Golden Airbrush Colors: Info, Tips and Hints

• easily accessible as most craft stores have them
• fairly inexpensive and
• great quality

Have you tried these paints yet? If not, let me tell you a little bit more about them to get you aquainted :)

Paint Formula

Golden airbrush colors are a 100% water based acrylic paint. The paint is high quality, fairly light fast (i.e. does not fade in sunlight easily) and the color payoff is really good. These airbrush paints are packaged in a consistency that is just right for airbrushing - no thinning is required - they are meant to be used right out of the bottle.

The fact that the paints are acrylic makes them really easy to clean up - just soap and water does the trick! This makes them really easy for beginners to use.

One of the greatest things about these paints is that Golden, the company is purely a paint manuafacturing company. They make all sorts of acrylic paints for all sorts of art applications - what this means is that these folks know their stuff! They use the best binders, pigments and processes to make their paint. I think the most noticable "quality indicator" for airbrush applications is how finely groung the pigments are - because the milling of the pigments is so fine there are very few issues with clogging or dry tip with this brand.

Packaging

Golden airbrush colors are available in three sizes:

• 1 ounce
• 4 ounce
• 16 ounces.

And, if you are feeling really crazy, the black and white formulations are available in one liter containers (which is 1/4 of a gallon).

All the bottles (except for the liter version) are semi-transparent plastic bottles equipped with "screw up drip tips" which allow you to drop one drop of paint at a time. These tips are great because they eliminate the risk of spattering when closing the bottles which is a notorious problem with flip top bottles. One of the downfalls of these types of tops is that it is easy to forget to close them when you are done with them which can cause the paint to dry out or get clumpy.

Side Story: I forgot to close my black golden paint top one day and when I sat down the next day to paint I picked up the container and started shaking away to mix up the paint... I got through several shakes before I realized it was open...lets just say I had A LOT of cleaning to do! So watch for that!!!

Another nice feature in the packaging is that most of the bottles (depending on color) come with a mixing ball inserted into the bottle which aids in pigment dispersion when shaking up the paint. That's a nice feature!

Application

I personally find this paint really easy to apply and would consider it very beginner friendly. Although there are two types of extender available (Golden Airbrush Transparent Extender and Golden Airbrush Medium)the products are totally usable without them.

The "litmus-test" for any paint line though is the quality of the opaque white ... if the white is good, you can almost guarentee the rest of the line will be! Golden's opaque white is very pigmented, very opaque, fairly true to white (it has a faint blue hue as most whites do) and flows fairly good through the airbrush. It does cause tip-dry but not anymore so than most other brands.

Uses

While these acrylic paints do not specicically say that they can be used in applications other than fine art, I have had no problem using them in custom applicaions or clothing applications. If painting custom work (i.e. helmet or something) the acrylic does have to be cleared over and if using if for clothing, the paint must be heat set with an iron.

Colors

Because Golden Airbrush Colors are not focused towards the custom crowd and are geared more for the fine art crowd, the available colors and the naming conventions for their paint line is pretty "artsy-fartsy". You won't see any "rootbeer" or "neon green" in this line - however, you can always mix your own custom colors. Don't let the fancy names deter you - they are just colors....

GOLDEN AIRBRUSH COLORS: OPAQUE

	Hansa Yellow Light #8180
	Hansa Yellow Medium #8190
	Diarylide Yellow #8147
	Bright Orange #8015
	Bright Red-Orange #8016
	Naphthol Red #8210
	Quinacridone Red #8310
	Quinacridone Magenta #8305
	Deep Violet #8146
	Dioxazine Purple #8150
	Ultramarine Blue Hue #8400
	Cerulean Blue Hue #8050
	Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) #8260
	Turquois (Phthalo) #8390
	Phthalo Green (Blue Shade) #8270
	Bright Yellow-Green #8017
	Permanent Green Light #8250
	Permanent Green Dark #8247
	Hooker's Green Hue #8192
	Raw Sienna Hue #8340
	Burnt Sienna Hue #8020
	Raw Umber Hue #8350
	Carbon Black #8040
	Titanium White #8380

GOLDEN AIRBRUSH COLORS: TRANSPARENT

	Transparent Hansa Yellow Medium #8450
	Transparent Naphthol Red Light #8455
	Transparent Quinacridone Red #8470
	Transparent Dioxazine Purple #8445
	Transparent Phthalo Blue #8460
	Transparent Phthalo Green #8465
	Transparent Yellow Oxide #8490
	Transparent Red Oxide #8475
	Transparent Raw Umber Hue #8480
	Transparent Shading Grey #8485

Wrap Up

I think you'll like this paint... if you haven't tried it you should see if you can get your hands on a few colors to try out!