6 min read

Updated: 2026-03-04

Airbrushing Miniatures: A Guide to Citadel Air Paints

Taking Your Painting to the Next Level For many hobbyists, buying an airbrush is the moment their painting transitions from...

Airbrushing Miniatures: A Guide to Citadel Air Paints - Buzz Paints UK

Taking Your Painting to the Next Level

For many hobbyists, buying an airbrush is the moment their painting transitions from a casual pastime to a serious pursuit. Airbrushing allows you to achieve incredibly smooth, flawless basecoats, seamless colour gradients, and glowing object source lighting (OSL) effects that are exceptionally difficult and time-consuming to achieve with a traditional bristle brush. It is an absolute game-changer for painting large vehicles, Imperial Knights, monsters, or simply batch-painting a horde army in record time.

Why Choose Citadel Air Paints?

While you certainly can thin regular Citadel Base and Layer paints for use in an airbrush using dedicated thinner and flow improver, it can be a fiddly process getting the consistency just right. Citadel Air paints remove that headache entirely. They come pre-thinned to the perfect, milky consistency right out of the pot. Best of all, they are colour-matched perfectly to the regular Citadel brush range. This means you can basecoat a tank with the airbrush, and then touch up mistakes or paint details with a regular brush using the standard Base paint version, without any noticeable colour discrepancy.

Best Airbrush Practices for Beginners

  • Always use a primer first: Airbrush paint goes on very thin and needs a primed surface to adhere to.
  • Work in thin layers: Don’t try to get opaque coverage in one pass. Build up translucent layers to avoid “spider-webbing” paint blowouts.
  • Clean your needle tip: Acrylics dry fast. Keep a cotton swab with thinner handy to gently clean the tip of the needle frequently to prevent dry tip clogs.

Expand your arsenal and speed up your workflow with our full range of Citadel Air paints, available now with fast UK delivery.

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