"Airbrush Paint for Gaming Mats" Topic

I have an Iwata airbrush that I haven't used as much as I should have, and was thinking about doing some custom game mats pm fleece blankets. Two questions:

1. Given the large amount of surface area involved, I was wondering what pre-mixed airbrush paints you guys would use that would flow easily, but not be prohibitively expensive.

2. Would any of you guys use acrylics for this? I've had issues with clumping, even with Vallejo airbrush paints, when doing large areas.

There's no getting out of mixing with thinner and regularly stopping to blast some cleaner through.

For a large project like this, I'd use craft paints, suitably thinned. For a really large project, I'd use latex house paint (again thinned).

Actually, though, for my terrain mats, I use craft paints (thinned a LOT) in a sprayer bottle, not my airbrush. I spritz the color onto a dampened ground cloth (in my case, cheap sheets of a suitable color). The colors bleed and blend nicely.

Doug

Had not considered a sprayer bottle. I'll give it a whirl,and maybe save the airbrush for roads and rivers.

Great idea!

Do they still airbrush T-Shirts?
Maybe there are some resources that you can get some helpful hints from there

I use a cheap $10 USD harbor freight airbrush for this and really thinned down craft paint. The airbrush is cheap, siphon fed with a large (bigger than .5 I suspect) nozzle. The tip is two parts and a simple C-clip holding it together, simple to clean when it clogs. The paint will flow thru it well if thinned down enough, I don't measure but I imagine I've gotten it to 1 part paint to 3parts water or even closer to 1 part to 4, I've gotten used to it enough to be able to tell if it'll work. It's siphon fed so you'll waste a lot of paint, which is why you use cheap craft paint. I use this to a base coat all of my terrain and vehicles and have used it on felt cloth for table mats.

I used an airbrush to do the felt gaming mats for our gaming group. You can find the post here:

link

I do pretty much just what whitphoto does for all kinds of terrain work – cheap thinned down craft paint sprayed through a $10 USD harbor Freight airbrush. Even with occasional clogs, I've always been able to clean it out and if it gets terminally clogged, being out $10 USD versus my decent airbrush is a win

I'm thinking fabric dyes might be better for this, but have no practical knowledge on the subject, and it is mere conjecture on my part.

Still, I think it makes sense, and eliminates the paint cracking issue.

Only problem I see is that there are very limited colors of dyes in your basic, retail store, so you might have to order those from more specialty stores at higher prices, or mix your own.

Also, I suspect dyes might bleed more than paint, so controlling where it's applied in a precise way might be more problematic too.

Would love to see if anyone else has tried dyes on their fabric mats.

Also, anyone tried using just plain old, low-tech, spray bottles for applying paints, and/or dyes to their fabric?

[Just read elsyrsyn's comment after posting this, so I see I'm not alone in thinking about this option]

Also, anyone tried using just plain old, low-tech, spray bottles for applying paints, and/or dyes to their fabric?

I want to emphasize that the trick that made this work satisfactorily for me was to make sure that the material was wet, so that the sprayed thinned paint spread and blended.

Doug