A good airbrush technique will give your paintings a realistic feel. Lighting and shading are essential for a 3D effect. Here are the steps Paul used for this mural painting of Spiderman.
Spiderman Mural Painting
by Paul Rhyne
Step 1: Scuff a metal sign blank with red scotch brite pad to prep surface. These characters were originally drawn comic artist Todd McFarlane. I transfer the images using Saral transfer paper.
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Step 2: Start laying a white undertone, building shapes and forms. On Venom’s teeth, keep them very tight and white. You may wish to use a freehand shield to reduce over spray.
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Step 3: Start free handing in the blue areas keeping everything tight. By this I mean detail. You don’t want a blurry painting. Don’t just blast these colors on. Build your layers slowly and where you want your highlights to be at the end on the painting, try to save those areas. Don’t just cover everything. Shading is important. You can achieve more than shade of color through your control of the airbrush.
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Step 4: Next follow through with red in the same process. Don’t worry about dark areas. We’ll tighten them up in a bit.
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Step 5: Purple is next on the gums of Venom.
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Step 6: Now to darken and tighten up the shadowed areas. Never use straight black. It will muddy up your painting. Generally, I use a mixture of red and black, highly reduced for any shading. The color blends well with just about any other color. Any over spray around the edges or outside of the subjects can be alleviated with black.
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Step 7: Now the highlights. This is usually the hardest part for me. Pick out your light source (where he sun would be if it were shining down inside of your painting. I usually use the top left). Now imagine the surfaces or ridges that would catch light and reflect it. Lighten these places with some over reduced white. If you did a good job and saved the white from our original underpainting, there won’t be much to do. I’m never that lucky. For Spiderman’s eyes. I mask those off to keep them crisp and sharp.
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Step 8: Fill up the empty areas. I threw in some webs and some slobber for a more menacing look. Two coats of clear and everything just seems to pop!
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Current online articles and tutorials:
- Learn to paint using these basic techniques. Example: Painting a skull and flames on a golf club.
- Learn advanced airbrush technique of lighting and shading. Example: Painting Spiderman on a metal sign blank.
Check back soon for more tutorials.
This entry was posted
on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Articles and Tutorials.
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