The more dark areas you cut out the better the sketch will turn out. You can see that I also made a second mask to cut out the areas that would have fallen out if I would have cut them in the same mask.


Once the mask is done, line out the corners with the marked edges to make sure your b/w copy is in the right position. If you don’t have edges to mark, just cut out some holes to position your mask.


Spray through the masks with thinned paint and be care- ful not to go too dark, because you can’t see how dark it really is. It will always turn out darker than you think. I used 1.8 bar and thinned my paint with water on a scale of about 1:15 drops. You can see that in picture 4 you start with a really nice sketch, with light and dark areas instead of many lines that confuse you while painting.


Remove the mask and position the second mask, sometimes one mask is enough. You can also work with a combination of some pencil lines and cut out some important parts to spray through. This way you can be sure you have the right propor- tions. If you are not good with a knife yet then you can draw in the tiny details, like eyelashes, little wrinkles or other guiding lines that will help you finish your portrait. If the airbrushed sketch or pencil lines turn out too dark, you can take an eraser and dab the shapes and lines until you are happy. Wrinkles should be drawn/sprayed very subtle. Always stay lighter than the value on your reference picture.


A big difference between working with transparent and opaque paint is that you work from dark to light with transparent and from light to dark with opaque. With transparent you have an instant result that should look like a lighter version of the final painting. Transparent always gets darker with every layer you spray Try to keep everything in balance while building up your painting, so if the iris of your eye looks lighter on the reference, it should also look lighter on your painting, etc.


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