Airbrush Like A Pro

1. Airbrush Like A Pro - Introduction: Hi. I'm Charlton Brown and I'm an Airbrush Artists from South Africa. I'm a self-taught artist and I started airbrushing 20 years ago. It started off as a hobby and over the years it grew into much more. I was born with a gift and a passion for drawing and enjoyed practicing my craft from an early age. Over the years, I've worked with everything from pencil to oil paints and everything in between, but something was still missing. In the mid 90s, I saw some airbrushing for the first time in the movie "Blood In Blood Out." It was love at first sight. I immediately set my sights on trying it out, but no one in my circle knew what airbrushing was and the people who did were not prepared to share their knowledge and skills. When I started out, there weren't any courses or platforms available for me to learn from either. So I had to figure it out through trial and error. I bought my first airbrush in the year 2000 and I haven't used a paint brush since. Operating under the name Full Blown Creations, I've worked on many private and corporate projects, and I've done exhibitions and live airbrushing at various shows, festivals, and events. I've airbrushed virtually everything from walls, motorbikes, bicycles, cars, helmets, caps, T-shirts, you name it. With airbrushing, my imagination runs wild and free because I can paint on virtually any surface and the final product always looks amazing. With this course, I will be showing you the ins and outs of airbrushing and everything you need to start you on this journey. I'll be covering the following: what you need to get started. We'll also do some airbrush exercises, airbrushing with stencils. We'll be painting skulls, tropical sunset. We'll do some lettering. Fun tips and tricks like bullet holes, water droplets, and sparkles. We'll be talking a bit about free hand versus stenciling. Zig Ziglar said, "You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." So let's get started. 2. What You Need To Get Started: Getting started, you will need a dual action airbrushed, an air compressor, paint, and a whole lot of patience. High-quality airbrush is only as good as the hand that holds it. It's entirely up to you and your budget when it comes to selecting the right air brush. Some airbrushes come with the gravity feeds on top or on the side, others come with 30 millimeter bottles attached to the bottom. Most airbrush compressors are compact and very quiet. Bigger air compressors can be used for bigger jobs like murals. The air in the airbrush is like the bristles on a brush. The air transfers the paint from the airbrush to the surface you're painting on. So air pressure is very important. The recommended air pressure for airbrushing is between 30 and 65 PSI. PSI stands for pressure per square inch. Most airbrush paints are water-based and needs to be thin down to avoid splattering and clogging. I use automotive base coats when airbrushing on cars, motorbikes, and walls. Also makes sure you get the right paint suitable for the job you are doing. You wouldn't want your paint to wash out after painting a T-shirt. Remember, it takes time to create a beautiful piece of art and perfection can not be rushed. Especially when you're airbrushing, you need to be patient. The more time you spend on a project, the better it will look when it's finished. Now that you know what is needed, make sure you have everything, and I'll show you how to set up and we'll do some exercises so you can get to know your airbrush. 3. Airbrush Exercises: Connect the airline to the compressor into the airbrush. Switch the compressor on and allow it to pull the tank. Hold your airbrush as you would have been with your index finger on the trigger. The trigger will be in the forward position. Pushing the trigger down allows it to flow through the nozzle of the airbrush. As you gently pull the trigger back, it will allow paint to flow through. The further back the trigger is pulled, the greater the flow of paint. It is important to get comfortable with holding and handling your airbrush. Now let's do some exercises that will help you with this. Before you start spraying, make sure your workspace is well ventilated. Alternatively, wear a vapor mask. For this exercise, I'll be using 180 grams A3 paper sheet. Are you ready for your first exercise? Okay, let's go. Hold the airbrush approximately three centimeters from the paper. Push the trigger down and pull it back slightly to paint a little dot on the paper. Now, right next to it, do exactly the same. This time when you push the trigger down, pull it all the way to the back. Can you see the difference in the spray out? Continue doing this in a straight line across the page. Now, do it again. But this time, hold the airbrush roughly 10 centimeters from the page. Next, I want you to draw a line across the page while slowly pulling the trigger back. Do it with both three and 10 centimeter positions. You should be getting a feel of what your airbrush can do. Now, just for fun, try and do spiral pattern. This is where patience comes in handy. Keep practicing because next, I'm going to show you how to do some airbrush tricks using Stencil. 4. Airbrushing With Stencils And Creating A Skull: I personally don't use stencils that often. I prefer and enjoy doing freehand airbrush. The only time I'll use stencils is to get sharper lines on smaller images, bold lettering, or to create cool effects like water droplets, bullet holes, torn metal and stars. Stenciling speeds up the process of whatever it is you're airbrushing. In this exercise, I'll be showing you how to paint the skull using a stencil. The exercises we did previously will come in handy because we'll be doing fine lines and shading. For this, you'll need a reference picture and a stencil of a skull you'll be painting. I would normally trace the reference picture and cut out the stencil myself. Place the stencil on the page and make sure you hold it in position. Otherwise, the air from the airbrush will blow it away. Using black paint, start by airbrushing a light shade on the cut out sections of the stencil. If you remove the stencil, you'll see the basic outline of your skull. Make sure you put the stencil back in its exact position before you continue painting. Now, continue shading until you're satisfied with how it looks in comparison to the reference picture. Now remove the stencil and you'll notice that the image is quite flat on the page. The next stage, which I like to refer as push and pull, we'll be lifting the image off the page by shading and highlighting it, always using the reference picture as your guide. At this point, we're basically done with the stencil, but you can always use it if need be. Continue shading or push, and do all the detail you see in the reference picture. Finally with white paint, bring out the highlights, that's pull. There you have it. Sign your name, give yourself a pat on the back, well-done. 5. Tropical Sunset: Next up, tropical sunset. For this one, I want you to let your imagination run wild. Create your own tropical sunset. We'll be starting from the back and working our way to the front. Let's start with your eyes and work from there. A yellow sky over deep blue sea in the center. Place a round cut out where you want the sun to be. Give the sky around the sun orange tones fading upward into blue. Remove the cut out and now using stencils, add clouds. Now let's give the clouds a silver lining and make the sun reflect on the sea. Using black, add in some landscaping with palm trees. The final touch, a couple of birds flying off in the distance. You will notice that I used both stencils and free hand on this one. This allows me to soften up and hide some of the stencils. 6. Lettering: Now, lettering. To be quite honest, lettering is not one of my strong points. So this is why I really appreciate stencils. It gives the need to finish with cleaner lines and is ideal for when you're doing a brush work for corporate clients. Let me show you how to do lettering to look like metal using stencils. First, you cut the stencil. You'll be using both positive and negative parts of the stencil. We start by doing the outline on the letter. I'm using the positive stencil him carefully spraying fine line on the edge of the thin film. If you're happy with the outline, remove the stencil, now place your negatives tensile over the outline. Now, with blue paint, fade from the top down to the middle of your letter. The very top of the letter should be a darker shade of blue and lighter shades going down and the middle should still be white. Now, using a page, cover the top half of the letter. Now, using a classic yellow, start from the edge of the page, the middle of the letter, fading down to the bottom. Same as with the top of the letter, the classic yellow must be stronger on top and fade out as it goes down. Remove the stencil. It should already look like metal. Now, let's lift the letter of the page by putting back the positive center and adding shadow. Finally, we do some highlights. Now, that wasn't difficult. Remember, the more you do it, the better you get. 7. Fun Tips And Tricks: Let me show you how to do some cool effects using stencils. If you do it right you'll have people believing what they are seeing is real like bullet holes, water droplets, or sparkles. For bullet holes you will need the following black, white, and gray paint. Cut the small round hole in a piece of paper, and a bigger random shape. Place the bigger shape onto the page and paint it gray. Now place the smaller hole on the gray and paint it black. It should already look like a real bullet hole but let's bend the metal where the bullet ripped through by adding shades of black on top and white below the hole. Bang you killed it. 8. Water Droplets: Now let's do water droplets. Once again, we'll be using black and white paint. Cut the stencil of a circle but not perfectly round. We will be using both positive and negative stencils for this one, take the negative stencil and lightly spray the edge with the black and make the top of the droplet a bit darker. Use the matching positive stencil, add some shade with the black. Remember, the shadow falls away from the light source. If the light source is in the top right corner, then the shadow will be in the bottom left. Now, remove the stencil and highlight the reflection of the light source. There you have it, a wet canvas. 9. Sparkles: Finally, sparkle stars or bling can be free-handed, but always looks better when it's stenciled. For this effect, I'll be using a black background with white paint. I normally use clear plastic sheets to make a stencil. The transparency of this stencil is important for its placement. It's quite simple to make. Just take two sheets next to each other like this. The space between the sheets depends on the size of your spark. Start by painting a white dot on your page. Place the stencil on the dot and sprayed it wide. Makes sure the dot is centered. Now, place the stencil crossing the line. Do it two more times, but make the second cross slightly shorter. Finally, give it a glow by focusing on the center and moving your hand back slowly. The further back, the bigger the globe This effect can be used to paint a starry sky, sparkling jewels or fairy dust. There's a lot of effects that can be done using stencils like bubbles, tone metal, through fire, just to name a few. 10. Freehand vs Stencils: I personally prefer and enjoy freehand airbrushing. I find that when I airbrush a big project freehand, it goes much quicker than when I use stencils. Because in most cases, stenciling requires a lot of masking. On the other hand, stencils gives you cleaner lines by eliminating over spray. In my opinion, when you use both freehand and stencil, you need to find the perfect balance to blend the two. This will take your airbrush skill to a higher level. 11. Conclusion: Thanks for watching and I hope this course was helpful. Remember, practice makes perfect. So the more you do it, the better you'll get. Please be so kind as to rate, review, and share the schools with fellow artist as it will help us create more content for you in future. Thanks for watching. Goodbye.