One of the most important concerns at an airbrush shop (or even your home studio) is keeping your painting area clean. Keeping things picked up and wiped down both during and after you've spent the day painting will not only make your setup look more professional and appealing from the customer's point of view but will also lend to the overall efficiency of your airbrushing operation. And after all, being more efficient means being able to make more money in a given time period.

I've been in many airbrush shops where empty bottles, paper towels, and three-day old hamburger wrappers litter the easel area. Reference books, photo albums, and empty ticket books are scattered about the sales counter in total disarray.

On top all of this stuff, as well as on the floor underfoot, is a sticky purple muck that comes from the combination of spray adhesive residue and airbrush overspray settling everywhere. This is the worst!

Fig 1- Remove the on-off switch from the fan and rewire it through the face of your easel so that it's easy to turn on and off when needed.

Needless to say, you really should have (and use) the proper storage areas within your airbrush booth to house all of your equipment while it's not in use. Storage should be as much a part of any airbrush booth plan as the easel area. Having a place for everything and keeping everything in its place is the key.

In this article, I will give you a bit of advice on how we at West Coast Airbrush tackle one of our biggest problems concerning the cleanliness of our shops-controlling overspray residue from spray adhesive.

Fig 2- the filter is just a 20-by-20 inch furnace filter placed in front of the fan. When you place a stencil on the filter's surface and spray it with adhesive, the residue is sucked through the filter by the fan.

Both paint overspray and residue from spray adhesives are very bad for the health of our artists and employees, in addition to being the main problem in keeping our stores clean. When sprayed unchecked, the adhesive overspray goes everywhere and sticks to everything. Once covered with adhesive residue, everything then becomes a magnet for the airbrush paint overspray floating in the air. Airbrush overspray in itself is not much more than dust, but when added to spray adhesive residue, it becomes the purple, sticky muck we all know and hate.

At West Coast Airbrush, our stores no longer have a sticky purple coating. We only have to deal with airbrush paint dust, which is easy to wipe up. This cuts down on cleaning time and gives us more time to paint and make money. Keeping our stores clean is not just a good idea-it's a must.

We control our adhesive overspray problem with a simple vent system made just for our spray adhesive. Built into the easel just below our airbrushing area, we have installed a compartment that houses a ventilation fan and filter. A door covers this area. When needed, you just have to pop back the door, turn on the fan, and spray all the adhesive you want. The cloud of spray adhesive is now under control.

This convenient and effective solution has made cleaning up our work areas much easier and less of a time-consuming chore. In fact, it makes doing it every day feasible even for the most procrastinating airbrush artist. And best of all, it's really nice to walk into an airbrush booth where your shoes don't stick to the floor!

I hope you will incorporate this idea into your own airbrushing workspace. I know you'll like it.

Fig 3- The vent system is extremely simple yet very effective. The compartment is built to accommodate whatever size of box window fan you have available to use. Set the fan within the compartment. Be sure you can take the fan out, though, because it will need to be replaced about every 12 months. When you are finished spraying the adhesive onto the stencil, just close the door to trap whatever overspray might have escaped. The clean, filtered air is exhausted through a vent located just below the easel face. WCA