Questions on Thinning for Airbrushing

[Tuluth]

Hey all. So, I'm finally getting around to playing with the airbrush kit I picked up back in December. Just a cheap starter kit from Model Masters off Amazon.

So, I'm experimenting, and trying to find the right ratio of paint : thinner, as most of the time the paint seems to be too 'watery,' and is pooling or running on me. I'm currently using Citadel Base paints, and using Windex as my thinner, running the compressor at around 15psi.  Closest I've gotten is around 8 'scoops' base paint (using the large spreader tool) to 1 ml Windex. Anyone have further suggestions, especially in regards to the Layer and Air paint ranges?

[Vasshpit]

Never used Windex but I usually do a 50/50 mix of Vallejo non airbrush formulated paint to Vallejo airbrush thinner.

YYou want a milk consistency.

[RuneBrush]

First off, welcome to the fun world of airbrushing

Sadly there isn't a magic ratio of thinner to paint, each paint will be a different viscosity and thin differently too - infact different thinners will change how the paint thins as well.  Your needle size will make a huge amount of difference to what the correct viscosity is as well.

As @Vasshpit says you're aiming for the consistency of semi-skimmed milk, although this sounds really weird, grab a little pot and pop some milk in and then gently rotate it round, roll the pot from side to side and you'll see that the milk moves in a particular way - there's a bit of resistance (unlike water).  This is what you're aiming to achieve with your paint.

Personally for all of the Citadel paints, I only thin with Forge World Solution.  I've found that for my setup it produces pretty consistent results, in the past I've used car washer fluid (roughly the same as windex).  If your paint is spidering everywhere you probably need to increase the pressure as it's not atomising before it hits the miniature.

Here's a couple of other useful discussion threads on here: