How To Airbrush Water Drops – Airbrushing Tips

We have added another airbrush training tutorial to our video collection.  To watch the other video tutorials, visit How To Airbrush.

Water Drop Effect

In this video tutorial, Ed Hubbs demonstrates how to paint 3D air drops that look real.  This is a simple effect that anyone can can learn.  I have tried this and it works great.  However, I did notice that some brands of paint work better than others.  I would stick with Kustom Shop as demonstrated in the video.  You certainly do not want to use a water based paint, such as auto color for this technique, as the water used would dissolve the paint rather than create the effect we’re looking for.   Other than that, the technique is quite easy, just spray water drops (bigger drops tend to look better when I tried this technique) onto the surface, lightly highlight the drops from one angle and let the water dry.  If you do not have heat lamps or another way to speed the drying time as Ed used in the video, you can simply allow it to dry.  This will take a while, but the effects will look awesome.

Candy Paint

Candy paint is basically a color that is translucent.  In other words, it has little pigment (color) and a lot of clear.  This will allow you to spray over another color without hiding the color underneath it.  You will see the tint of blue, or whatever candy you’re using, however, you will see through the blue and see the color underneath as well.  To make it simple, just think of canned as a tinted clear coat.  With this in mind, each coat that you apply is going to change the color.  To get the color that you desire, use a let down panel.  First spray your base coat, next spray one coat of candy on all of the panel, mask a 2″ strip on the panel.  Mask another strip and spray another coat of candy.  Repeat this until you have a panel with 4 or 5 strips masked off.  This is what you will have.  A panel with a strip with only one coat of candy, a strip with two coats, a strip with three coats, and so on.  Once the panel is unmasked, clear coat the whole panel.  Now you can take the let down panel outside and see which one you like the best.  If you are trying to match an existing color, you can see which one matched the best.  I hope that I did not confuse you with this process.  It is hard to explain in words.  Perhaps I should do a video demonstrating this process.  That would make it a lot easier to understand.

Anyway, Ed used a candy to the flame job to give it another effect on the hood.  You could candy one end of the hood as Ed did, candy the whole hood, or not use candy at all.  It just depends on what effect you are going for.  Experiment with it and see what you like the best.

Shadowing

The last thing that Ed demonstrates is how to shadow the edges to create a 3D effect.  Just follow the outside edges, half on the panel and half on the masking paper.  You do not exactly have to be able to freehand to achieve this effect, but it will take some time and gun control to make it look right.  So get your airbrush out and practice a bit before trying this on a real project.

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