1. Use the correct airbrush – This one is easy. If you really want to airbrush t-shirts, you have to get an IWATA Eclipse HP-BCS airbrush. It is a bottom feed airbrush, which means that the airbrush paint bottle is attached directly to the bottom of the airbrush and is sucked in and out of the nozzle using a siphon created from the flowing air. Get started with this airbrush first and you’ll save yourself a lot of headache.

2. Use the correct airbrush paint – The 2 big players in airbrushing t-shirt painting are CREATEX and AQUAFLOW. In my experience, AQUAFLOW “flows” a little better, but it’s hardly noticeable. You can’t go wrong with either of these two major brands.

3. Wear the right shirt – 100% preshrunk cotton or 50/50 blend. (50% cotton, 50% polyester) I got the best results by washing a new T-shirt at least once before I airbrushed it. This removes most of the loose fibers and also takes care of some of the initial color fading that is bound to happen.

4. Use good design – Take your time here. Awesome airbrushed t-shirts don’t happen by chance. Think of a good layout on paper first. That way you can erase and make corrections before putting paint on the shirt. It takes some discipline to draw first and airbrush second, but trust me, you’ll waste a lot less shirts this way and end up with a better finished product every time.

5. Get comfortable – Keep your workspace clean and work at a comfortable height. I prefer to stand when airbrushing t-shirts. I use a large pegboard with shelf hooks as my easel. This makes it easy to adjust the height of my t-shirt board, so I’m always in a comfortable position to airbrush without having to kneel or reach to finish a stroke.

6. Prepare the T-shirt – After washing it once, iron it to remove the wrinkles. The wrinkles act like magnets for airbrush painting over spray. Use clamps or clothespins to secure the shirt to the shirt board so you have a nice flat surface to work on. For maximum color fastness, spray one coat of Frog Juice or CREATEX clear extender to area to be painted first, heat set, then paint.

7. Take your time – There’s no rush, yet. Until you take your show on the road and start doing malls or swap meets, take the time to master your skills first. Speed ​​is important and will come with time, but for now, focus on each shot. Less is more too. Try to get that perfect fade in 1 pass instead of 2. The less paint you put on the t-shirt, the better.

8. Take advantage of your strengths – It’s definitely nice to be versatile, but if there’s a particular area of ​​airbrushed t-shirts that you really excel at, go for it! Find out what you are best at and what you like to paint the most, then master that area. It’s easier to build a reputation of being the absolute best at one thing than it is to build a reputation of being pretty good at many different things.

9. Heat Press – Spray your finished airbrushed shirt with another coat of CREATEX Clear Extender, use a heat press to heat it to 400 degrees for 20 seconds.

10. Rinse and repeat – If you only followed the first 9 steps you could probably go pretty far as an Airbrush shirt toartist, but who wants that? We want to be the best airbrush ever. As a great man once said: “Only persistence and determination are omnipotent” If you were to take a drawing I did in first grade and put it next to the drawing of any other average first grader, you wouldn’t be able to tell which is which. 30 years later, if you take a drawing I did now and put it next to every other average drawing from 30 years old, I bet you could tell the difference. Because? Because I practiced more than them.