I've got a few projects on the boards that I'm finishing up, but I wanted to pull out a classic piece today. A Star Wars inspired portrait of the Jedi Knight, Qui Gon Jinn. He was played by Liam Neeson and portrayed a Jedi Master in the Star Wars prequels that came out about 10 - 12 years ago.
There was a time not so long ago, when I did a lot of airbrush work. This was a personal piece, done for my own pleasure. The artwork is on cold press illustration board and I used transparent acrylic airbrush paints (Comart or Golden are my personal favorite).
I started by drawing the layout on the board and then laying in color with the airbrush with no masking or frisket. I wanted to keep the mood with a warm pallet of browns and yellows. By not masking I got a little soft overspray of colors that served to enhance that mood in certain areas of the piece. The other tools on hand were an electric eraser and X-acto knife. As I painted in more and more detail I would need to remove some of the color to define detailed areas, uncover highlights, and remove some unwanted overspray. I would simply use the knife and electric eraser to scrape or erase the paint from the board.
The beauty of using transparent colors is they blend well. They also allow you to work dark to light on a project like this without a lot of tedious masking. If I got a little yellow overspray on the dark areas it wouldn't show. The knife is a great tool for this because it let's you really show the fine texture and detail of hair and beard. The brushes I use for this work are made by Iwata; HP-C, HP-B, and Custom Micron. The C has good coverage and the B and Micron are great for fine detail. Freehand airbrushing isn't the recommended approach by illustration masters, but I think with some practice you can get some pretty good results.
Until next time....Have a great week.
Aloha,
Tom
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