Starting first colour portrait: Kevin Smith, here's my first airbrush attempt, too.

[Jtownsend]

Hey folks. I'm about to start doing a colour portrait of Director Kevin Smith, after showing him the black and white partial Sagan below. I just finished mixing half my paints. I'll finish them when I get home from the bar tonight, sit down, and get going. I've never done colour anything with my airbrush. Here's hoping it turns out well. I'll post updates as I get going. Using an Iwata CMC+ and strictly Liquitex heavy body acrylics thinned to run through the thing. I'm currently having an issue of all of my paint beading, if ever so slightly, as I spray--not "dry" like how I'm used to since moving to Washington from California. I'm attributing it to my water supply getting filtered before hitting my taps with whatever breaks it down. It's frustrating, but hopefully not going to be a huge issue. Anyways, here's the partial sagan--my very first attempt at airbrushing, after playing with the thing for an hour before starting. It was roughly 60 hours in at this point.

Nice to meet you all. I'll post again when the first section of the Smith piece is done. Also, once the Smith piece is finished I'll be saving to start a holographic portrait of my late father as a way to honour him. That's ages away though. Should be fun to post that too, hopefully.

 

[john thompson]

I have also used the Liquitex tube paint to spray through the airbrush but I wouldn't recommend thinning it with tap water. I went to the store and bought several jugs of distilled water for acrylic thinning and also for experimenting with different recipes for homemade acrylic reducers, with varying outcomes of course. But to address your problem with the beading, I would try switching to the distilled water first. Its free of any contaminants, minerals, chemicals, etc. that your regular tap water might contain. Your pic shown looks like it's coming along really well. Keep at it!

 

[Squishy]

Hey Welcome to the forum, Looking forward to seeing how you tackle colour. Your face book page has some really cool stuff, hope we get to see plenty more of it here!