Oh, well

Where Venus is born, and the benefits of airbrushing are discussed

Over the last months I’ve been intermittently devoted to finishing a series of illustrations for another small exhibition. I think I’ve already told you about this. And since placing digital work in an exhibition still seems somewhat inadequate to me, this time I decided to go entirely traditional. So I have been using the airbrush again and polishing my not-so-convenient technique of inking over previously colored pieces, something that you have already seen in this blog.

This is one of the illustrations that came out. That’s my somewhat predictible, mythologically inaccurate rendition of the birth of Venus. There is no astronaut in there, so maybe it’s not so predictible after all. I’m afraid that juxtaposing birth and death symbols is far from being a bold or original move, so there’s little to comment on the theme of the drawing. Let’s focus on technique, then: acrylic ink, sumi ink and screentone on A3 bristol board.

As usual, it started as a rough pencil drawing. I scanned it and finished it in the computer; did some color tests, etc. This kind of symetrical compositions are easier to get right using the computer, so that’s what I did. Then I printed the result in a couple of sheets of paper, taped them both together and got this:

My printer was running out of ink, yes; but who cares. Then it was time for colors. As I mentioned before, I had done some tests in photoshop trying to keep color separations very simple, since my intention was to use the airbrush.

I’m growing more and more fond of aibrushing. To be completelly honest, I don’t like the airbrushing proccess itself; it’s the results it provides what I’m in love with. Airbrushing is a bit of a drag. It’s messy; you have to plan the whole process very carefully, mix colors, mask everything a few times and be prepared for accidents to happen (they will). In short, it’s not Photoshop. But it’s also quite rewarding. When I’m finally inking over the colored drawing, if everything goes well, it’s as if I were watching the piece emerge, colorfull and finished, in a somewhat exciting way. Oh, well.

Before applying each color, I mask off the areas which I want to keep free from that color using frisket film.

Then I airbrush the whole thing trying to get an even, uniform shade. 

At this stage it may not look uniform at all, but it will begin doing so as the rest of colors are being added. Then it’s just a matter of repeating the process for each color: remove masking film, add masking film, airbrush. I use mostly acrylic inks diluted with water. Of course, it’s possible to mix layers of colors. Depending on brand and pigment, some colors are transparent and others are not, so take that into account. Opaque colors can be made transparent through gentle dilution, but I’m not the right person to show you the whole science of this.

As you can easily see, I made some nasty mistakes. Paint ran below the masking film here and there, which may happen if paint is too diluted and the masking film isn’t tightly adhered. But since I was going to ink over this anyway, I actually didn’t need a faultless rendering.

You may realize that I’m using the airbrush in a very restrained fashion. I say this because, at least in my mind, the airbrush technique is related to artists like Chris Moore (ah, those spaceships!), Sorayama and the like. Sure, you can get that sort of smooth, hyperrealist renderings and spectacular effects with an airbrush if you know how to use it (not exactly my case, as you may realize), but I’m limiting myself to a few well-defined sections of solid color just because that’s the look I’m after. I’ve been wanting to get this sort of rendering directly on paper for quite a long time. End of digression.

After the colors are done, I put the drawing on the light table and basically traced over the printed sketch. Too much tracing may bring havoc to my eyes, but it’s the best way of doing it I’ve found so far.

I used sumi ink for this drawing. Lately I’ve been using both Higgins Black Magic ink and sumi ink (bottle is in japanese so I can’t tell the name of the brand). Both are deep black, though this sumi ink is maybe thicker, and also shinier. And this is the inked piece:

A small close-up of the lettering:

And here, some of my previous scribbles to get the lettering right:

The last step was adding screentone as a single shadow layer:

And that’s all. Here you can see the finished piece, nicely framed and ready for the exhibition:

By the way, if you are planning to start using the airbrush and are as lost as I were a while ago, you’ll do yourself a favor by visiting Kevin Hulsey’s website and taking a look to the tutorials section.