Sprayed a whole bunch of blue last night. Also on the topic of airbrushes: thinners! A good thi

Sprayed a whole bunch of blue last night. 

Also on the topic of airbrushes: thinners! A good thinner is a must if you want to use off-the-shelf acrylic craft paints (which I often do). While I have a lot to learn about airbrushing still, I have discovered a few thingsthat might be useful to you, too! 

I haven’t fully tested these two thinners side by side (which I will do and post the results), but for now I’ll post the recipes and you can try them out for yourselves if you like.

Thinner option #1: Pledge Floor Care with Future Finish

Pros: This seems to give the paint a fairly hard and durable surface. 

Cons: Have to test this further, but doesn’t seem to completely dissolve the acrylic paint, which has lead to a verrry slight orange peel texture, and adds a low level of satin/gloss to the paint.

How to make it: Go to a store that carries it (I got mine at Wal-Mart in Canada), buy it.

Notes:This seems to be more commonly used as a top coat, which it does very well. It will protect the paint beneath and gives a satin/low-gloss finish. Here’s a video on that and some other top-coat options.

Thinner option #2: Make your own

Pros:Crazy cheap, thins acrylic paints beautifully, can be used to flush your airbrush between colours. Seems to Retains original sheen level of paint (satin stays satin, matte stays matte–though more testing is needed on this).

Cons:Paint needs a topcoat, as this does not add strength to the finish.

How to make it: First off, this is not my recipe! I directly followed this video from Luke’s APS on Youtube. Go check it out!

Ingredients: Distilled water, glycerin, 91% isopropyl alcohol, thumbs up.

Directions:In a vessel of your choice (I used a 500ml water bottle) mix 2/3 distilled water, 1/3 isopropyl alcohol, and 1ml glycerin (more/less if you’re making more/less than 500ml). Shake it up a bit and you’re done. Thumbs up!

Notes:So far, I love this mix. I want to test it on a few different brands of acrylic paints before I totally leave Pledge behind, but so far it seems to really do a great job of thinning the paint, and I love that I can use it to clean up afterwards. It’s so cheap that I don’t sweat using it to flush my brush frequently or clean out jars etc. You can also make a variation of this that includes ammonia-free glass cleaner to act as an airbrush cleaner.

Leave a comment if you end up trying either of these, I’m curious to know what you think!