Ok, so why is an airbrush my old friend ( I can hear you thinking..tick..tick..tick)?
Well it's easy really, you see I started my career as an airbrush artist in the commercial art game back in the early 1980's, yeah I know I know, that makes me about 50 or something. Hmm pretty close.
So airbrush what is it?
It is a tool for spraying small areas of paint on to a drawing to create the most smooth effect you have ever seen.
The very first time I saw this being demonstrated in real life was at the Hot Buttered surfboard factory in Brookvale in about 1974. There was this guy creating the most spectacular surf scenes on surfboards before they were fiberglassed.
We are talking about sunsets over the ocean in beautiful oranges and pinks, crisp spray flying over the back of classic offshore days that you mostly can only dream of. This just bleeeeew me away.
I asked the dude (Martin Worthington)
what he was doing and he told me he was airbrushing! Woow! How do I get to do that, I asked? He told me I needed to get a compressor to supply the air and an airbrush to blow it through and then start experimenting.
So that is what I did when I got my first job
after leaving school in 1979. I picked up my place of employment in Brookvale as a surfboard fin maker. It was there that I got to experiment with their airbrush on some old bits of surfboard foam and from that moment I was hooked, if it hadn't been from the time I first saw Martin Worthington doing this back at Hot Buttered.
After doing a year in surfboards, and incidently making the very first set of "Tri-Fins" for Simon Anderson in 1980, cira October (the fins that have changed the surfing world forever), I decided to go and study Graphic Design so that I could become Australia's best airbrush artist.
I guess you are wondering, "Did he do it?" become the best?
Well it is a matter of opinion but some would say that I was up there with the top 5 in Australia.
Now if you would like to see some of my st
uff, here is an image I did for Coca Cola. It was used for a calendar and some advertising. All done in airbrush, (oh and a teeny tiny amount with a 000 brush for the small lettering on the bottle). What do you think?
So what else has this got to do with learning to draw caricatures, which seems to be the topic of the moment?
Well I have just got the coolest video of a "dude" who creates his caricatures with an airbrush.
You have got to see this as it is another way of standing out from the crowd. And I might add it is a very fast way to work.
Check this out and let me know what you think. Post a comment if you like...?
