Author:
Simulacrum
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Date:
6/12/2020 8:44:20 AM
Subject:
Airbrushes must die
What we think of as the atomizing airbrush is an old invention. As early as the 1890s, art students were introduced to essentially the same technology we use today. Although insignificant improvements were introduced by various companies, it's still the same thing.
The same half-baked defective broken-ass thing.
"Sim, thousands of professionals use airbrushes every day. Why you throw chip? Just git gud."
I fully acknowledge my inferior airbrush skills. I am a duffer of the worst order. I have no business using the cheapest Chinese recycled tin-whistle junk. But that does not change the fact that airbrush design is inexcusably stupid, a betrayal of human capability, a crime against a species that walked on the moon.
In order to operate a double-action airbrush successfully, you have to (1) supply it with air, (2) regulate the rate of paint flow, and (3) cease paint flow. Steps (1) and (2) can be done by chimps. Step (3) is as simple as remembering to gradually move the trigger forward instead of letting it go in a sudden snap. But the human mind does not want to gradually do anything when a stroke of painting is finished. Thus, you have to batter yourself over the head if you want to avoid "dry tip."
Dry tip is what happens at the end of the needle when paint and air mix in the wrong proportions. Your paint literally dries at the location where the needle, which opens and blocks the rate of paint flow, must move back and forth. When paint dries here, you no longer have predictable paint flow. If your paint reaches its target, it dries too fast, sometimes in the air just before it arrives at the target. Sometimes, without warning, a fleck of dried paint lurking inside the nozzle spits out and lands on the smooth surface you've been trying to create. This is nearly always unfixable, so you have to abandon the job, strip the paint, and start over.
People teach classes in how to avoid this. They tell you to increase your reducer/paint ratio, turn up your air pressure, devise ways to clean the needle as you're painting (e.g., with Q-tips and the like). This is nice, but why not make an airbrush that doesn't create these problems? Why should people spend ridiculous quantities of money in order to micromanage a defective technology? Because this is at least half of what you do when you airbrush. Sometimes you actually get to paint something, but mostly you're fussing with paint/thinner formulas and going through Q-tips in a nerve-racking attempt not to ruin your work.
Maybe it's down to a suffering rite. The violin is a stupid instrument. It's as if someone went out of their way to invent the most unnecessarily difficult learning curve imaginable, and no one ever tried to make it better or more sensible because that's how you learn to play the violin. I had to learn this way. Therefore, you have to learn this way. People in the future will go on learning this way, because the violin is fine. Nothing wrong with it. Git gud.
Next time: how do they get paint in spray cans?
