A while back Copic approached me about doing a Guest Tutorial for their blog! I was so excited and delighted of course I did it! SO here it is for you to enjoy and the art! (Blog restructure is still happening, I just got sidelined with dental issues)
I will be doing an airbrush demo demonstrating the techniques and tools used to create my piece "Noplan". I will be focusing on Airbrush Techniques.
Sculpey
Wednesday April 21st 2-2pm
Opus Framing and Art
120 Lonsdale Avenue
North Vancouver
I will be demonstrating techniques for using Super Sculpey. I will cover creating an armature, baking, tools and techniques. I will briefly discuss painting sculptures as well.
These Demo's are always free to attend, and there are many more that come up often, some by more famous people as well! check OpusFraming.com for more!
So last week I was working on a Sculpture of my Abade to have as a display when I do a Sculpey Demo in April, and then she fell from the table and was pulverized. She got even more destroyed when I tried to repair her.
So Now I'm going to use her Dishevelled remains to test painting scupley, and top coats etc.
So I've also been changing up my airbrush paint so here are some reviews of Airbrush paint I've used:
Golden Airbrush paint sucks... It claims to be useful for paper and illustration but I did light coats and it seemed like it was just way too watery. It seemed like it took too many layers to get even a moderate colour covereage, even of the opaque colours! I do not recommend it even for paper.
Com*art and Medea is what came with my airbrush. It's good. I wouldn't rave about it, but for what Golden should have been able to do, these ones actually do it.
Createx is a great one. I find I have to thin it a little since its quite thick, but I painted Metal with it and its a dream. They also have decent mediums, top coats and stuff. Recommended for painting with sculpture and metal!
Now, Having said all that, I don't think I'll be using any of those much any more with the exception of Createx for some things because I discovered something far better to all of them.
Golden Fluid Acrylics + Golden Airbrush Medium = WIN
Right now Golden has a promo going on that is if you by 6 1oz or 3 4oz bottles of Golden Fluid Acrylics you get a 4oz bottle of Titanium White for free.
I got mine! got to any Opus Framing Location in B.C., they're participating and also have the Fluids on sale for the month of March. The Price is definitely right! (Friends of mine, I can pick up some for you if you cant get to an Opus, Let me know!)
Okay so this Golden Airbrush Medium is mixed with the Fluid acrylics in a 1:1 Ratio. and I've put them in mixing bottles.
That website I just linked is a great resource with 2 videos on how to use the Fluid Acrylics for airbrush!
I really love this fluid acrylics! I never liked painting with acrylics because it was difficult to get a thin even coverage coat without brush strokes or that sort of globby look, and as mentioned I had trouble with the other paints applying to sculpture before. These are beautiful!
I'm doing a demo on March 17th 2-3pm at Opus framing and Art 120 lonsdale ave in North vancouver on my painting technique for my previous airbrush painting
and I'll be going over my tools and the techniques. I've been preparing some samples :)
see my work station:
There are 3 panels there, the green one being worked on is drying from gold leafing :)
In the picture:
on the box is my airbrush matte topcoat, the box for my airbrush, Opus acrylic polymer medium, a couple of my mix bottles of colour, airbrush cleaner, and my table cleaning station with my airbrush shoved in it. there are also 2 pieces of broken Sculpey wing and a frisket film cut out.
beside the box is a bag with the bits of my Abade sculpture in it XD
on the board I was painting on is my heat gun (my best friend), the green painting has gold leaf on it, and beside that is a package of gold leaf (imitation), up against the back is the 2 other paintings I had going.
all for my demo.
Hope that was interesting to you airbrushers :>
I might try to do an online or video demo of my techniques in the future if there is any interest for it.
Next month I will be doing a Sculpey Demo as well, so stay tuned for some sculpey information soon :)
Well, 3 paintings on one day! A new record. Safe to say I'm getting over my slump. Now that the weathers cooling off I will start getting back into Encaustics too!
Anyways, I broke out my airbrush on 'Noplan'; the painting in my last post, and the techniques I used in there made me want to experiment more with airbrush.
There is a very basic technique that must airbrushers come across by accident, and most times unhappily. YOu get it many ways: paint too thin, brush too close, too much paint released too fast... you get a dot, then these little tendrils of paint wiggle out all over ruining your perfect fuzzy dot! It can be frustrating to a beginner. I happen to think that the effect is pretty neat, and exploited it in 'Noplan' quite a bit.
Today I painted 2 paintings for the anonymous art show they're called "Embers" and "frost". They're a pair (diptych) and they were both donw using the spidering technique with airbrush in a differnt way from "Noplan".
Embers came first with a light coat of a couple different yellows, I then added some cad orange into the yellow and kept spraying. I never cleaned out the colour before adding more, it gave it a more gradual transition between colours. I really saturated this one, and let the air push around the thick puddles of colour. as the air focused on one area it would push colour away revealing the under colours and create neat funnels of overlapping colours.
Frost was after, i had it painted upside down the whole time and it wasn't until i turned it over (to the way it is now) did I actually like it HAHA! i used a more standard spidering technique this time, but i did alot more "drilling" to the base colour in this one. Both were gessoed with canvas coloured gesso, to the warm colour of the gesso i think really looked great peeking through the really cold blues.
And there it is. Not all airbrushing is flaming Harley tanks, and naked women with badly proportioned bodies.
Posted my first real painting with an airbrush last night. I am so pleased with it :) I used a series of home made stencils for the background, and freehand the bottom half with airbrush. Then i painted some gouache details, and a bit of beach on the ground, and finally painted in all the mist in the BG. that's when I though I should pull some colour up to the top and added some of the orange foliage. I then pulled off the stencil masking off Bala, and coloured her in markers. Some of the airbrush sprayed underneath the stencil, and that worried me at first, but in the end I think it helped create some unity with her environment. What do you think?
I'd like to say Ive been creating up a storm, but I haven't. I've been mostly experimenting with my new toys. I spent a ton of money getting the supplies I need to get my encaustics going, and finally tried to do it, except the hot plate I had didnt get hot enough to keep the wax molten, so I'm on another quest to get more stuff. I need:
A hot plate that will get to 200ºC
Resin (it's on hold at opus, forgot to buy it)
Mortar and pestle (To grind resin)
So, that's not too bad. I got a decent old timey scale for weighing my ingredients, and some metal bowls to make my hot palette and tons and tons of wax!
We've also been experimenting with the airbrush a little. I wasn't too happy with how this paint behaved on my sculpey so iI got some airbrush medium and I'll see if I can get better results with gouache. I've also got to experiment with how the airbrushing looks and reacts to marker paper. I got illustration board though, just in case, and because I like it! I bought bigger boards because the smaller sizes were out of stock, and then spent 20 minutes cutting them down to my sizes. Then the shipment came today with the sizes I wanted. Woof. Next time I'll get the full sized sheets and cut anyways, since its $1 cheaper.
SO anyways, ya, Daqueran was featured as one of the top 20 webcomics in the Estonian For Him Magazine (fhm). Thats pretty exciting! Kitty scanned the article! Check it out :D we translated it sort of, online and it seems like just a little synopsis, but it put it at #18 for the top 20 webcomics. Thats pretty impressive :D The #1 spot is pretty dissapointing. Stick figures with no real humor except whats been rehashed. I'm happy Kitty was choosen at all, and #18 is pretty respectable too, but still, stick figure comics being #1? c'mon! lets get some artists in the #1 spot sometimes!
So tomorow is Conflagration day! I plan to spend the entire day working on Conflagration and getting SOMETHING accomplished. I find it really difficult to work on it most days, because I need full concentration on it, and I'm never alone, so tomorow being my day off alone, it is a good plan to dedicate! So I hope to post something soon. Would anyone be interested in a trailer Animatic? of should I just wait and post the trailer? rough animation? anything? Feedback would be awesome! thanks :D
So, Tomorrow I'm getting an airbrush! Kitty and I are going to pay half each to get a delux set. Its got the Iwata Smart Jet compressor, Iwata Eclipse CS Airbrush and a ton of other goodies. I'm terribly excited to share all my info on Experimental Guru once i get the hang of it! Its going to make my maquette painting so much easier, and it will make painting models to sell at conventions really fun and awesome :D
