Airbrush
Instruction Page
Multicolor Airbrush
Systems
Handwriting and Calligraphy
Drawing "Flick" Seagulls
Starting out with a young student.
Learning to use an airbrush can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be.
I suggest starting as simply as possible.
You'll need an airbrush - for sure, but to start learning,
you really don't need
much else. For example, you don't really need a compressor, you can use a car or truck tire.
You don't really need to buy any special airbrush paint - yet.
Most of the
beginners problems seem to result from not keeping the airbrush clean.
Therefore
I recommend using food coloring when you start -
because it is easy to clean up,
and it doesn't really matter if you set the airbrush down and forget to use it
for a few hours.
If you were using paint, the airbrush would clog up, and
require cleaning, whereas with the food coloring you can clean it by rinsing it
in warm water.
It is perhaps strange that most of the work you do to get good airbrushing
isn't seen.
The quality of your work is improved by paying attention to things
which are not even noticed.
For this reason, I think, many people abandon
airbrushing too soon because it seems to be too difficult,
too finicky, too
detailed, and too much work. The most important component is the audience. The
work I do is manipulative.
I am manipulating the audience into saying "I want to buy one of those". I keep
changing what I do until that happens.
There are
at least two kinds of good airbrush work, (just as there are at least two kinds
of good calligraphy, and two kinds of good kites).
The first kind of good
airbrush work makes people respond by saying
"Wow... that is good airbrushing!"
and the second kind simply makes people say "I want to buy that".
I am good at
this second kind of airbrush work. It is what I love to do well.
For the past 30+ years, I have been earning my living and
having a wonderful time as an artist.
Your delight is what I seek. In my work, and in my life, I want you to be
pleased and to
have a feeling of success. The most difficult part of the work for me has been
to do the very
best I can while you are watching, realizing that nobody really knows what "the
best " is.
I can only do the best I can.
I started drawing pictures in public in 1976. At first,
I was drawing large alphabet
letters on white wrapping paper with a black bullet tip Flomaster refillable
industrial marking pen.
. My first mall show was in Walla Walla in March 1976. One name over 6 feet
long.
Customers asked for color, so I used pastel chalks, softening the colors by
rubbing a Kleenex round and round.
I discovered
an ink dauber system used for coloring large areas of color on glossy commercial signs.
When I started using high gloss chromecote paper, I noticed these particular colors became
fluorescent
I would write your name using a broad marker underneath the alphabet letter
pictures. I started writing
names, then messages on the pictures, then verses, the pictures became more
romantic, for couples.
When I started using airbrushes in 1981, I used this flexogleem alcohol based
ink.
in 1996, at the Everett mall, I discovered that by holding the airbrush about
1/4 inch away from
the surface of glossy paper, I could create a lettering style with my airbrushes
which looks like neon tubing.
It is endlessly fascinating to me to be able to create value.
I take a piece of paper which maybe worth 10 cents or maybe 25 cents,
and by the simple act of writing on it with my hands holding a pen
it suddenly has value.
At the Puyallup fair in fall 2008, a woman paid me $57 for a picture which took
me less than one minute to make.
This is in no way a rip off, or a trick. She watched every step in its creation.
She was absolutely delighted
The picture I made for her was $25. The frame she selected was $32.
The picture cost me 15cents, the frame cost me $11 - I had bought three from
another vendor at the show.