What is an Airbrush?

The airbrush is a small, highly precise spray gun for applying paint. It was invented in 1879 by Abner Peeler, in Iowa, USA.

This first airbrush used a hand-operated compressor, and the inventor patented it \"for the painting of watercolors and other artistic purposes\". However this first device was rather crude and it took a number of years of further development before a practical device was developed, which was marketed by Liberty Walkup.

The first modern type airbrush came along in 1893, presented by Thayer and Chandler art materials company at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, invented by Charles Burdick. This device looked like a pen and worked in a different manner to Peeler\'s device, being essentially the same as a modern airbrush. The most modern airbrushes today are ironically manufactured in Japan, one of the most popular brands is Iwata.

An airbrush works by passing a stream of fast moving air through a venturi, which creates a local reduction in pressure (suction) that allows paint to be pushed up from a reservoir at normal atmospheric pressure. The paint is mixed with the air and blown through a very fine nozzle, which atomises it into tiny droplets. The paint is carried onto the paper or other medium.

The operator controls the amount of paint using a variable trigger which opens more or less of the nozzle using a very fine tapered needle. This extremely fine degree of control is what allows an artist to create such smooth blending effects using the device.

The technique allows for the meshing of two or more colors in a seamless way, with one color slowly becoming another color. The images have a floating quality, with undefined edges between colors, and between foreground and background colors.

http://www.airbrushart.info