Here’s a comprehensive buyer’s guide to airbrush paints, helping you choose the right medium for your project.

Buyer’s Guide To Airbrush Paints: Choosing the Right Paints for Your Project

While practically any liquid with the consistency of milk can be sprayed through an airbrush, paints generally fall into one of five main categories: acrylics, inks & dyes, oil paints, urethanes, and watercolors.

Types of Airbrush Paints

Acrylics

• Versatility: Most versatile and easiest to use of all paint options for airbrush.
• Surfaces: Can be used on almost any surface, including fabric, canvas, and acetate.
• Performance: Spray evenly through an airbrush with short drying times, allowing quick layering.
• Effects: Can achieve transparent effects when properly thinned. Many brands offer ready-mixed acrylic paints, ideal for beginners.

Inks and Dyes

• Consistency: Thinnest of all paint types, requiring less pressure for airbrushing.
• Vibrancy: Provide vibrant colors on paper and similar white surfaces.
• Transparency: Can create transparent paints for various surfaces, though most are not suitable for non-absorbent surfaces.
• Specialty: Food-grade inks and dyes are available for airbrushing cakes and edible decorations.
• Beginner-Friendly: Often do not require thinning, making them great for beginners.

Oils and Enamels

• Properties: Provide intense and durable colors.
• Application: Can be tricky to use with an airbrush due to the need for precise viscosity.
• Thinning: Must be thinned correctly with mineral spirits or turpentine to avoid clogging and ensure smooth spraying.

Urethane

• Durability: Even more durable than acrylic paints, but significantly more toxic.
• Applications: Generally used for heavy-duty work on cars, motorcycles, boats, and other surfaces designed to withstand the elements. These paints can be clear-coated, sanded, and polished.
• Drying: Do not dry by water evaporation; they require a catalyst or hardener to cure.

Watercolors

• Airbrush Suitability: Ideal for airbrushing in terms of viscosity and ease-of-use.
• Limitations: Not opaque and lack durability compared to acrylics and urethanes. They will not hold up when exposed to elements, especially moisture.
• Primary Use: Generally limited to illustration and fine art.

Our Range of Paints

Everything Airbrush offers a wide range of paints for many applications. Click on the links below to view the specific product ranges:

• Createx Wicked Colors: An ultra-high performance, multi-surface airbrush paint for any interior & exterior project. Wicked contains mild amounts of solvent inter-mixed with a durable, exterior-grade resin and automotive pigments, creating an extremely durable paint that withstands direct, prolonged exposure to outdoor elements without washing or fading. Perfect for t-shirts, automotive and RC graphics, illustration, and almost any application.
• Mig Ammo ATOM: A new type of paint specifically designed for modeling. Formulated for maximum performance with both brush and airbrush, offering strong covering power, durability, and perfect flow and color intensity. For airbrush use, thinning with ATOM Thinner is required.
• Vallejo Metal Color: Especially designed for airbrushing. Uses the latest generation of aluminum pigments in a specifically designed formula to produce colors of exceptional resistance and adherence to plastics and metal. Can be applied directly on models without the need for a primer.
• Vallejo Mecha Color: A new range of acrylic airbrush colors from Vallejo, designed especially for painting Robots, Gundam, Transformer, and Gunplas figures. Mecha Colors can be used straight from the bottle with a 0.2mm nozzle, but thinning is recommended for a smoother, more even paint flow.
• Vallejo Model Air: Model Air paints adhere exceptionally well to all surfaces (resin, plastics, steel, white metal). They offer a wide range of colors suitable for various airbrush models. Can be used straight from the bottle with a 0.2mm nozzle, but thinning is recommended for a smoother, more even paint flow.
• Vallejo Model Color: Matt and opaque acrylic paints with the highest pigment concentration in a water-based formula, especially developed for brush-on application. For airbrush use, thin Model Colors with Vallejo Airbrush Thinner to a milky consistency. The range is extensive, including basic shades, historical figures, and specific colors for all types of vehicles, planes, and military models.
• Vallejo Model Wash: Traditionally applied with brushes but can be reduced for airbrush applications. Used to create various weathering effects on Armor, Model Vehicles, Planes, Ships, and Figures.
• Vallejo Game Air: Colors selected in collaboration with modelers specialized in fantasy figures and dioramas, maintaining the names and shades of popular Game Color paints but with the formulation and resins employed for Model Air. The viscosity allows working with airbrushes as small as 0.2 mm without dilution, though environmental conditions may necessitate further thinning.
• Vallejo Game Color: A new approach to painting Fantasy and Wargame figures. Developed with professional modelers, this range offers an intuitive, easy-to-learn painting method based on the BSL (Base, Shadow, Light) system. This system uses chromatically compatible groupings of three colors for easy choice of shades, highlights, and shadows for each base color. Game Color and Special FX Colors are formulated for brush painting but can be airbrushed if reduced with Vallejo Airbrush Thinner. Game Color Fluorescents, Inks, Metallics, Washes, and Xpress Colors are formulated for both brush and airbrush applications.
• Vallejo Premium RC Colors: A safe, water-based, non-toxic, and highly versatile airbrush-ready paint, suitable for all surfaces. Especially formulated for superior adhesion to metals, fiberglass, polyethylene, clear Lexan polycarbonate, slot car and RC bodies, and all tuning and automotive applications. The range includes 20 bright opaque colors, 23 dazzling metallics and fluorescents, and 9 shimmering transparent Candy Colors. All colors are suitable for both detail work and large surfaces, and can be applied by brush as well as by airbrush.