Vantablack12, on 04 May 2020 - 02:43 PM, said:
How do you thin your paints and with what? I have a Vallejo airbrush thinner and a Testors enamel thinner that seem to work pretty well when used with thier espective paints.
It depends on the paint type and what I am doing with it. there are four paint types; lacquer paints, enamel paints, oil paints, and acrylic paints. the first three are all pretty straight forward and I tend to use thinners from the brands themselves, ie AK brand lacquer paints, ill use AK brand lacquer to thin it. you can get away with using off brand stuff like hardware store lacquer thinner but as it tends to be "hot" you're just making a bigger deal of it than it should be.
Acrylic paints are a bit different as you have latex based acrylics, glycol based acrylics and other formulations as well. the first two are the basis for most model brand acrylic paints. If latex based acrylics are what you're using, water is ideal for thinning. Mission models, Vallejo, usually stuff you see in the eye dropper bottles are latex based, and (in my opinion) are only good for brush painting, don't run these through your airbrush. Conversely glycol based acrylics can be cut with water, alcohol, or lacquer thinner. im no chemist so don't ask me, but I've done it and your tamiyas, gunze type jars can be cut with either of the three, with alcohol being the easiest to clean and spray through your airbrush. lacquer thinner will give you a strong bond and coat but smelly to spray and messy to clean. while water should only be used for quick touch up with a paint brush. hope that helps.