My first airbrush experience
 

After spending 130 bucks on an airbrush, paint, thinner, propelle can, and about 5 differant kinds of masking tape, I pull out my remote control BMW to paint some flames/stripes on there. I come up with a design, mask it off, and ready my airbrush. I spray. I get:

-Bleeding
-Edge buildup
-"Stuttering" dots
-Not correct color
-Masking peels off
-A mess all over
-A huge headach from doing all this in my basement
-One fucked up BMW body.

I screwed this up bad. One of my problems is my masking. My masking tape (1/8th an inch) was a bitch to put on, and didn't stick well at all. Maybe i'll stick to Photoshop and 3D. No! I want to learn to do this correctly.

I'd love to be able to print out my design on some sticky paper, cut out what I want to spray, and stick the paper on there.
Is there such thing as some kind of masking "paper" that is sticky, but won't leave any residue when I peel it off?
This would be so much easier than outlining everything with tape. On the scale i'm working at, anyway.

Thanks

There is such paper.. Im not to sure what its called or where to get it.. As for the other stuff it seems like you have your paint mixed wrong. Thin it seems to be from what you described. And maybe the airpressuer turned to low. What kind of brush and what pressure are you running?

Thanks for the reply :)
It's a dual action Anthem Badger 155. I don't know the pressure, I haven't changed it. I think the guy at Hobby Town said it was set on the highest setting, which he said is good for most people.

As for mixing paint goes, I don't know how to judge whether it's thin enough or not. The back of the airbrush thinner can says 3 parts paint, and 2 parts thinner, but I haven't used any measuring cups or anything. Speaking of thinner. Is it a bad thing to stick thinner in a plastic jar? I put it in there and now my plastic jar has all kinds of tiny cracks. No idea why.

I did have some luck so far, though. Before I painted the stripes, I painted the entire body black metallic. It turned out beautifully. Things just went downhill when I got to the masking part.
Also, just now I took off my masking and found that it wasn't QUITE as bad as I had expected. Around the curves there is quite a bit of bleeding, but along straight lines and such it turned out really nicely.

I appretiate your help MoNoXiDe. Thanks! I'll look for some of that paper. I think that will solve more than half of my problems.

Here's a little tip that should staunch the bleeding -

Mask - use the cool, thin, blue masking tape for flames. Or use frisket, if you are so inclined. Now spray a light coating of CLEAR around the edges of your design. Any bleeding that happens will be with clear paint AND all your little holes will now be sealed (so to speak).

NOW paint your flames. When its all done, take off the mask and apply clearcoat over the whole thing. Ta DA! no visible bleeding!

Oh, and before you go and paint the car again, practice on some other things first. Get a little technique under your belt.

I don't have much practical experience with airbrushing (I've got all the stuff, but haven't fooled with it), but I can tell you that for the adhesive-backed masking paper, try www.coastairbrush.com. That's where I got mine.

They also have TONS of videos/books that could help you.

Awesome clavus, thanks a ton for that! I had no idea about that clear coat stuff. I'll definitly pick some of that up.

Thanks for that link majik, I think that paper will help a ton.

I appretiate it guys. Thanks again

As for the instructions on mixing paint they are hardly ever right.. It alldepends on the application and how much pressure you are running and a few other factors.

If you are going to use frisket, or some other sort of masking paper, make sure to try it on a scrap section first. When i did my R/C car body, i didn't. So i pulled it off and had sticky clear goo all over the place. It was a bitch and a half to get off. That being said, it worked amazingly well for keeping the paint off of where i needed it to go, and nothing bled ( well not unless you look really really hard and close).

Get in touch with my mate, Adrian Chesterman, who is a shit hot airbrush artist among other things - did a load of stuff for people like Speilberg and others....

www.chestermanart.com

what kind of air compressor are you using? what psi are you shooting at? wait - propel can. that could be a problem. shitty air regulation at best, and you can only go for like 5 minutes. find and air compressor with a storage tank and a regulator (dont go buy a fancy expensive airbrush compressor - they're junk. but if you really want one, i have one i'd let go.......). play around with the pressures, but you'll be best at the 20-30psi range. lower the pressure when you want to do smaller detail work.

what kind of paint/thinners are you using? i dunno what tip/needle sizes run on the badgers, but i think it should be about .5, so you wouldnt have to worry about straining your paint. are you using a modeling enamel? if so, the thinner might eat away at that plastic container. although.......ive kept lac thinner in plastic containers for years. never really worked with enamels, although enamel thinners seem to be a bit more caustic.

as far as mixing ratios? throw em out, just mix in thinner till the paint has a nice milky consistency, and make sure its mixed well. if you're using waterbased paints - same story.

if you are using enamels - make sure you clean that gun well, then blow it out with compressed air, the enamel thinners can eat away your rubber seals.......

i'll also agree on the 1/8" blue fine line 3m tape, it corners and sticks nicely - although a material called automask might work best (i think this is what majik_6 was referring to, you get it at coast).

If you happen to have one laying around, a CO2 tank is another good way to push "air" through the brush.

My compressor is loud as shit, so I use an old tank that I used to use for brewing.

nate_dawg: yeah, Automask is what I was talking about. I was blankin' on the name when I wrote my reply earlier. I haven't used it much yet, since I bought it to paint my truck with, but I've seen it used and it's good stuff.