The Discount Airbrush Guide Series: Develop Basic Artistic Skills

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2 The Discount Airbrush Guide Series: Develop Basic Artistic Skills As an airbrush artist, some basic drawing and artistic skills can help you as you develop your talents. A lot of the basics that apply to drawing also apply to airbrushing such as perspective, lighting, and tonal value. The grid method and tracing images onto rice paper are good ways to develop your drawing and painting skills before you start creating your own freehand work. If you're a new artist, take some time to study these things. A lot of airbrush artists rely on stencils. A lot manage to create some unique custom artwork using stencils; take the increasing popularity of stenciled graffiti-style artwork. But for those who plan to create custom freehand artwork as well as those who like to use stencils, learning some of the basics of drawing and painting could go a long way as you continue your development. Table of Contents 1. Perspective 2. Light and Shadow 3. Tonal Value 4. The Grid Method 5. Tracing and Transfer Paper 1. Perspective As a graphic artist, perspective is very important in creating realistic visual representations of whatever you're drawing or painting. As a basic rule, objects that are farther from the perspective of the viewer appear smaller than those that are closer to the viewer. Perspective is used to portray distance and space within one's work. The vanishing point is an important part of learning perspective, and the number of vanishing points present will determine the type of perspective used (one-point perspective, two-point, three-point, four-point or zero-point). A vanishing point is the point at which two parallel lines apparently converge. Take an image of a road as perceived from the vantage point of a person standing in the middle of the road and looking straight down the road towards the horizon line. As the road gets farther away from the viewer, the sides of the road will appear to converge at a point. This point is called the vanishing point, and this is an example of one-point perspective. An example of two-point perspective would be viewing a building from its corner. The tops and bottoms of the walls on each side of the building will appear to get closer and closer together as they move away from the corner. The vanishing point does not have to be visually represented in the image; in this

3 example, the lines making up the top and bottom of the wall will not meet, but continue to get closer together until reaching the back wall. Keeping with the building example, an example of three-point perspective is viewing a tall building from the corner and looking upwards towards its roof. The walls on each side provide two vanishing points, while looking up at the building you'll see the two sides of the building getting closer and closer together. Zero-point perspective occurs when there are no parallel lines present. Think of a mountain range, for instance. There are no parallel lines and no vanishing point. 2. Light and Shadow By determining the source of light hitting the object, your work will be given dimension. The use of shadows helps to convey the source of lighting. Shadows appear on areas of the object that receive little to almost no light. A darker shadow appears on areas that receive the least amount of light, while areas that receive a little bit of light may receive a lighter shadow. The cast shadow appears on the surface on which or over which the object sits; the area of the cast shadow is blocked from the light by the object. The cast shadow is one of the most important mechanisms for identifying the source of the light. Take a sphere, for example. Let's say the light source comes from the top right. The top right portion of the sphere will be lighter in color, and the rest of the sphere will gradually get darker moving towards the bottom left. A cast shadow appears on the left side of the sphere. Depending on the angle at which the light source hits the object, the cast shadow may extend farther from the object, or closer to it. Light sources that are higher above the object will case shorter shadows. A light source that is at a lower angle will cast a longer shadow. If you were to place a column in an open field, it would cast a longer shadow in the morning and evening when the sun is at a lower angle relative to the horizon; about midday, the shadow will be shorter as the sun is overhead. The closer the light source to the object, the shorter the cast shadow. The cast shadow will be at its darkest in areas closer to the object casting it, and will gradually get lighter the farther it extends from the object. 3. Tonal Value The tonal value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. This is very closely related with lighting and shading, in that tone, also called value, shows the contrast between light areas and dark areas. It's because of tone that you can make out a black and white image or watch a black and white movie.

4 As we all know, pure black and white are not the only colors at play in black and white images; we see varying shades of gray that create contrast so we can make out shadows, light sources, and other key elements. We are seeing the tone, or value, of these colors instead of the actual colors. When a sphere fades from its lightest areas where the light source hits it directly, to the darker areas that receive little to no light, we are seeing the changing tone of the sphere's color. 4. The Grid Method The grid method is a way of drawing an image using grid paper. It is an effective way of drawing an image in correct proportions, and can be very helpful for the beginning artist learning how to draw. The lines of the grid paper help the artist breakdown the image into smaller, more manageable sections. Artists learning to recognize shapes when evaluating an image may find the method useful. Make a copy of whatever image you're drawing, unless you don't mind drawing on top of the original. Next draw gridlines on the image. Draw vertical and horizontal lines on your paper an inch apart from each other. Now you have your grid. (Note: Squares can be as large or as small as you'd like.) Draw the same grid on the paper where you'll draw the image. If you used one-inch squares on your image, use one-inch squares on your paper, too. Now all you have to do is recreate what you see in each square instead of the entire paper. Try starting in the upper left, and reproduce what you see in the first square. Then move onto the next square, and reproduce what you see in that square. This will breakdown the image into tiny 1-by-1 inch squares. It's a good way to start recognizing shapes and the subtle contours of your subject. Continue to draw what you see in each individual grid until you have completed the entire image. 5. Tracing and Transfer Paper Of course, the easiest way to reproduce an image is to simply trace it. Some artists trace images, noting that it helps them get an idea of how the original artist produced the shapes and contours that make up the image. To draw an analogy from another art form, author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson used to produce copies of work by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway to become familiar with each author's writing style. Tracing the work of other artists may help you become familiar with shapes and subtleties in each piece of work. This could aid you as you create your own freehand work. Get some tracing paper or rice paper, place your image under it, and start tracing. If you do not want to get imprints in the original image from the pressure created by tracing the image, just make a copy and place that under your tracing paper instead.

5 Transfer paper can be a valuable tool if you need to reproduce an image of your own, too. If you do not want to mark on the original image, make a copy. You'll need transfer paper that includes a carbon sheet underneath a sheet of rice paper. The carbon will transfer to the rice paper wherever pressure is applied. Place the copy of your image on top of the rice paper, and go over the image with a pencil, being sure to press hard enough that the carbon transfers to the rice paper. It's important to understand that tracing is intended as a means of practicing and honing one's artistic skills, or to transfer one's own artwork onto another material. Copyright by DiscountAirbrush.com. All rights reserved.