A slightly different approach for this portrait. I used more color pencil, mainly to set up the image. Surface is a Canson oil / acrylic linen canvas structure paper, 33 x 41 cm which is difficult for airbrushing because of the texture and smoothness. It requires very intensive spraying to achieve colour intensity, but the result is very vivid eventhough I used few (dark) colors. I used Inspire H2O Black Smoke paint, Caran d'Ache Luminance 6901 (white) and Derwent Studio Sepia 53 pencils.
The setup technique is quite simple: I tape common office paper to the monitor and trace most important face features with a fine Edding 400 Permanent marker. The traced image I tape to my lightbox and placed the Canson paper on top of that. In doing so the pencil strokes on the Canson paper are limited and the pencils are used only to apply accents. It beats using a traditional projector, since there is always an unobstructed view on the reference trace image and the projector's heat dissipation always causes the image to move (become larger), which in portraiture is disastrous. Intense thin lines nevertheless had to be sprayed with the Iwata Custom SB airbrush, because of the irregular surface of the Canson paper that mimics a canvas structure.
The reference image contained mainly black hues, which made me decide to make a monochrome portrait. Later (October 2022) I added a colour layer in Affinity Photo and made some corrections - right side of the mouth' upper lip, left eye and overall hardened the crispness with the burn / dodge tool, mainly to the shadowing and accents. Affinity Photo is a photo editor like Photoshop, equally functional, but at a much lower one time fee. This program allows to apply corrections digitally, that would take ages to do with an analog airbrush, brush eraser, colour pencils, hairy brushes and Exacto surgical knife.
Editing analog airbrushes with Affinity Photo is what I often do lately. After not having looked at old airbrush portraits for a long time, I see all sorts of mistakes that are easily and quickly corrected in this photo editing program. Apart from amending shapes, it also allows to tinker with colour accents, which would be some sort of an ordeal with an analog airbrush and real paint.
The photos of the various stages were shot with an old Sony smartphone camera, which explains the mediocre quality of the images. Update sequence: Newest stage on top, oldest stage at the bottom. Click on the photos to see larger versions of the images.
