want to paint. Cut halfway over the line so that you can get good coverage. And if the lines are not as black as you like them to be, just go over them afterwards with a fine pigment marker.
 
Thanks! One thing I've learned with hobbies is that it's never good to try to do something on the cheap. You may start out and feel like you are progressing, but you don't realize that your tools are holding you back until you go out and buy the quality tools you should have purchased in the first place. Do research on forums, watch videos on YouTube to identify the people whose work you respect and admire and invest in instructional books and DVDs. Make note of the types of tools they are using. Figure out the most basic list of the types of equipment that you need, but then buy the best quality that you can afford without buying the very best available. Then, as you progress, buy new tools to solve issues as they come up or to open new avenues of possibility. If you buy a bunch of gadgets right when you start out, I can guarantee that for any given hobby you won't use half of them.
 
I just ordered the Power Series Level 1 DVD set to supplement all the great videos on YouTube from AirbrushTutor.com. From the reviews of it that I was seeing on youtube from Svee and others, it seems like it will be a quality instructional set.
 
Thanks everyone. Well, most everything has come in the mail. Still waiting on the Powers DVD set. They took a week to ship from Australia, so hopefully I'll receive them sometime soon. Just like with glassblowing, ventilation is the last thing that needs to be done. I've got a plastic desk mat down to protect the ugly carpet from paint. Ended up using a 30"x36"X1/8" pane of glass from Home Depot backed by white foam board as my work surface. Im hopeful that I can use it for basic practice as well as something that will keep clean. I'm not all that happy with the lowest bidder Chinese made knockoff easel that I purchased from amazon. The center column has a lot of rattles since they used the incorrect diameter of tubing on some of the parts. I'll have to think on how to fix that. Also need to find a better solution for holding paint bottles with some type of work surface.
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I was going to try painting on the glass as a way to practice since people have said that it is less forgiving to learn on a hard surface than it is on paper which is absorptive. I also got a roll of butcher paper, some poster board and 120 lb card stock to try, since I can't afford Dru's fancy pants paper.


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If your just starting out just use the butcher paper till you learn how to do your dots.lines, and dagger strokes. also learn how the paint your using works with reduction and air pressure,It will make your learning curve go faster.:D
 
Base paint has ya covered.
Wish I had started as smart as you, I eventually bought a huge paper roll myself.

Welcome to the forum and best of luck to you!
 
Thanks for the support. I've been playing around with the different colors making sample card using small index cards. Mainly just getting used to the airbrush and trying to work on uniform coverage. I've been working 1:1 color:trans base @ 35 psi with my Grex mac valve turned about half way down. Looking at the airbrush tutor videos it appears that he has his psi turned up based upon how quickly he lays down an opaque dot when he snaps on and off. I'm already having issues with spidering when I get close to try to do small lines at just 1:1 without any water. I feel like I should be practicing using the full 35 psi with the mac valve all the way open to work on control of the paint flow using small movements of the trigger. Not really sure how to do that without the spidering issue.


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