Well, as with most things, you're going to need to break a few eggs before getting to the omelette... Practice on other pieces that you have lying around that you don't care about. The paint is going to need to be thinned down... a lot. The bottles are small, but you'll get a LOT of paint out of each bottle, and you aren't going to run out very quickly.

There are many techniques for masking... some use tape, some use liquid masks, some just use precision spraying... there isn't any single "way" of achieving a clean line. It's all technique and personal preference... you'll need to find which one works best for you.

Do NOT expect your first piece to come out perfect... it's good to want to learn how do customs, but as others have said, many of the nicest pieces you've probably seen posted here have come via experimentation, and many by mistake/happenstance.

The more you play around with spraying/brushing/dripping/etc., the more comfortable you'll be for when you think you're ready to make your attempt on the piece you want to get "just right".

From my own experience, I've painted figures, stripped them, painted them again, stripped them again until I got the desired looks I wanted.

We could tell you step by step how we try something, but it would be the equivalent of telling you how to hit a 90 mph fastball... it's one thing to have the information, it's another thing to put it into practice.

i cant mask worth a shit. tried everything including liquid mask and then lash told me to turn down the air pressure as low as possible....

try it

oh, as you can see from what i have posted on here, my first pieces are far from perfect! i'm not looking to get any just right at this point - i mean, i'm painting rxh to look like a pro wrestler! i'm just doing it for fun and learning along the way

i think the paint 1:1 or so... that seems to be the way to go from reading past posts around

an example i mean about the clean lines is this custom PK did for me



i know masking tape was used, but the surface is so smooth like he sprayed it on with zebra paint.

i know i know, i've been doing this for 3 weeks and of course my stuff is going to look shitty

every time i have tried masking just one line or shape with the masking tape, i get 2 obvious layers of paint

i dont know anyone else that even owns an airbrush must less knows how to use one outside of this community here, so of course i want to pick you guys' brains as much as possible. it's such a fantastic resource. that creepy guy on my how to dvd showing me the perfect seascape and unicorn just doesnt quite do it for me

that's exactly what i have been trying to do - gather information that i need then applying. i mean, look at the difference in my one gaira toy just because i didnt know you needed to shake the shit out of the gold paint to get it to look good. i just assumed the paint sucked but LASH told me what to look for and i was able to improve my work thanks to the simple advice.

and that's also why i am posting these things as i do them. i have visions of art school and posting my sub par work on the wall before class, waiting to be embarrassed by someone more talented than me. but i do it to get the feedback of you guys and suggestions and tips and all that.

anyway, i appreciate all the help from everyone, and i apologize if i was nasty at all

see, this is what i mean. i am such a newbie at this i did not even think about changing air pressure. it was all or nothing!

and i might have to try the liquid thinner

thanks!

i, too am enjoying this thread and i certainly think that it behooves the beginners to get info from the pros....of course, there are some things that you can only learn yourself but as pickle said, there are plenty of tech stuff that could be shared to everyone's benefit....that's why we have teachers in the first place. why should you have to go and devise a whole system for trigonometry yourself if someone has already done it?

pickle,

I thought of you when writing this last night....

Another interesting sidenote is that I dig the way the eye came out. but it was really a result of an accident. While I was using a paint pen to color the eye red, I pushed on it too hard and the paint flooded out filling up the entire eye socket and spilling just a bit on both sides. I thought it looked cool, so I let it dry and then used a little gold frost to highlight the center.

I agree! I have gained a lot from this thread alone! now I can get the right paint at the right place! thanks to all of you guys!

looks awesome

i need to get on those paint pens... i gotta get rid of those brush strokes and sticky paint!!

thanks again