New Member

Mark Milburn

Triple Actioner
Good Day to all. My name is Mark and I am 72! I started airbrushing about 15 years ago and would be classified as a novice , although I have done quite a bit of different thing, strictly for my enjoyment. My initial goal, and still my goal, is to be able to do some portrait work of my 14 grand kids before I take the "big dive".

My wife and I spend a lot of time in our den area, each on our computers, watching movies, etc etc. As we do, I spend a lot of time on a Jag forum since I am about 80% thru the restoration of our 1969 Jag XKE Fixed Head Coupe. As a little break, I have started airbrushing as we sit, trying to get back into it!

I can do the individual parts of a portrait, reasonable well, but they never end up looking like the original Picture!!!! I spend a lot of time on youtube, watching others do perfect renditions of photos and try to mirror their actions!! My primary shortcoming is I try to go to fast and end up putting too much paint on!

I hope to learn more about the proper mixing of colors and portrait techniques.

Again, a good day to all and I appreciate you all for the information you provide!

Mark
Murrieta, Ca.

P.S. I should have said I primarily use Createx and Auto Air colors!
 
Welcome home Mark nicw to have you here.
Being ya are retiring that old cat I doubt ya will be airbrushing on that.but I still wouls love to see pics of it.
 
Here is what it looked like new. I have the entire drive train rebuilt and installed. A little more minor body work and it goes for paint! I hope to have it completely done around a year from February!mg7716.jpg
 
That will make a very nice ride indeed! Welcome to the forum. Portraits are tough subjects to crack, so don’t be disheartened that things haven’t yet gone your way.
You’ve mentioned using Autoair, can I ask what airbrush you have also? The more information we have the more we can help. We have members here who produce incredible portraits, so I’m sure they will be able to help.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Welcome.

What is your method of image transfer? Are you just winging it totally freehand? Very very few people doing portrait work are doing it completely freehand. Most use a transfer method with cut paper stencils or projecting.

Some need just a few precise lines while others want a complete road map beginning to end.
 
I have 2 Badger Velocity's, 1 Eclipse HP-CS and 1 Iwata CM-C

I print my picture, usually about 11 x 14, cut the eyes, nose etc etc, partially so I can get the positioning correct and then remove and use as a guide. Having watched several excellent youtube videos re: B&W portraits in the past few days, I have learned that I go way to fast and try to put too much paint down rather than build slowly. Aside from those issues, I clearly lack the knowledge of whether to build slowly with transparent black , shades of gray, combo of all, etc. I think I can learns the speed, etc with practice but my lack of paint usage is probably my current major downfall.

I appreciate your taking the time to consider my problem!

Mark
 
I see lots of people struggling with a similar issue because their paint is a little too thick. I haven’t used much Autoair, but I have used Wicked which is very similar (if not the same). I found I needed to mix around 8-10 drops of reducer to 1 drop of paint to get a nice mix. With it being so thin it helped with not allowing me to put too much paint on too fast.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Welcome from Australia Mark, nice Jag :thumbsup:

many struggle when first attempting portraits, because our brain tells us we know what faces look like we tend to go in like a bull in a china shop and not actually paint what we see. I know I fell into that category with ALL subjects lol

if you are confident that your ‘parts of portraits’ are on point then you are half way there. Dive in, get some paint on paper sometimes find out what NOT to do is as good a lesson as any :)
Going to dark to early is also another common thing when starting out.
What series of Createx are you using ? If it’s the “Createx airbrush colours’ then you have the textile paint, which reduced will suffice for practise but not ideal for art works.
As SiRoxx stated above, reduction will assist with the flow of paint through the brush but transparent base will assist with the saturation of color and help with light layers of color with each pass
 
Back
Top