English
History of Airbrush 01
2024.11.04
An
airbrush is a small,
air-operated tool that atomizes and sprays various media, most often paint, but also ink, dye, and foundation.
Spray painting developed from the airbrush and is considered to employ a type of
airbrush.
History
Up until the mid-2000s, it was widely published that the airbrush was invented in 1893, but following research undertaken in collaboration with New York University's Conservation Department, and personal support from Professor Margaret Holben Ellis, a more detailed history emerged, which required many authorities such as Oxford Art to update their dictionaries and references.
Depending on the definition requiring compressed air or not, the first spray painting device that could be called an airbrush was patented in 1876 (Patent Number 182,389) by Francis Edgar Stanley of Newton, Massachusetts. This worked akin to a Edgar Stanley of Newton, Massachusetts. This worked akin to a diffuser/atomiser and did not have a continuous air supply.
Stanley and his twin brother later invented a process for continuously coating photographic plates (Stanley Dry Plate Company) but are perhaps best known for their S tanley Steamer. No artistic images that used this 'paint distributor/atomiser' exist or are as yet known.
According to the research prepared by Professor Andy Penaluna, the first instrument to use a compressed air supply was named the "paint distributor" was developed by Abner Peeler "for the painting of watercolors and other artistic purposes" and used a hand-operated ompressor to supply continuous air. It was rather crude, being based on a number of spare parts in a jeweller's workshop such as old screwdrivers and welding torches. It took four years of further development before a working prototype was developed by Liberty Walkup of Mt. Morris, Illinois. Walkup repatented the work under the name of "air-brush", a name his wife Phoebe Walkup came up with. Thus according to the research, the formal birth of the name 'Air Brush' can be traced to a documented stakeholders' meeting of the new Air Brush Manufacturing Co. at 7:00 p.m. on 6 October 1883, when the name was formally born. In modern times the date is used to celebrate airbrush art around the world, using the Twitter hashtag #airbrushartistday. Walkup's wife would later go on to be the founder of the Illinois Art School where airbrushing was taught to students from all over the world. In that same rented 4 story building Rockford Air-Brush would be stablished under Liberty Walkup. Amongst others, the Walkups taught airbrush technique to A merican Impressionist master Wilson Irvine at the Air Brush School in Rockford, Illinois. The first certain 'atomising' type airbrush was invented by C harles Burdick in 1893 and presented by Thayer and Chandler art materials company at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Burdick founded the Fountain Brush Company in the US, and launched the first series of airbrushes onto the market. However, Burdick initially re-cased the Walkup design into a finger- operated instrument, and as many of his designs echoed those being developed by Walkup, a legal row resulted over the name Air Brush. This device was essentially the same as a modern airbrush, resembling a pen and working in a different manner than Peeler's device. Aerograph, Burdick's original company, still makes and sells airbrushes in England. Thayer and Chandler were acquired by Badger Air-Brush Co. in 2000. Badger Air-Brush continues the Thayer and Chandler tradition of manufacturing quality airbrush guns, tools and compressors out of Franklin Park, Illinois.
Design
An
airbrush works by passing a stream of fast moving (compressed) air through a venturi, which creates a local reduction in
air pressure (suction) that allows paint to be pulled from an interconnected reservoir at normal
atmospheric pressure. The high velocity of the
air atomizes the paint into very tiny droplets as it blows past a very fine paint-metering component. The paint is carried onto paper or other surfaces. The operator controls the amount of paint being blown by using a variable
trigger which manipulates the position of a very fine tapered needle that is the control element of the paint-metering component. An extremely fine degree of atomization is what allows an artist to create such smooth blending effects using the airbrush.
The technique allows for the blending of two or more colors in a seamless way, with one color slowly becoming another color. Freehand airbrushed images, without the aid of stencils or friskets, have a floating quality, with softly defined edges between colors, and between foreground and background colors. A skilled airbrush artist can produce paintings of photographic realism or can simulate almost any painting medium. Painting at this skill level involves supplementary tools, such as masks and friskets, and very careful planning.
Some
airbrushes use pressures as low as
20 psi (1.38 bar) while others use pressures in the region of
30-35 psi (2-2.4 bar). Larger "
spray guns" as used for automobile spray-painting need 100 psi (6.8 bar) or more to adequately atomize a thicker paint using less solvent. They are capable of delivering a heavier coating more rapidly over a wide area. Even with small artist airbrushes using acrylic paint, artists must be careful not to breathe in the atomized paint, which floats in the air for minutes and can go deep into the lungs. With commercial spray guns for automobiles, it is vital that the painter have a clean air source to breathe, because automotive paint is far more harmful to the lungs than acrylic. Certain
spray guns, called High-Volume Low-Pressure (HVLP)
spray guns, are designed to deliver the same high volumes of paint without requiring such high pressures.
(our new
Dual-action airbrush)
Types
Airbrushes are usually classified by three characteristics. The first characteristic is the action performed by the user to trigger the
paint flow. The second is the mechanism for feeding the paint into the airbrush. The third is the point at which the paint and air mix.
Trigger action
The simplest airbrushes work with a
single-action mechanism, where the depression of the trigger actuates air flow through the airbrush, immediately outputting paint. The airbrush's color flow and spray pattern are adjusted separately from the trigger action. This is done through an adjustment of the airbrush's needle placement within its paint tip, by the turning of the paint tip on an external mix airbrush (Badger 350 or P aasche Model H are good examples of single-action external mix airbrushes) or the turning of a needle setting dial on an internal mix airbrush (Badger 200 or Iwata SAR are good
examples of single-action internal mix airbrushes). The color volume and spray pattern are maintained at a fixed level until the airbrush user re-adjusts the setting. Adjusting the color volume and spray pattern while painting is possible, but not by design. Single-action airbrushes are simpler to use and are generally less expensive, but they present limitations in applications in which the user wishes to do something more artistic than simply apply a large, uniform coat of color.
Dual-action (or
double-action) airbrushes enable the simultaneous adjustment of both air and color at the trigger, by allowing the user to actuate air by depressing the trigger and simultaneously adjust color and spray pattern by rocking the trigger back and forth.[6] This ability to adjust color flow while spraying the airbrush, coupled with the user's adjustment of distance from the painting surface allows for the variation of fine to wide lines without stopping to re-adjust the spray pattern (as is necessary with a single-action airbrush). This allows for greater spray control and enables a wider variety of artistic effects. The use of this type of airbrush requires practice to achieve proficiency, both with triggering technique and control. The effort is worthwhile, as airbrushing offers greater artistic versatility. Dual-action airbrushes (Badger Patriot 105, Paasche VL, Iwata CM-C are all good examples of dual-action airbrushes) are of a more sophisticated design model than single-action airbrushes, which tends to make them the more expensive of the two.
Feed system
Paint can be fed into the airbrush by gravity from a paint reservoir sitting atop the airbrush (called gravity feed or top feed), or siphoned from a reservoir mounted below (bottom/suction/siphon feed), or on the side (side feed). Each feed type carries unique advantages and disadvantages. Gravity feed airbrushes require less air pressure to operate, as gravity helps assist the flow of paint into the mixing chamber. Typically instruments with the finest mist atomization and detail requirements use this method since less air pressure allows for finer control of paint flow and less overspray. However, the paint capacity of gravity feed airbrushes is limited. Side- and bottom-feed airbrushes allow the artist to see over the top of the airbrush, with the former sometimes offering left-handed and right-handed options to suit the artist. The bottom paint reservoir can be a variety of sizes, and so a bottom feed airbrush typically holds a larger capacity of paint than the other
types, and is often preferable for larger scale work such as automotive applications and clothing design. Side feed airbrushes are a hybrid of the two, and are able to use both a gravity style cup or a suction-style bottle.
Mix point
Airbushes can be divided into
internal mix and
external mix. With an
internal mix airbrush, the paint and air mix inside the
airbrush body (in the tip), creating a finer atomized "mist" of paint. With an external mix airbrush, the air and paint meet outside of the tip before mixing with each other, which creates a larger, coarser atomization pattern. External mix airbrushes are cheaper and more suited for covering larger areas with more viscous paints or varnishes, while internal mix airbrushes are more expensive and more suited for fine detail work with thinner paints.
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