Old School Flames

Hi Russ,
Awesome job, I'm a skulls and flames man myself. I've only had my airbrush for a month and never been any good at art whatsoever but I thought I'd give it a go and ended up with...
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As a noob I'm quite happy with it but it doesn't look quite right, I tried to mask a border and give the flames a metallic lick but It's killed the tips of the green. Also I think the bodies of the flame are toooooo fat.
Tips and criticism more than welcome mate.
If I could get anywhere near the quality of your flames I'd be happy :)

Cheers

Tom
 
Heya MrDigBick, lmao, sorry man, almost couldn't type that, haha. Thanks for the compliments, appreciate it! I will gladly give you some critiquing on your artwork as I would hope others would do the same for me! First off, you being a newbie, this isn't bad by no means, some of my first skulls were hideous, haha. Here's a quick mockup I did in window paint (don't laugh at it as Im at work and I was trying to hurry so I could help ya before I leave). Look it over, the red lines are where I would have made the flames (If I were doing it!!) There's no wrong way to do a flame though, its all a matter of what you are wanting to achieve. You're right though, comparing your flames to mine, you have way more body than mine do.
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The lil' drawing out to the right is how I tape my flames off. Say you already have your base color down, or in your case your Metallic, I would layout the flames with my tape (lime green in the drawing) and once I got to the tip, make sure you have a sharp point, both on the inside where the flame is (RED), and on the top (which would be the top of the dark green). If you have those 2 points, your metallic underneath the tape will have perfect edges, then cut the ends of the tap off (the orange in the drawing, cut it along the dark green in the drawing with an Xacto knife, and do it carefully not to go into the paint underneath, use a new blade), then paint your flame color while leaving the tape over the metallic. Then when you peel the tape up, you have a perfect outline around your flames!!!
 
One other thing would be on your skulls. Looks like you had a stencil to spray them with, if that's the case, ONLY USE THE STENCIL FOR THE LAYOUT. In other words, lay the stencil down and just spray a light coat over the stencil, then remove the stencil and you should have guidelines of where all the skulls are. Once you have these, use freehand airbrushing and shading to detail them out. Heres a quick step by step: STEP ONE: Lay the stencil down and lightly spray over the stencil, very lightly!!!
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Here you can see where I did it twice, the top one is incorrect, the bottom is the better way (in my opinion) to do it
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STEP 2: Before you pull the stencil up after the light spraying, go ahead and figure out where your light source is coming from, then shade the darkest spots of the skulls, like I did here on the eye sockets
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STEP 3: Here I removed the stencil and started using a freehand shield to start shading the edges of the skulls and freehand shaded the actual skulls, then laid the stencil back over it and shot a dark background around it. This is just a quick tutorial, not too much in depth, but thought it would help ya!!! Good luck my friend!!
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sorry to but in DB but Russ is that a store bought stencil or something you came up with ?? I am looking for something similar if not the same
 
Heya KO, its a store bought stencil. Got it from Air Sick Stencils!! Great stencils, all laser cut and work well with waterbased or solvent based paints, I highly recommend em' if you haven't ever used em'!! Tell I said "Hey"!! I make a ton of my own stencils, but mine aren't near the quality these guys put out!! Give em' a shot! They have sales all the time too, 20-25% off usually around the Holidays.

So the pictures showed up??? When I came in here to reply to your post, all I see are tiny black boxes with white "x" in them where the pics should be? Think Im still having some issues with my puter, lol.
 
they were showing yesterday now they are not.. wierd.. Do you happen to know the name or number of the stencil? thanks Russ
 
Heya KO, sorry I left ya hangin on this one!!! The stencil name is "Mini Skull Background 1" Hope this helps!!!
 
Thanks Russ No sweat they do look like the right size for a project I have in mind And there is no way In H___L I am freehanding that many skulls This one should fit well with the mini's I already have
 
When you said old school flames I thought you meant Girls . LOL
 
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