Airbrushed portraits using a controlled palette
Just got back from a week in Portland Oregon, where I visited family and participated in the annual AMI (Association of Medical Illustrators) meeting. I was so impressed with the fun, bright and creative people who make up the AMI.
It was really interesting to learn how many of you came to where you are now…it’s certainly a varied route we all take.
My own path, that everyone seemed to find unusual (in a good way) …was via: Airbrush T-shirt artist -to- traditional artist -to- a medical artist
While still airbrushing I studied classical technique. At this time, I modified the typical neon T-shirt airbrush palette to a “controlled palette” consisting mostly of opaque flesh tones and a few transparent colors for glazing. This odd technique gave me a bit of notoriety in the airbrush world…
And since you were all so nice sharing your techniques and ideas, I wanted to give something back…
In this “how to” video i use a controlled palette to paint a portrait of Sir Patrick Stewart (Jean Luc Picard.)
Don’t be fooled by medium of the T-shirt…there is some real art knowledge in this video.
BTW, this was done in 1997 so please ignore the big glasses!
Enjoy!
-mike
Mike,
Great video, and a beautiful portrait of the Captain. You made it look easy! I appreciate the fact that the foundations never change, regardless of medium – color, value, edges. Lots of little tidbits in here too (keeping the shadow edge soft unless its towards the center of interest or against its point of origin). Good stuff!
Thanks for the link!
-Nick
Awesome!
Great stuff Mike. I learned a lot. I’ve always painted by observation alone, but this will really help me speed up and simplify my otherwise muddy/redundant process. Now that you hang out with the AMI, you’ll pick up little names for all those fleshy folds/protrusions.
P.S. Looks like glasses come from 1994, not 1997 according the the copyright at the end of the video. I think my class of 1997 was one of the last to learn traditional airbrush at Hopkins. Hopefully this will help others look into it.
G