Portrait of a little girl

Recently I started experimenting with a combination of airbrush and color pencils. I prefer the oil-based pencils because they're not affected by paints and lacquer. In addition their coverage is quite good and they leave light-fast colors. The Surface of this particular portrait was Canson's linen textured paper, which is not the ideal surface for color pencils when attempting to create realistic art, since the bumps and dents of the surface results in grainy lines and coloured surfaces. When the pencil tips are sharp this problem is reduced.

I tried the whites of Faber-Castell Polychromos and Caran d'Ache Pablo (which are oil-based), but the graphite Derwent GraphiTint gave the best result and is probably the cheapest of the three as well. The Derwent has the same feel as the oil pencils, perhaps even a little bit more oily - smooth movement over the surface - and its coverage was absolutely great. I haven't tested smooth surfaces yet, but will do so in the near future. My guess is that the Faber-Castell and Caran d'Ache will do better on such surfaces, but I have to experience that to be sure.

The reference photo does not show the top of the girl's head, so I created some more hair there to be able to position her face better on the surface. The photo also lacked detail, but fortunately child's faces have less accents than that of older people. Airbrushing those requires good concentration, because subtle accents are easily messed up. The girl's hair was a different story, half messy (which is what it should be with children) and also difficult to interpret due to the lack of fine detail. This where the Derwent pencil saved me a lot of time.

I started using the Iwata HP-BH and it behaved badly. Checking the needle tip under a looking glass showed a slight kink in the tip. I straightened and polished it after which it performed well again. For the hair, I used the Iwata Custon SB after first polishing its needle. Since I always spray freehand, this top of the bill airbrush was necessary (saves time). The Inspire H2O paints in combination with the Createx 4012 Reducer currently are the best paints /reducer available to spray fine detail. It took me four days to spray - doing all sorts of other chores in between airbrushing.

Oldest stages at the bottom, newest on top as usual.

Virtually framed (using Rhinoceros 3D)

Don Corleone airbrush / color pencil / Affinity Photo

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.