my first trys with my new airbrush!!

hey everyone! just figured i would post the very first practice lines i did! airbrushing is alot harder than i had thought! but its soo fun! the one with the lines is the tutorial 1 and the beach is tutorial 3 then i just tried shading on the other one.. i suck but practice practice practice!

[Paul Loner]

Hi Jeremy, good start, you are so right. Practice, practice, practice. You will build confidence as well as good hand eye coordination, as well as muscle memory. Do the drills can some times seem a waste of times but those concepts will likely be used in so much of the art that you will probably be doing from here. The beach and the face are good. I think you have a good eye now you just have to work on technique. And that’s what this Site is all about.

Keep having fun. LoneStar

[Airspray]

lookin good keep it up

[KDSilverBrush]

Your doin great, Jeremy, keep up the good work !

[JeremyRobinson]

thanks alot everyone! really appreciate it. i just cant seem to get thin lines.. and im very shaky as well. so my lines look all wiggly and thick. i guess that all comes with practice tho! ill keep posting my progression!

[fontgeek]

Jeremy, you're not alone in that problem, it's one of the hardest lessons to get through to my students.

This is one of those times when you have to go the route of the hare rather than the tortoise, in other words, go fast when you do these strokes. When you go slow you are still spraying out the same amount of paint, the brush doesn't know the difference on how your hand is moving or not moving as the case may be, so it just keeps spraying paint out, that means that your lines get more and more flooded with paint, and that your strokes have time to show the shakiness of your hands. By going fast you don't give the airbrush a chance to build up a lot of paint or to show any shakes in your hands or arms.
This doesn't mean that you have to disregard the distance of your airbrush to your paper, but it should help you a great deal.
So, go FAST on those lines and dagger strokes, speed is of the essence. Going slow because you want to make sure they are perfect guarantees that they won't be.

[erikgeist]

Very good start Jeremy, I have drawers full of practice work. It takes a while but you will have a blast. Don't worry about doing great right off the bat, I'm still practicing daggers and dots, I like to paint all sorts of different things but I still need practice too.

[PhillipJ]

Jeremy, your beach looks better than mine. The tops of your palm trees are way better than I can get. I can paint just great with my big spray gun, but the airbrush is a different deal it seems.

The video I have says to draw a grid on your paper to practice dots & lines. Supposed to give you a target to aim for instead of just doing random stuff and to be more consistent in your spray.

[AirTodd]

Jeremy,
Welcome to the board.

[Hotrodd45]

Hi everyone. I'm new to airbrushing and just started practicing in the last few weeks. I used to be an automotive painter in new car dealerships and then moved onto management for 25 years. The two loves of my working life were painting and management. I am now disabled and cannot work, so I am painting again. Don't know where it is going to take me, but I'm having fun doing all the basic lessons. I agree with all that I have been reading in these forums; practice, practice, practice. As one of the AB'ers said in one of the forums here, that he can't even draw a stick person, well that is me. But now I am doing the beach scenes. Need more practice on the lines though, amongst other things. But thanks to you all for all that you give back to us rookies!

Mike

[gjunior]

Congrats Jeremy, am a VERY NEW BEGINNER to airbrush, in fact just started one week ago and understand what you are going through because I'm in the same predicatment. Like some posts, I realize that practice and hand-eye coordination is very important. For me though one thing that is hard is the steps to making a perfect drawing. I am used to drawing but with a different medium, .05 pencil. Thus am used to doing the detailing work right off the bat but with airbrush you must learn some kind of LAYER thing, which is something that I am not used to. for examples of my pencil work just copy and paste. www.geocities.com/godunior and click artwork. This is what I find most difficult for me but you are doing great and can't wait to be where you are.

Keep up the good work

[Paul Loner]

Air brushing is it's own animal. there has been great discussions here about skill/ or/ talent. I think it takes a bit of both to be good. and you have to practice to get the skills 'technique'. then slowly the talent kicks in. I recently seen some portraits done in pencil and they were amazing !!!!!!! so I knew this person had loads of talent, gave her a try on my air brush for a while and she could hardly paint a stick person.
Just keep working at it.

[fontgeek]

gjunior, when you draw with a pencil, do you trace or draw your lines in a single pass of the pencil, or do you sketch your drawings, using many passes of the pencil to build up the shades and textures?
That's primarily what the "layers thing" is in airbrushing. Rather than trying to get the perfect line in a single pass of the airbrush, with the width, shape, color, density, and texture to be perfect in that one pass, we use multiple strokes or passes with the airbrush, using minute amounts of paint to build up the painting to the desired look. It's much more forgiving, just like the pencil in that if you tried to get everything perfect in a single stroke, you would go through a lot of paper, erasers, or whiteout/eraser fluid trying to do a whole drawing using that method.

For those struggling with the lines, etc.
First, be patient with yourself, this is not life or death. Relax and enjoy the ride, the learning and discovery is a great part of the enjoyment.
You don't have to have a death-grip on your airbrush, for many, that is one of their biggest obstacles, they tense up so much, and go super slow to make sure they get everything perfect, that that becomes the problem in itself. Your muscles clench, and your hand and arm shake because of the tension, and going slow means that every shake of your hand, arm and body, including your heartbeat, has a chance to show itself in your paint stroke. Add to that the fact that the paint and airbrush don't know anything about going fast or slow, so by going slow, you end up spraying a whole lot more paint in that little stretch of shaky lines, and you get thickesh wiggly lines because of it.

I don't know how you hold your airbrush currently, but you might look at the photos I posted here. These show a grip or hold that lets your hand and fingers stay in a more relaxed pose or hold, and that lets you get better control and smoother lines. Water trap at the AB for an Iwata
Depending upon the model brush you use, you might find that using a grip on it would help you. I know Grex makes a grip that will work on the majority of gravity feed brushes out there, not just theirs, it gives you a pistol style grip that keeps you from working in a fist-like hold on your brush, there may be others out in the market too.
I have put them on Iwatas and other makes for students who have a struggle with gripping the airbrush, and using it for any extended period of time.
I modified one of mine to make it more comfortable for my hands (I have large hands), and was able to tweak it, shape-wise, quite easily with a pair of nippers/cutters and an emery board to smooth out any edges left by cutting the plastic grip.
All this may be more than you wanted to know, but at least you have the choice of reading it or not.
Good luck guys, practice 'til you can do the drills without having to stop to think about how to do them. Work safe, this is the only body you get, so you need to be careful with it and the environment.
And last but not least, relax and have fun.