Airbrush Gallery
Some step by step and how to’s of airbrush art we do.
This piece is for a BMW Z4 we lightly customized for a client. She said she wanted dragons, smoke and skulls. I took a little influence from Fitto and his great contrast of black and white with color.
This is the digital design. Using photoshop, I start with an image of the part and build the whole piece digitaly for three reasons. One is to show the client to make sure it is what they want. Two is to know what I am going to do in the beginning, not as I go, and I can estimate price. Three is COMPOSITION. Detail is important but does not mean near as much without good composition. Good composition can be seen from across the room, detail can not.
With the part prepped, primed and a basecoat with a layer of intercoat clear on it I mask out the areas I want to stay silver. My intention is to leave the silver border and have it look beveled. I really want a ton of depth in this piece.
I scaled the dragon image to the correct size, printed it and cut it out to use as a guide. After placing it per the design I shade just a little color around the outside to use as a preliminary guide.
Step by step I choose a defining shape of the image and cut it apart. Choosing to use each part as a guide to the most contrasting areas of the image I place it and airbrush some guide color to the shadow side.
OK, so here is the fun part. By using a print of the image I am reproducing I very tediously begin to line and shadow just like the image I started with. I did choose with this piece to adjust it slightly. I want to head to be closer so I lightened it and darkened the body.
Everything here is control. My airbrush is very clean with fresh rebuild. If you notice the scribbles on the bottom right of the image, that is testing paint viscosity, making sure it is shooting properly before I touch the actual piece. Other than that it is years of practice. TEN THOUSAND DAGGER STROKES!
Although a little blurry, this image is after i shot in some smoke like forms ion the background. An important step is that the dragon has been back masked with frisket.
Now for the purple candy.
