“TIGHT PAINTS”
Airbrush, paints and other materials used for this painting: Airbrushes:Iwata HP-B Plus, Iwata HP-SB Plus, Iwata HP-C Plus Acrylic paints:Createx opaque and transparent, Dr. Martin Spectralite, FW Artists Painting surface: Bristol Board, series 500 Size: 23’’ x 29’’ wide (painted area 20’’ x 27’’) List of other materials/accessories used: Clear acetate for hand made shields, clear acetate for ink jet printer to make transparencies, Stencil cutter, Frisket mask in roll, low tack tape, Scotch 3M (blue), 3’’, 1’’ and 1Đ4’’ in width, standard masking tape (beige), 3’’ and 1’’ in width, Scotch magic tape, blue box which is very low tack and the green, liquid frisket, roll of sketch paper, scrap 8 1Đ2’’ x 11’’
paper used to cover work from overspray, colouring pencils, standard and watercolour, Xacto # 11 blade, calligraphy pen, light box, projector, air mask (with cartridges).
Establishing a sequence of work: The question that we all ask ourselves at the beginning of a new painting is where do I start? Personally, I found this to be my first hurdle. When working on photorealistic paintings, contrary to say a portrait painting, I like to break down the subject in phases or “work areas”. I found that working this way allowed me to tackle some very complicated subjects with confidence without being too overwhelmed with the high level of details. It’s almost like having many small paintings within a big one. Each work area is then studied carefully to determine how to proceed. For example, if I’m going to go from light colour to dark, colour mixing, the type of mask that will be used, hand held shields to fabricate, free hand work, etc. I find that the time spent doing this at the beginning of the painting is time saved at the end. I take down all my notes in a logbook. For this par- ticular painting I determined that I would have 5 distinct “work areas”. The first one are the pants, the second the bracelet, the third the background, the fourth the skin area and the fifth and last one, are the panties. I find that there are no rules as to what should be done first except that I try to start with something that will give me the most punch. I look for something that will get some kind of momentum going in my work. In this particu- lar painting, I opted to start with the pants. I could have started with the background no problem, but it would not have had the same effect. One important note when it comes to determining what gets done first between work areas is how each of those areas interacts with one another. For example when I decide to do the panties last, its because I wanted to get the skin painted underneath them so that where the panties are semitransparent or where it has some small holes, I wanted to get the right skin tone and not have to do small skin dots on the panties. This is what I mean by interaction between the work areas. Again, I find that this exercise will help you save time. If for some reason dur- ing one of your painting you realize that your sequence is off or that you find yourself repainting stuff, re applying masks, etc, no problem!! Don’t get down on yourself. Simply take some notes of what you feel you did wrong and what you feel are the steps that should have been taken to avoid repeating the same mistake again. I guaranty you if you take the time to write it down, you
will remember it. Sorry, there are no magic tricks for this one!! This can only come with practice. Another important note is to mark down your comments in a logbook right after your paint- ing session. This way you don’t miss anything. I even write if I was tired or not! I found that over half my mistakes where made as the result of simply being too tired to paint or not being in the right frame of mind. Now, when I’m too tired and I want to paint, I spend that time to work on my paint formulas for pres- ent and future work areas, which are then noted down, or I look over my pre determined sequence of work to see what can be improved, if I need to fabricate some acetate shields, masking techniques, etc. Basically, I take that time to prepare my next painting session. That way when I do get around to painting I know that everything has all been planed out and I can focus strictly on my painting. It’s just you and the airbrush! One last note, if you can, take as many pictures as you can of your work, save them on a CD . You have valuable information of those pictures that will help you in your future projects. Painting: While using a good quality picture and with my Tracer projector from Artograph, I transferred using a 3H lead pencil the main lines onto the Bristol Board making sure not to press too hard to avoid having some pencil lines showing thru the paint. I could have used some water based colour pencils to do this. I did not use the entire board surface because I like to have about 1 1Đ2’’ all around to allow me to clip the painting to my work surface while using plastic clamps normally used in millwork. For the projector I substituted the recommended bulb type by a less powerful bulb that does not create as much heat. I now use a 9W mini-spiral, self-ballasted fluorescent type bulb. The recom- mended A type bulb puts out so much heat that I found that after about 15 minutes of tracing my picture had expanded slightly making it impossible to have the lines meet. I found myself try- ing to work too fast to avoid this from happening with the result of forgetting some important details; I don’t have that problem anymore. To mask around the pants I used some 1Đ4’’ low tack tape for the long and slightly curvy lines. For the more complicated edg- es I used some 1 1Đ2’’ wide frisket strips which I cut with my X-acto.
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