I have always been fascinated by extreme realism in grayscale. Even at a very young age I felt that the value of any artist was measured realism drawing skills. I noticed that most artists who mastered the harder "challenges" of wrist and hand drawing skills, seemed to find the execution of color, composition, concept, and impressionism rather easy to learn by comparison.
Years of teaching artists that range from kids to veteran masters and professionals, has solidly verified my hypothesis that drawing skills give us the meter of potential that any student will have in any media or artistic endeavor.
Take any "rare" young artist that will master the discipline of spending a 100 or more hours executing a drawing that is better than any photo. and you are looking at the seeds of greatness and a peek at a genius a "legend" in the making.
The bottleneck of any media usually is in the tools. Better tools equal better art. Better art = better artists, more opportunity, and most of all ...more fun!
When I began in the early 90's to invent and expand my drawing tools, I was better than any local artists I knew in grayscale realism, and had to look to the old masters, or art i would see in galleries to be impressed or intimidated. I was getting paid often to do commission portraits and was teaching a core of young students as an enjoyable and profitable break from my life's work in heath club management and personal fitness coaching.
I had always experimented with any new surfaces or tools that the local art stores would stock or introduce from time to time. I found that the use of projectors, reductive tools like pencil erasures, exacto knifes, and mixing charcoal and leads gave my art and students a clear advantage.
One day I saw a lady in an art festival, who was paint brushing lead grounds onto an illustration surface and then she would draw into the portraits using both leads, charcoal, and all kinds of erasure tools. She was able too create the softest skin features using reductive techniques, and the white of the board. The idea hit me that maybe the grounds could be emulsified and sprayed onto the illustration board in controlled dosages. I was already a skilled airbrusher, and using top fed HP-C from Iwata,( the best brushes),..i began the process of trying too find a good emulsifier for a jar of lead grounds i had purchased.
Over a period of years i created many good, (and many horrible mixes) that would allow a person too draw just as much with the white of the board using reductive tools, as well as using leads and charcoal.
Currently the best results are being obtained by myself and many of my addicted apprentices by using the following tools:
Here an exert from an article explaining Liquid Lead Technique from Issue #16 Airbrush Technique magazine:
Use an ultra smooth illustration board
(plate pressed, cold pressed, or epoxy- resin C.S. 10 illustration board)
or smooth sanded gessoed canvas (3-5 coats). Spraying any media without
Frisk masking means you must establish all detail and edge control reductively.
( see my list of reductive tools). These surfaces will allow for the best
result. The fun is that you get to draw your highlight details and shapes
using the white of the board, rather than miserably masking each shape
out and then trying to get the edges to look natural. Everyone agrees
cutting Frisket masks is slower and more boring than watching snails sleep,
so working with the right surface, means you will be working intuitively
with every airbrush/drawing tool including erasers. This will feel much
more like traditional drawing and give you an unbelievable amount of detail
control.
FRISKET FREE AIRBRUSHABLE MEDIUMS
1. LIQUID LEAD
(a fully erasable emulsified graphite greyscale acrylic fluid). Just image
airbrushing with pencil/ charcoal tones that erase with ease. This is
by far the best “frisket free” media, Don’t let the fact that I invented
and sell this medium for profit, or the obvious Self serving bragging
influence your own oppinion.)
2. COMART TRANSPARENT COLORS (the most erasable acrylics for airbrushing)
3. HOLBEIN AREOFLASH TRANSPARENT COLORS (best reductive color pigments but less forgiving than com art.)
4. UNBLEACHED WHITE ACRYLIC Liquitex ( all other white acrylics will turn the other tones bluish, with the bleach that white acrylic is made out of.).
THE FRISKET FREE TOOLS
1. IWATA CUSTOM MICRON AIRBRUSHES ( THANK GOD FOR IWATA!)
You don’t have to mask details that you can render
free hand if your airbrush is good enough.) Our studios use the bottom
fed eclipses for tinting and wider spraying, and we use the custom micron
C (top fed) for all detail and stippling work. I’ve used every airbrush
know n to man over 2 decades, and nothing works better for frisket free
creativity than this IWATA airbrush combination.
2. SAND ERASER PENCIL
This will be your primary drawing tool when it comes
to the details of your art that are done on the white of the board. A
good sand eraser pencil must be sharpen able, and have a high grit. My
favorite is the Sanford Typewriter erasers. But there are lots of choices
out there.
3. PINK PEARL SOFT STICK ERASER
These are pencil stick pink pearl erasers that are
softer and wider, Obviously for erasing out softer wider shapes. I use
a crayon sharpener if they need to be shaped.
4. THE EXACTO KNIFE (insert pics)
This is the real secret to frisket free art. An exacto
knife will give you tighter detail than the most sharp pencil. My best
reductive secret is to use the exacto lightly, creating with my wrist
a lil vibration to the tip of the blade. I can tickle away the softest
details without even touching the board. It takes practice, but my best
details are done 80 percent of the time with the exacto knife. Used lightly
and with a wide light stroke, you can even create soft shading.
5. GUMMY ERASER AND SQUARE PINK PEARL ERASER(insert
pics)
Sometimes you need to pull back a wide area. Or lighten
up a pigment. Using a little muscle and a faster lighter stroke, the large
gummy/square pink pearl erasers are magic.I work 20 by 30 most the time,
and sometime LARGE areas need to be controlled.
6. ELECTRIC ERASER WITH PEN N PENCIL NIBS (insert pics)
( the SECURA brand, is my favorite tool for special
effects. If you need quick highlight, or adding variant texture, the electric
eraser is god. I use the ink nibs for extreme tight highlights, the white
pencil nibs can be used for details that are soft edged. Tap it all over
to create slight textures. The electric eraser is great for busting up
frisket edges too.
7. FREEHAND AIRBRUSH SHIELDS (insert pics)
If you build up your media in transparent layers carefully enough, you wont need these, but from time to time, having a hand held mask can make for fast control of heavily pigmented , or opaque areas. Holding the masks slightly above the surface, or vibrating the shields back n forth as I spray can give me soft edges in large areas, without having to cut a Frisket mask.
Hopefully we have established the reasoning behind
being FRISKET FREE, and with most of the core tools, and a few secret
weapons listed, i wanted to show you some art in its early then finished
stages. An actual step by step would be a BIBLE sized, so I am going to
skip all of our concept tools, reference libraries tips, digital assembly
tricks, projection notes, or digital stylization steps, and just show
you a series of half way stages and finished art done completley frisket
free
CLOSE WITH TEASER
THE FUTURE OF AIRBRUSHABLE FRISKET FREE MEDIAS
1. AIR PASTELS (A mind blowing combination of airbrushed Holbein areoflash colors, Pitt pastels ( non fading),Rembrandt pastels, and prismacolors sealed with airbrush fixatives in layers on the new "Amstel pastel board". Were the only studio i know that teaches mixing airbrush and pastels togeteher, but its the most favorite color art medium in all our studios. The mix is so forgiveable and fun(example)
2. ULTIMATE OILS ( Using traditional oil painting brushwork layers, sealed with a thick secret medium, then reworked with Holbein acrylic airbrush colors , and, then textured with gel medium strokes and finished with 2-3 layers of Demar glazing. Who ever said that oils and acrylics can’t be mixed obviously never worked in layers. The results are off the charts.(example)
3. THE DIGITAL 3 WAY (Scanning/digitizing your airbrush art ,then using Photoshop C.S., bryce 6, and painter 11 for total edge control/special effects/ backgrounds or stylization, then wide format printing ( we use the Epson 7600) with archival inks on Canvas, then over working the canvas with thick acrylic gel medium, brush strokes, oil dabs, and Damar glazings. This is the future in creating airbrush masterpieces that will last 200 years on canvas integrating and no frisket cutting at any level.) Plus multiple copies can be printed but each one remains original.(example)