mrsuthern'log. Startdate 30.10.13

[mrsuthern]

Ok... I saw these and figure the best time to start one is when ...... well..... your first starting.

So.... When I get my first Dots started after a decent session I will post it. This is mostly for me to judge my distance traveled, but all y'all are welcome to stop in and snicker about how far I have ahead of me. :biggrin-new:

Sooooo here is to learning, laughing, and revelations

 

[Russ Allen]

Cheers......(raises bottle)......here's to your newly found addiction,

 

[Squishy]

Hey Mr! Starting the log as you're starting out sounds ideal to me. It will be a great way to keep a photographic record of how you're coming along. Believe me, you will probably have a "why the hell am I bothering" moment somewhere along the line (or maybe that's just me LOL) and if you feel you aren't getting along as fast or as well as you'd like, then you can look back at this and realize, just what you've achieved and how you've improved. Then you can give yourself some goals to help get you from where you are, to where you want to be, whether it's working on perfecting the dagger stroke, or trying your first portrait, I've found having a log like this, and actually committing things in writing, really helps keep you focused on completing the challenges you set yourself. So good luck with it all, looking forward to seeing those dots!

 

[mrsuthern]

Ok..sooooo First off...it's obvious I don't know internet things anymore... How do I shrink this sucker?

This is first attempts at dots, with some doodles thrown in to un-cross my eyes. Lessons realised and learning.......

1) Training brain to realise that paint off does not mean air off..... help keep rampant splatters from hitting paper after re engaging air too

2) Having to watch my distancing from the paper..... also.... first large dots were created close and pulling back like tring stationary dagger stroke... took me half the page to get the forhead smack of ....OFF/On dumby :culpability:

3) not sure which was more inconsistent...me....or the paint. Most of the time it was me, some other times it was paint. Not sure how to correct the paint part. The lesser saturated dots was due to ...well messing around too much in reducing the paint trying to correct a problem only to create a new one.... oh well...live and learn..... eye dropper now on shopping list.

4) that many dots can make you go blind-ish

5) Lines will be a very huge learning curve.... thank god these aren't in a sobriety field test.... sheesh

*****please ignore tiny heart.... it was the only thing I could think of that is simple, recognizable small and would be a tip of the hat to my better half*****

 

[Squishy]

Yeah, you're up and running! Trying to remember everything is an effort at first, but stuff like paint off and keep air on, distancing, saturation, trigger control, etc will soon become as natural as breathing. That's why the exercises (although they can quickly become boring), are vital as they are training your brain, and developing muscle memory until you don't even have to think about how you are doing things. Once you've nailed them, you will be able to tackle virtually any subject without having to think about how to create each effect, and just concentrate on what strokes/blends etc are going to give you the result you need. When you have your paint/reducer ratio dialed in, the spiders will be less of an issue. Right now it is probably paint too thin/pressure to high, or maybe keeping the gun in the same place too long. This may not happen to you, but it's really common that your second or third session can become a frustration filled headache, and your gun that worked perfectly before now doesn't. Don't worry, if you start having issues with your AB, or find you can't do the things you were doing before, it is more than likely because your nozzle is clogged, or even just slightly dirty. You will have probably cleaned your gun to within an inch of it's life, but nozzles are tricksy. You can have given them a lot of attention, and they can even look clean as a whistle, but paint can still hide in there. You may not have any issues, but just incase you do, don't panic, the gun is fine, just make sure the nozzle is spotless. The fun starts here, Enjoy!!!!! (sorry for the big paragraphs, I can't hit enter and go to a new one, and I can't be bothered to go all technical and fix the glitch)

 

[shadow2462]

Welcome to the "club" mrsuthern, its a great step in truly seeing how you progress not only from others opinions but your physical evidence but remember we are ALWAYS our own worst critics. keep practicing your dot, lines (not the white ones) hehe daggers, ect. and I know they can get very boring real fast so you could try when you get bored find or steal you childs coloring book and practice painting in the lines( a basic rules even with crayons) and or practice shading trust me it is a way to help when you get tired of the hum drum but still continue the basic exercises.

 

[MeeshellMP]

I would cheer, but then, that would really make me a drunk! ol! Soon, you will be amazing yourself with awesome paintings!! Tonight, I will surely have a drink for ya ol

 

[mrsuthern]

Well these are the products of night 2 playing and learning. I adjusted the air up to 35 the other night but not before I ran out of time and determination to see if that helped. And it did a bit. I still found that I had to reduce the paint greatly. I wish I had kept up with it in a scientific method but I went pure southern on it..."a lot of this .... a little of that.....yea...that looks like black milk!" LOL!!!!! Anyway the practice run is the Dots...again. Paint was flowing better. Some tip dry here and there and I remembered the Toothbrush tip to clean it out, especially since I have the horn style cap. I didn't buy a new one and wasn't wasting mine but I did decide to use the brush that came with my electric trimmer.... work better then I though it would and the bristles are long enough for me not to have to worry about bending the needle.

So...here's the first.... Dots..... messing around with the eye off of memory with some....um.... fun added in. No dagger strokes yet, still focusing on Dots, paint and trigger control and well just getting comfortable.


This is #2 .... I got the picture from a nice artist sweet enough to allow folks to use her line art on Deviantart. Wish I wrote down her name as I forget to even so much as favorite it. I will check my browser history in a bit to see if I can track it down. The Dragon obviously is what she drew, the rest of the "stuff" is me messing around. It's amazing how quick a trigger mistake can quickly turn into mountain sides!
I got tired of black which was the original intent...just to mess with "blending" or "shading" then decided to switch up to another color. The Brown definitely flowed better then the black.


I learned a bit tonight, one obvious lesson, no need to do an under layer of black for shadows . I forgot I wasn't doing other art forms.
I learned that yes, it is definitely fun messing around and learning when your not fighting the paint and tip dry.
I also learned.... I am wayyyy out of practice drawing pretty much anything . Templates are in my near future until I get some skill back.
Well hope it doesn't look too remedial or hurt your eyes!

I am going to hit the bed and go a couple of rounds with the sandman.

 

[mrsuthern]

Well when you set out to do nothing more then to play around with an air brush and try things as they come to mind in the middle of pretty much anything and nothing this is what I get.


First I wanted to do a coloring book practice....no go, printer is out of ink grrrrrrrrrr

Then I decided, hey why not try some clouds or sky type background. Turned out ok. In the midst of all that I was wondering about setting pictures up, as I am still unsure on this with transparent paints. I learned as a kid (Thanks Bob Ross) with oil paints that if you make a mistake....just paint over it! Sooooo decided to test that out a little...which is why you have the not so cool "scales" around the eye. So lesson learned! In fact you can not! So, printer ink on the shopping list to print things twice so I can cut masking! Also while doing that I did learn that yea severely reduced Opaque black is just transparent charcoal gray. However, opaque white can be used as a eraser to some degree.

Also learned while trying to mimic the old school shine burst of the 80's fantasy album art that I can in fact, when not thinking about it, can do a dagger stroke!

Hrrmmmm let's see what else ...... oh yea..... practicing on printer paper that get saturated in AB paint.... is nearly impossible to follow original lines and such as the paper tries to curl on you. Though this will probably make for good training if ever I feel I can get good enough to do Helmets.

 

[airbrushingferret]

looks good so far you scared me I thought you were going to do nothing but practice dots go ahead and have fun with the air brush it is for fun and you cant go wrong playing around with it its not like your going to get bad habits

 

[mrsuthern]

Ok...soooo I couldn't sleep and had no idea what to do, soooooo having no clue I started doodling with a pencil, then decided to put the AB to it. Originally was going to be black and white to work out in my head when to apply what and where in what order so thats why the outline-ish flame like things.... Wasn't completely sleepy yet so I figured I'd mess with color a bit. This is a huge learning curve for me as I had stated before usually when I used to draw I was a B&W kinda guy. Somewhere about the 4th or 5th mistake of too much trigger for paint on the red, I decided it's almost 2 am and I am feeling goofy so why not add yellow and learn about mixing colors a bit. Not sure I really learned anything there.

What I did learn:
1)Still haven't gotten drawing skills back, though completely off the top of my head and free hand and early in the morining.... I'll take what I did to be decent.
2)Still got a lot of pressure control to figure out and dial in both in trigger muscle memory and air pressure for reduced vs non reduced.
3)Even though I was feeling un inspired and goofy I can still do something resembling what eventually forms in my head
4)Cold....... cold is not conducive to non squigly lines- note if cracks in bones are what you are after, turn down thermostat and go 100% saturation on the line because there will be little success in duplicating that line you just made shivering .





Oh well chalk another one up for the learning tree

 

[Squishy]

Nice one Mr Suthern, the more you do, the more you'll be able to do, and everytime you pick up the brush you learn something, so keep on keeping on.

 

[mrsuthern]

Well this is what I get when I have absolutely no plan do try anything recognizable as a shape or hint of a picture. All I meant to do was go out and try some olive green acrylic craft paint through the gun to see if it was feasible. Turns out yes...yes it is. With quite a bit of reduction that is. 2 drops out of the bottle and half the gravity cup of water and got decent flow.... psi near 40-ish. However, cleaning it out takes a little more effort. That paint just don't want to let go of whatever its on! So as I was messing with the color, things started shaping into something, then I decided why not. My insomnia is kicking in and somewhere in there messing (up) with using my fingers to try and shield, along with some cut paper, and some can lids I just started getting really umm silly and having fun, good songs on Pandora helped as I was jammin and sprayin. Which explains the absolute lack of symmetry with the pupil. Remember this was NOT SUPPOSE TO BE A PICTURE ....!!!!!! Oh well, critique away but most of all..... pointers!!!! besides the obvious of "Next time have a plan"


A cool take away I had. The inside of the eye was all white (paper)....then I painted it all blue .... tried to go for the fang style slit in the middle, looked crappy so I filled all of it in black. Then thought that looked tooo cartoonish so decided why not throw a yellow outline around the black. Remembering a bit of what I read about shifting I did some white over the black to throw the yellow over the white. It's obvious up close I gave up template/shield long before that. But I learned yes....base it out with an Opaque white and as Bob Ross says....you can paint over the mistake...or in this case better polish a turd!

I am still trying to learn to be ok with colors.... the black and white traditional in me is screaming NOOOOOOOOO

 

[mrsuthern]

Oh yea... want to say thanks for the folks taking time to read and post in here. It kinda is cool to know someone other then your kids may actually take a look at your new hobby.

 

[flycatchr]

Oh yea... want to say thanks for the folks taking time to read and post in here. It kinda is cool to know someone other then your kids may actually take a look at your new hobby.

thats what its all about - encouragement, upliftment, helping each other through issues. SPREAD THE LOVE

 

[Cordyk]

Hi mrsuthern !
First off mate, welcome and glad to see you have started a log! Apologies for not logging in sooner and checking it out, been a busy month and life happened to get in the way for me! You seem to have gotten yourself off to a cracking start mate and are doing all the right things, remember to always focus on the dots n daggers, boring as they seem at times, they are the fundamentals of airbrushing and practice does make perfect and is paramount gaining to best control.
It's always a great way to start any art work by doing 10 minutes of these first to get you in the zone, it will help you to get your reductions correct see if there are any problems with you airbrush.
It's great to see you just going freehand and just getting paint down and seeing what happens, it's a fantastic way to better your confidence and skills, in this game your really can only learn from your mistakes, all paints are different in the way they work and it's all down to personal preference, they perform in different ways on different substrate and so on! Practice practice mate and if you are fortunate enough to get yourself on a course then take it, it's will be a fast track way of improving your abilities!
Above all else my friend....enjoy yourself and keep spreading the love

PS...I edited the title so it matches the rest of the logs and you can clearly see when you started your journey, keep it up mate you are off to a great start

 

[Squishy]

Hey Mr, keep up the good work! Looking forward to your next pic!

 

[airbrushingferret]

keep up the good work and experimenting just one thing try not to use to much paint not intended for air brush i have a velocity and know it could be a night mare to clean out clogs thain you run the risk of loosing that tiny nozzle. my advise if you can do it try out com art or efx also keep a spare needle and nozzle . the art work looks real good for a beginer keep it up

 

[mrsuthern]

Welll...... haven't given up...but haven't done anything of late. Trying to get the rest of my world back right. Started lifting weights again which bites into my after work time. Have been having a tough financial year which has added severe stress, fortunately my now ex-bossman recently got canned so hopefully this will be correcting itself soon. Not to mention I think the health thing is spreading on this board . Not sure what's going on yet, other then I think my body is just wiggin' out. Between major cutback on caffeinated drinks, small reduction on carb's, the stress both mental and physical, headaches are almost around the clock. AB'ing unfortunately has not made the mix, haven't been inspired, motivated, or had the time. I am however about to make some time this coming Holiday week. Even if I have to fake it!

 

[Squishy]

Sorry it's such a sucky time for you. I can totally relate to the financial and health thing. I spent a few weeks not being motivated. I had to make myself paint, and when I did, it really helped switch my mind off my other worries for a while as it takes lot of focus, and I was able to get back into it. It helped me relax enough to deal with other things better. So hope you do get to paint, and thtit can do the same for you.