Getting Started with an Airbrush

Getting started with using an airbrush seems really intimidating. But I promise you if you have the right supplies and just a few bits of knowledge you can truly create a beautiful art piece. I'm Rachael Teufel and we're gonna talk about what you need in order to get started with airbrush. And of course the first thing that you need is an airbrush itself. And there are a few different styles out on the market and in a couple of different price ranges. So depending upon how committed you are to really, truly learning an airbrush, I would recommend choosing either a less expensive version or if you're really ready to dive in and get started, choosing a slightly more expensive version as well. So let's talk about two different styles of airbrushing. The airbrush machines themselves can be slightly larger as in this unit here, this is actually a compressor. It has an air gun or brush as well. And this particular setup is really gonna be in the 150 to 300 and of course, far upwards of that depending upon how large of a compressor you utilize as well as the style of gun that you have. Now this is a really great basic airbrush setup. It's around 150 on Amazon for just a very general use airbrush. This is what I started with when I first became a little bit more interested in airbrush. I would say that I typically use this more for shading three dimensional cakes. However, you can really create some beautiful landscape art or different styles of portraits with airbrush as well. So for cake purposes, this is just fine. Don't go out and spend thousands of dollars getting set up for airbrush. It's really just not necessary when it comes to cake world. Another style of airbrush is a portable airbrush. And what I like most about this is it allows me to take it on site with me when I'm delivering a cake just in case I need to make any touch-ups. If you happen to touch a cake that is airbrushed and it's humid outside it will literally pull the color right off. So this is a great way for me to be able to use it as a touch-up item. But if you just wanna do a handful of things with airbrush this is actually a very reasonably priced machine and really great quality for what you have. It's in the 55 to $65 range, depending upon the brand. And for me, this airbrush is just as nice as my larger airbrush and compressor as well. This unit will last approximately two hours and is just charged via a USB cable. So it makes it super easy and convenient. But truly, the pieces that are important are the brush or gun itself. These units come in two styles, so you'll either get a single or a dual action brush. My suggestion is to get a dual airbrush gun, and that's because when you press on the button, you get air and when you pull back you get paint. A single action brush is more like a can of paint. When you push on it, you both get air and paint and it's a little harder to control. You aren't able to get quite the same detail work done as you can with a dual brush. So be sure to check that out when you're looking for your airbrush. Some of the other items that you'll need to purchase are airbrush colors and there are a couple of different brands out there that provide these types of airbrush colors. Your other option is to mix a gel color with a high proof alcohol or lemon extract. And you can do that, but these are not very expensive. I highly recommend just getting it into your cake arsenal of tools and making sure that you have the right product. The reason for that is gel color has a slightly different consistency than airbrush color. And while you can thin it down, sometimes there are some leftover chunks and those chunks would clog your airbrush. And it just makes the process a little bit frustrating. It's not that you can't do it. It's just not quite as easy. The other thing that you can keep in mind when you are dealing with an airbrush gun, is there are a couple of different types of containers to hold your paint. This one is a top action. Just meaning that it's going to drain the paint down from above, like a gravity feed is what they call it. And there's some smaller metal units that you can attach. It literally just unscrews right from the top and then screws back on. And you could certainly use, this is just a plastic one and it's a little bit larger. So depending upon the capacity of paint that you need to utilize you might pick one or the other. There's also another style of gun that has what we call a suction feed. And that is just a plastic container, it has a straw, and it loads from the bottom. My recommendation is just to stick with the gravity feed. It's a whole lot easier and it's more practical for the use in the cake world. If you were doing much larger projects like painting cars for instance, where you're looking at quite a bit of surface area, then a gravity feed with a much larger container is more practical. Just keep that in mind too. I highly recommend using gloves and you can even utilize any sort of mask just to help prevent some of the fumes. It's not really fumes more than it is just particles in the air of the paint, to prevent from going into your respiratory system. And of course the gloves are to protect your hands from getting paint all over. It's actually food grade, so it's not harmful to you but it just kinda helps keep you clean so that when you're working with different surfaces you're not getting airbrush paint everywhere. I also recommend getting a roll of Scotch Tape. This is just masking tape. The tape is really to help mask off different types of stencils, just holding your paper down to your surface when you're practicing. The tape really comes in handy and you want a tape that doesn't have a whole lot of adhesive to it. Don't get any type of really high quality masking tape. You just want something that's gonna be able to peel off of fondant for instance, or peel off of your stencils fairly easily. Always keep a towel around for wiping your hands and of course your airbrush. And then when practicing I use different styles of paper. The first style of paper is just a very traditional copy paper. And then I also have card stock. So it's a slightly thicker grade of paper. And I use this more for making stencils. You can also purchase stencils or make your own stencils from any sort of acetate or plastic material. But I just find that the card stock paper does its job really well. It's easier to cut than a piece of plastic and it's easily disposable as well. So don't go out and buy any sort of major templates or anything until you really get into airbrush and see how much you're gonna utilize them. So now that we know a little bit about the basics of airbrushing, I encourage you to check out some of our other videos on how to actually use your airbrush and start working on your cakes.