I'm a novice at airbrushing though I have owned a small compressor and a couple of cheap brushes for a few years.

What I have always struggled with is how to mix, decant and thin paint.

I have two brushes (both cheap), one with a built in cup and one that uses bottles.

So I'm going to try spraying. I have a jar or tamiya or a tinlet of humbrol say.

I might need to mix some paints to get the correct colour or to lighten for scale, I will almost certainly need to thin it.

But my dilemmas have been and remain

(i) How do I mix - how do I measure, how do I get the paint out of the tinjar and where do I put it.

(ii) How do I know how much am I going to need

(iii) How do I get it into the airbrush

(iv) What do I do with the paint left when I have finished

Whenever I have tried, I've always ended up with a mess, paint wasted, enough of a hassle to put me off using it.

But I know that airbrushing is the way to go and now that I'm buying more expensive kits I want the finish to be better.

Most here use airbrushes so I figure it can't be as difficult as I think.

Any advice would be welcome.

Cheers,

Nigel

http://www.gamerabaenre.com/airbrushing.htm

I hope that will help you

cheers

the method i use for all of these are as follows----

1)how to measure--i use an eye dropper with a line on it that indicates 1:1. when it comes to mixing colors or thinners to colors, i use whatever it calls for IE: 1:3 (one to every three) or whatever may be needed.

2: how much are you going to need?--im my opinion, you can never have too much. at some point, that color can always be used again somewhere. which also will lead to point number 4. but for this, a half of an AB cup will typically do one coat of camo on an entire model.

3: to get it into the airbrush, if its a single color from a new paint bottle, ill use a dropper. however, if its paint i mixed and i want to keep as much of the paint that i can, ill pour from the spare bottle ive mixed from. i do this so i dont waste extra paint that is in the dropper.


4: when it comes to this, i have extra screw cap bottles from paints that i have expended, that i use to store the excess..



end story, dont throw out the bottles of the paint you have used up. they can be used after their contents have been dried up or used. you will obviously have to clean them well, but they will come handy for mixing and storing the paint you mix.
take it for what its worth, but this is how i do it