 What is airbrush tip dry anyway?Airbrush tip dry is a fact of life when it comes to airbrush art. You may find yourself asking why paint producers haven't developed a product that doesn't cause tip dry.... well, it is not as simple as it sounds.All paint, whether it is house paint or art paint starts out as powdered pigment. The higher quality the paint, the finer the pigment is ground. House paint has fairly large pigment in comparison to art paint. To make the pigment "spreadable" they are suspended in a liquid base. That base liquid dries entrapping the powder pigment on to the surface painted. Now we all know that when you paint using traditional paints (i.e. house paint or any paint applied with a brush) that you can speed up the drying time by blowing on the freshly painted surface. Circulating air causes the curing agent in the base liquid to evaporate at a faster rate and thus sets the paint faster. The problem with airbrushes is that they come with there own "blower". Air is constantly being circulated around the paint causing it to dry very very fast. This is great for our artwork, but not so great for the application of that artwork. All that air blowing past the tip causes paint to dry very rapidly causing pigment to build up on the tip which equals airbrush tip dry... ... Paints with high pigment content (which typically depends on color - for example white paint has a LOT of pigment) add an extra complexity because all that "extra" pigment builds up much more rapidly on the tip and interferes with the flow of paint. So, for airbrush paint manufacturers it is a delicate balance of achieving a blend of paint that will have good intensity (i.e. enough pigment) and dry at a rate that is fast enough for application to artwork, but no so fast as to cause excessive tip dry. One good thing about airbrush tip dry is that it becomes predictable so you can anticipate when you are going to have problems. For instance... ... if you are using white paint - you are likely to encounter a tip dry issue due to the amount of pigment ... if you are spraying a larger amount of paint than you normally would (i.e. you have the trigger pulled far back and are covering a large area in a hurry) you are likely to see more tip dry due to extra air circulation ... if you are using an opaque paint as opposed to a transparent - probably going to see more tip dry. The key is to get to know your paint and to learn from your mistakes! Learn more about airbrush tip dry at airbrush-guidance.com |