Sprayed a whole bunch of blue last night.Â
Also on the topic of airbrushes: thinners! A good thinner is a must if you want to use off-the-shelf acrylic craft paints (which I often do). While I have a lot to learn about airbrushing still, I have discovered a few things that might be useful to you, too!Â
I haven’t fully tested these two thinners side by side (which I will do and post the results), but for now I’ll post the recipes and you can try them out for yourselves if you like.
Thinner option #1: Pledge Floor Care with Future Finish
Pros:Â This seems to give the paint a fairly hard and durable surface.Â
Cons: Have to test this further, but doesn’t seem to completely dissolve the acrylic paint, which has lead to a verrry slight orange peel texture, and adds a low level of satin/gloss to the paint.
How to make it: Go to a store that carries it (I got mine at Wal-Mart in Canada), buy it.
Notes: This seems to be more commonly used as a top coat, which it does very well. It will protect the paint beneath and gives a satin/low-gloss finish. Here’s a video on that and some other top-coat options.
Thinner option #2: Make your own
Pros: Crazy cheap, thins acrylic paints beautifully, can be used to flush your airbrush between colours. Seems to Retains original sheen level of paint (satin stays satin, matte stays matte--though more testing is needed on this).
Cons: Paint needs a topcoat, as this does not add strength to the finish.
How to make it: First off, this is not my recipe! I directly followed this video from Luke’s APS on Youtube. Go check it out!
Ingredients: Distilled water, glycerin, 91% isopropyl alcohol, thumbs up.
Directions: In a vessel of your choice (I used a 500ml water bottle) mix 2/3 distilled water, 1/3 isopropyl alcohol, and 1ml glycerin (more/less if you’re making more/less than 500ml). Shake it up a bit and you’re done. Thumbs up!
Notes: So far, I love this mix. I want to test it on a few different brands of acrylic paints before I totally leave Pledge behind, but so far it seems to really do a great job of thinning the paint, and I love that I can use it to clean up afterwards. It’s so cheap that I don’t sweat using it to flush my brush frequently or clean out jars etc. You can also make a variation of this that includes ammonia-free glass cleaner to act as an airbrush cleaner.
Leave a comment if you end up trying either of these, I’m curious to know what you think!Â