After spending countless hours researching the Web for some Iwata Custom Micron C+ for the entire piece with the .23mm
step by step articles on airbrush portrait painting as well as needle and nozzle kit. The canvas was done by starting of with a
reading magazine articles and especially from watching some good sanding of the pre-Gessoed canvas with a 320 grit paper
DVD’s from some great airbrush artists, I decided to give the to remove the high ridges of the canvas. I then applied 1 coat of
monochrome portrait painting on canvas a try. I went with thinned down Gesso to a creamy, almost milk like consistency.
monochrome because I felt I wasn’t ready to deal with skin tone The Gesso was applied using a wide paintbrush. When dry, I
issues at this present time. For now, I just wanted to get the feel sanded the entire surface again using the same 320 grit pa-
for shooting some paint on a canvas as well as learning all the per. How many layers of Gesso to apply are really up to you.
necessary steps from canvas preparation to working the high- It depends on what surface texture and effect you are looking
lights by exposing the white of the canvas with some erasers, for. You can keep adding Gesso till you have a perfectly smooth
X-Acto blades, Dremel bits, etc. Color portrait would come later, surface. In this painting, I went with one coat because I really
only when I will have mastered the monochrome painting wanted to see and feel the canvas texture.
I chose this subject because it has some smooth lines, some Working from a sharp image, I then transferred my subject to
fades that didn’t look too difficult to execute and most impor- the canvas with a projector. I located only the facial features,
tantly, no hair! For some reason, this is the element that wor- nothing more. I used a grey watercolour pencil for tracing. I
ries me the most in a portrait painting. For this piece, I felt that later found out this to be a mistake because when I started
I had just enough hair to get a good feel for it, but not enough erasing to create some highlights, when going over a pencil line,
to get discouraged. the paint came off instantly, leaving a undesired white line. I was
I worked with some Holbein Aeroflash paints, colors grey # 4 able to work around this problem but took good note of this for
and the black. No white paint was used, as the white of the can- future projects. I now use hard lead pencils (3H) when it comes
vas is what makes the highlights. I used the grey to build the to tracing for all of my projects and I haven’t had that problem
painting while using various levels of paint dilution with water. since.
The black is used for final detailing. The airbrush used was my
When working on a portrait, I like to start with the eyes. The way I see this, it
doesn’t matter how well you end up doing the nose, the mouth or even the hair,
if the eyes are not done correctly, the entire portrait will suffer. The eyes are
one of the most important features in a portrait. Well, they are all important
but the eyes are at the top of my list. With some over reduced grey, I start with
the iris with a circle template while making the outer edge a tad darker. Note
that when using a circle template, sometimes they come with little raised dots
on one side. Make sure you have them facing up or you wont get your template
tight to the painting surface, or else you risk getting some overspray to creep
between the template and your canvas, giving you a soft like edge which is
not what you are looking for here. It is also a good idea to apply tape over the
adjacent holes of the template to avoid having them transfer onto the canvas
from the overspray. This is a common mistake that can easily be avoided with
a bit of tape.
While working one eye at a time, I start building the eye without going too much
into detail at this point. The objective here is to define the shape of the eye. All
lines are done by making several airbrush passes back and fourth. Don’t try to
do your lines in one or two passes. I work very slowly since the lines I do are all
very thin and soft. I apply solid grey to the areas where I see black on my refer-
ence pic.
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