November 30, 2012

Iwata CM SB cleaner mod


Iwata's are great airbrushes, but they don't fit well in many cleaning pots, because the air duct kind of slopes into the front end that is partly outside of the cylindrical main housing. Most cleaning pots are designed to accommodate cylinder shaped airbrushes that have no protruding parts outside the main housing. There's a simple solution to modify them.


Left side of the Iwata CM SB

November 28, 2012

Erasers

Erasing is part of many airbrush artist's skills. When spraying with waterborne acrylics, there is a distinction between easily erasable and difficult to erase paints. Easy to erase paints (to my knowledge) are:
  1. Holbein Aeroflash
  2. Lukas Illu-Color
  3. E'tac
  4. Createx
A difficult to erase paints are Auto-Air and Wicked. There are also different types of erasers. In this blog entry I will discuss the manual type eraser pencils, which are often used by artists who create detailed fine art.

Meanwhile...


OK, after being stupid to spray uros without precaution I am recovering from inhaling the fumes and / or some kind of flu, I am airbrushing with bloody waterbornes again (for the time being). It is an old project that I postponed several times due to circumstances. This is a double portrait of the parents of a good friend. Here is the reference photograph (which is not really that good).



Reference photograph

November 27, 2012

DIY Isocyanide extraction system


After starting to spray with Uros again as can be seen in this post, I was having problems with my respiratory system and I am not sure if this is caused by the careless neglect of not using a fume extraction system or by seasonal influences in which humankind is periodically bombarded with pathogenic viruses or both. Just to be sure I am in the process of building an extraction system.


DIY extraction system under construction

November 23, 2012

Modern style management


It may have escaped the attention of a number of comatose people, but today's world is brutally being managed to shreds by a new breed of 'managers' that mindlessly apply all imbecile crap that was drilled down their dysfunctional brains in expensive bogus courses where they can get yet an other certificate to glue to their office wall for not falling asleep during a carnival of passing on useless bunkum conducted by some arrogant clown dressed in a three piece suit.


Congratulations to Karl here, who actually
picked up his phone and spoke with a customer.
This might be a breakthrough for our company!


November 22, 2012

Prevent image deformation of analog projector


Airbrush artists often project a reference image onto the surface on which they are airbrushing to trace the image with a pencil before they begin to spray. Many use an analog projector that radiates light on the image that is reflected by mirrors to a lens. Besides a flood of light, this lamp produces a lot of heat. This heat deforms the photo or printed reference image that gradually expands as a result of the energy induced to it. These deformations often show in the completed art work; most notable is that one eye is placed higher than the other. Tracing fast minimizes the image deformation but it almost always shows that an artist has been using a projector. There is a simple solution to this.


Glass plate supported by foam strips

November 20, 2012

Giger guitar WIP


Still in the process of becoming familiar with Inspire paints. I prefer to prepare decently, because I hate to mess up property of other people. So trial and error is performed on my own guitar that I bought when I still had money for 100 Euro. First wet sanding with 2500 grid (because the original clear was still in mint condition), then several layers of white base coat. The base layers behave pretty well, they're strong and provide a good surface with enough grip to spray fine detail. Below is the result of a few hours of spraying a Giger inspired image. I'm not copying Giger's fabulous art accurately. Unlike portraits this type of work allows me to use my intuition.


Giger guitar - Nov 20

November 16, 2012

Custom paint cups for Iwata Custom Micron


My Iwata Custom Micron SB is a stunning airbrush. Excellently suited for ultra fine detail and is useful to spray larger areas as well with excellent control. Only problem is that the standard paint cup does not have the capacity to spray larger surfaces without frequent paint refills. But, being a siphon feed airbrush that allows the paint cup to be taken off, provides the solution for spraying base layers and backgrounds that require relatively much paint.


Custom paint cups for Iwata Custom Micron SB

November 12, 2012

Things I hate to airbrush


Almost from the instant I became capable of coherent thought, I have felt an alien in this world. As if I was accidentally sent to this planet as a result of an administrative error made by some temp angel who could not care less about the consequence of his efforts. I really must have a chat with this chum if ever I will meet him. This alienated mindset applies to all occurrences in my life in which I am involved. That of course includes my efforts to achieve a decent level of creating airbrush art. One of the things I never felt drawn to, is to spray portraits of perfect, flawless faces, that exist only in imagination. I made several exceptions to that.


The stunningly beautiful and smart MM

November 7, 2012

Next project - Giger Ibanez


Preparations for the Ibanez guitar with Giger design. Messing about with various options. Gathering reference material, positioning, moving, scaling, composing images, whatever is necessary to come to a good design. Meticulous preparation is everything. Below you see one of the trials. I'll probably use Inspire uros for this one.


Concept Giger Ibanez guitar


Click the pic to see it big.

November 6, 2012

Everything is different here


Everything in this blog is different; most of the topics on this site are different, the way of airbrushing, the techniques used and tested, the way the airbrush classes are conducted. If you are looking for what everyone else is doing, you won't find it here. I don't care for what is hot, fashionable, popular or whatever else mindless masses chase without ever wondering why. I care for quality, sharp wit, compassion and empathy - I'm not in love with things or trends, but with human nature and talent that anyone has in his or her unique way.

November 5, 2012

A note on storing water



In an earlier blog entry I wrote about the treatment of water in a Reverse-Osmosis system. I feel I have to add a note on storing water, whether it is specially treated or came straight out of the tap. It is certain that the quality of water can be improved in such a way that it flows better and is better capable of dispersing paint particles, provided the paint is also treated which I also described in a previous blog entry. Water, however, is a living organism of a unique and powerful kind. 

November 4, 2012

Particle dispersion by high voltage field


As I described in the paint's pigment particle dispersion blog entry, the agitation of the liquid can be done with any type of energy. This particular article is about agitation of the paint by inducing a high voltage electric field of 20 kilo-volt. The field is created by a small generator that can be bought on sites like Ebay. A photo of the device is seen below.


High voltage field generator surrounded by paint bottles - 1

Shake, baby, shake!


Most airbrush paints are thixotropic, which means that they are quite viscous while not in motion, but become less viscous (having a capacity to flow better) when agitated or stressed - in other words when they are vigorously shaken. In the automotive business, before spraying, paint cans are shaken in a paint can shaking machine for a few minutes, sometimes up to half an hour or more. Many of the better quality airbrush paints are contained in a bottle that also has a ball inside of them to improve the effect of the shaking process. Also empty bottles for airbrush artists to mix their own paints should contain a kind of ball bearing (making them not empty in a literal sense) to make paints less viscous when shaken.


Empty (well, almost) paint bottle with ball


November 3, 2012

Ficticious vision


We have all heard about optical illusion. It refers to the perception of visual images (by the brain) that differ from reality. Illusions can be false perceptions of shapes, (intensity of) colors, and dimensional misinterpretation. They are things humans perceive but rarely become aware of, such as subliminal images hidden in moving visuals as (illegally) used by the advertisement business. Subliminal images are recorded by human eyes and brains, but the person observing the image(s) does not become consciously aware of what (s)he sees.



Animation by Edward H. Adelson

November 1, 2012

Ultrasonic dispersion of organic pigment particles


I continue to stumble into methods that have the potential to improve the handling of paint. In 1989 BASF (one of the big paint manufacturers in this world) filed patent 4929279 in which an invention is contained to improve the dispersion of pigment particles by irradiating it with ultrasonic waves. The optimal frequency range is between 40 Kilohertz and 2 Megahertz. These can be generated with relatively simple and low cost devices that use very little energy and are commercially available, more in particular with pond foggers... Below you see one of those.

Ultrasonic pond fogger