Tools:
Airbrush: Iwata Eclipse – HP-CS
Paint: Com-art Opaque black, Opaque deep red, Transparent Ultramarine blue, Transparent Moss green, Transparent Cadmium yellow, Medium/transparent base.
Stencil: Artool “The Bird”
Frisket: The “Original” frisket
Knife: Olfa AK3
Source your desired photo or take one yourself. Print it out the size you would like to paint it.
Using graphite paper, trace your image. If you are not able to print it the size you will be painting it or it will be on an curved or uneven surface, then draw it as good as you can with a removable pencil.
This is basically what you will be left with. I also drew in some of the folds with dashed lines. this will distinguish between cut lines and folds.
Keep the reference nearby.
Using an opaque black and mixing it 1:4 with medium (paint:medium), you start filling in the folds.
Some lines have hard edges so you should use a shield.
Continue with all the folds keeping an eye on the reference.
Use the airbrush at an angle to get a sharp edge on the one side and a blend on the other.
Then you are done.
Cover the entire image with frisket and cut all the cut lines.
Starting with the lightest colour. In this case, the white is already done and will stay covered for the entire project. The yellow is next.
The yellow is a transparent yellow so you will not need as much medium as what the opaque black required. It is a 1:2 (paint:medium) mixture. Start building it up till you’ve reached the minimum value as per your reference.
You can then build up the other values as per your reference. Go over the black blends so that you can shift their colour.
Cover the colour you’ve just done and open the next. In this case the blue. If you are confident that the paint is dry you can use the frisket mask you removed earlier. But you have to be sure to put it back perfectly as you might get overspray if there are any gaps.
With the blue being a darker colour then the yellow, you reduce it more. In this case it was 1 paint to 3 medium. Start building up the whole surface to the minimum value on the reference.
Again, fill in the darker bits and colour the black shading.
Repeat the process with the red. Although the red is an opaque paint, it is not very opaque so a 1:1 mixture of paint and medium was fine.
Again, repeat the process with the green. The green was mixed with a bit of yellow as well. So it was 2 parts green, 1 part yellow and 4 parts medium.
Last steps are the black. In the reference there is no detail in the black so you have to make it up. Remember, here you are using opaque black so reduction will be more but not as much as the initial shading stage as in step 5. Use a 2:5 mixture. Again, cover the whole area and darken the shadows.
Remove all the masking and you are done.
AVW AirbrushWorks 