A bunch of the guys I fly RC planes with have been wanting me to hold another Airbrush Class to go over the basics... I held one mid summer and it was mostly a flop, nobody wanted to pick up an airbrush, and it was mostly me painting them watching, not what was intended...

So I figured this class I would really give it a go and setup a structure, prepare and get this thing going like more of a true classroom. It was a huge success!

This past Saturday we all gathered at one of the guys garage, we had 12 different people show up, some having to leave a bit early, but the attendance was great. We went over the basics of what airbrushes were, how they worked, differences, paint reduction, types of paints, dots, lines, and a final project...

After about 45min of me lecturing on the basics, it was time to go hands on and reduce some paint. I broke out some small mixing cups for everyone and a couple bottles of reducer. I mixed the first cup, and told them what they were looking for then let them loose... All of them did pretty well once they knew what they needed it to be.

We then progressed into some dots and lines for a while. This was where the class really got a chance to airbrush. Most all of the class had never tried it before, and those that had tried, failed miserably in the past and gave up.

I brought a bunch of different airbrushes for them to try out, Badger, Devilbiss Dagr, Master Series, and some harbor freighters to round it all out. Some had their own airbrushes as well, a thayer and chandler and paasche too. While this was going on, I roamed around and helped them out, gave tips and answered a lot of questions, everyone was able to get the dots and lines going pretty good.

On to the final project! The night before I had cut out a bunch of masks on the plotter for the class to use. A basic Wolf howling silhouette, a classic license plate job. When I pulled out the reference picture and passed out the masks, most of the class was pretty intimidated, it looked complex, surely us "newbies" couldn't pull it off, we've only been airbrushing for less than an hour! We went through all the steps of laying the mask down, spraying in layers, light coats etc, step by step, and each one of them ended up with great results. All of them were happy as could be that THEY produced something that looked great with minimal effort....

They are hooked! Many of them ran out and got outfitted, one guy even said his "final project" was going on the fridge.. lol, his wife will enjoy that I'm sure...

I would encourage others out there to go and hold a small clinic. It was a blast for me to teach, I learned a lot as well. I gave this clinic for free, and even had to refuse a lot of "donations", I really wanted to just have fun and share some knowledge.

Some class photos thanks to Dirk (one of the students)...