Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Airbrush Paintings


I put up some of my airbrush illustrations on my Flickr photostream. Only three so far. They're not so easy to just scan and post, though. They require two passes on the scanner and a reassembly in Photoshop. They also weren't stored all these years in the best conditions, so there's a lot of cleanup and repair to be done.

These were done in the early Eighties, as I was teaching myself airbrushing techniques. I haven't used the airbrush for many years now, it's not so easy to set up in a small apartment. Being able to do the same basic things in Photoshop without the messy hassle of the real thing is a help, the downside being there's no actual "original" art in the end, just an easily duplicatable file.

If you've ever tried using an airbrush, you'd know how sloppy the process can get. And as much as I love thinly spreading rubber cement onto a delicate film, then slapping it on my artwork and taking an x-acto knife to it, the masking and setup makes for 80% of the process. And oh how I loved chasing my loud, chugging air compressor across the floor when it's vibrations caused it to start drifting around. And the constant flushing out of paint cups to change colors was a hoot, with paint fumes and spray cleaner mist filling the air with a chemical intoxicant. Fun stuff.

As I get the time I'll scan in some more, like my incomplete collection of SCTV character caricatures. These first 3 are among the smaller ones, though. They all took 2 passes to scan in. I'm not sure how I'd do some of the bigger ones, there may be no way to even reach the center of them. Digital camera, I guess.




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