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by Patrick Charuel
Required materials: Airbrush: HANSA Pro line 281 and EVOLUTION 2, JVR acrylic base coat, Paints: Auto Air, Schmincke, AeroColor,Knife, erasers, Acrylic paints from “Liquitex. This painting will be done on “maisonette” which has been prepared with Gesso and coated in white by using a roller. By sanding and scraping it will be easy to get some very nice effects on this type of painting surface.
After drawing the dog on the painting surface with light grey charcoal, I remove the charcoal with air pressure using my airbrush. With a reduced black from Aero-Color, I paint the principal dark parts of the design very lightly. With a reduced transparent brown, I paint the areas which will be brown. I’m already thinking about what areas will be in shadow and render them accordingly.
To give the hair a realistic look I make use of dry brushing techniques with a classic paint brush and scraping colour away with the point of a hobby knife. With both the paint brush and knife very short strokes must be used to render short hair.
Here the hair has been rendered mostly by using a classical brush and dry technique. This breed of dog presents a special challenge as it has very short hair which is harder to render than long hair.
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Because of my surface preparation I can take sand paper and sand the surface which will add to the realistic look of the hair. I make sure to sand in the same direction as the hair flows and use very short movements. Don’t forget that dog has a very short hair.
In this picture I have completed my gently sanding of all the areas and using my airbrush have applied a reduced transparent black to those areas that will be in shadow, this will turn those areas I sanded, scraped a gray color.
Rendering the eyes is the most critical part of rendering a animal or doing any portrait for that matter. With the help of a free hand shield I start to give shape to the eyes by using my airbrush and white.
With a very light brown and orange, I paint the eyes. After which using a darker brown I add some small strokes in the iris. This type of detail work requires low pressure so you can get very close to the painting surface with your airbrush. To bring out some highlighted areas I use an eraser and reduced white.
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To give the painting more of a feeling of depth I continue to darken the shadow areas. With a different brown I work on the mid tones. Finally using white I add some high lighted areas on the muzzle. To keep the back ground interesting I choose not to paint it a solid color but rather left it lighter in some areas.
With the dog completed to my satisfaction, the back ground finished I apply a thin coat of transparent orange over the entire painting. The transparent orange being a warm colour really helps bring the painting to life.
Conclusion
The main problem to over come with design like this was to render the short hair of this dog breed correctly. My preference is to use a classical paint brush and then removing some of the colour by easing and scraping to achieve the look of short hair. This method
is not very appropriated for long hair which should be done with airbrush. I hope you enjoyed this “How To” and that I presented you with some techniques you can use in your own painting. To see more of Patrick’s work please check out his web site www.p.charuel.free.fr
Break that tip off in your airbrush did you?
It’s very easy to do when replacing a screw in tip or nozzle (picture #1) using the little wrench the airbrush company provides with the airbrush. Over tighten it just a little and it will break the tip or nozzle off leaving the threads inside the airbrush body. (picture #2) The easiest way I have found to fix this is to use the tip of your X acto knife (picture #3); by carefully inserting it into where those threads remain in the airbrush body and turning the X acto knife just like you would the tip. Left/ to loosen, right / tighten remember. This nine times out of ten will turn that part of the broken tip right out of the airbrush, after which you replace it with a new tip. Careful this time not to over tighten, breaking it off again.
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