Choose What to Spray

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll

It all starts here.  If you don’t know what you’re going to do then how can you decide what you need to do it?  The requirements for spray tanning bodies are different from the requirements to spray cars.  The requirements to spray t-shirts are different than the requirements to airbrush makeup.

Don’t get too crazy about how many different things you want to do.  It’s okay to want to spray lots of things, or just a few.  For your first time using an airbrush.  Choose one or two things to focus on.  You’ll see why in just a moment.

I can’t tell you what you should do. Only you can choose what to spray, however,  I think the merits of airbrushing  speak for themselves.  But let me give you a list of some of the things I’ve seen done.

• Fishing lures
• Custom automotive paint jobs
• Cake decorating
• Taxidermy
• Fine art (photo-realism is astounding but not the only application)
• Miniature figurines
• Scale model painting and dioramas
• Temporary tattoos
• Spray tanning
• Special effects makeup
• Television and film makeup (especially for High Definition TV)
• Body art (both fun and serious)
• Advanced aerospace coatings
• Semiconductor (microchip) research
• Homeland Security devices
• Custom t-shirts
• Caricatures
• Murals
• Ceramic glazes (pottery)
• RC Cars
• Model Railroading
• Resin Figures
• Ceramic and Porcelain Figures
• Airbrushed Nails
• Shoes
• Leather Jackets
• Helmets from all kinds of different industries (firefighters seem to like them as well as Little League Baseball)
• Compressed gas canisters (firefighters again and SCUBA divers)
• And this one’s out there, caskets.  I guess there are some people who want to be buried in customized style.
• Car spot repairs
• Carpet spot repairs
• Refrigerators (paint shops love to have a painted beer refrigerator…it’s a status symbol)

There are even lines of automatic spray guns for industrial use with robots.

I have no doubt there are uses I haven’t even thought of or have forgotten.

Airbrushes are useful wherever you need to blend or coat an area evenly without anything touching the surface to be coated.

All of this to say, what are you interested in?  Almost all of the uses I mentioned can be done as a hobby or professionally (yes, even making security devices for Homeland Security–you might need a few more contacts to do that right though.)

So why choose one or two things to spray?  It’s really about the paint.  Different surfaces require different kinds of paint.  When you’re just beginning you don’t want to get too crazy.  The learning curve is steep enough when you’re only trying to spray one or two kinds of related surfaces, let alone the whole gamut of paint-types.  Consider this friendly advice from someone who’s helped thousands of people out of tight, annoying situations.

The next step is choosing the right kind of paint for the surface you’re going to spray.