Body Painting & Temporary Tattoos Airbrushes & Equipment

One of the coolest and most well-known uses of airbrushing is for body art, but that’s not all you can do… Many are surprised to find out that you can also make cool temporary tattoos that can last up to a week!

Starting with body art, Hollywood has done a good job of showing us what is possible with airbrushing thanks to all the sci-fi movies that we’ve all seen at least one of by now. It’s almost surreal how vividly they are able to paint the actors and actresses to fit their fictional character profiles, and this is because of the natural-looking result that airbrushing leaves you with.

You can get crazy creative and really make some your wildest ideas literally come to life by having them airbrushed!

What do you need?

An airbrush that meets your needs

  • Will you be focusing on facial art? If so, you will need a very fine needle size (0.15, 0.18 or 0.2mm) and an airbrush that performs exceptionally well with small details and adjusts to your movements quickly. Airbrushes with gravity fed paint are usually the best bet for this scenario as they are quick to react to your movements.
  • If you will be focusing on more of the body art and not so much on the face, then you have some more flexibility with the needle size and could go up to 0.35, but keep in mind for fine detail work you will still need the smaller needle sizes.

Paints that work well with the skin and do not contain irritants

  • Do NOT apply any paint across your body before testing a small amount first!
  • We recommend ProAiir paints. 

A compressor

  • The choice is yours here, if the sound doesn’t bother you then you might be able to get away with a tankless compressor. If you are planning on doing a lot of body art work however and will be doing it for several hours on end then you may want to look into a compressor with a tank (thinking in the long run). Working a compressor without a tank for that long over time will cause it to either overheat or break due to normal wear, as the piston have to be pumping the entire time you are using it to produce the proper output. A tanked compressor only compresses the air for a fraction of the time and is then silent as the air is stored in the tank for your use. Also, the tanked compressor will provide a much better and more consistent spray, making sure your work is quality and without blemish, or sputter from the compressor. You know what matters most to you as an artist so this decision is yours to make but these are some things to think about.