Disposable Art
A friend of mine is running a junker car in a demolition derby in Ohio. This year I was priveliged enough to use his car as a canvas for my airbrush projects. I've probably spent more than 20 hours airbrushing this car, knowing that it (and the art on it) will be utterly destroyed by other junker, redneck cars somewhere in Ohio come August. But it's been a hell of a lot of fun.
So far, the car has these murals:
- A flaming, insane-looking rabbit head (VERY crappy)
- A deep crow (pretty crappy)
- Some ghost-flames (crappy)
- Skull Snakes (badass)
I finished the skull/snakes today. Over 2 weekends, I reckon it took a total of 12 hours (excluding the time it took to draw the original design and the time spent acquiring the materials).
The final product:
The steps involved:
1. Copy a print-out of the guide drawing onto frisket film on the hood of the car. (Frisket is a sticky-backed transparent plastic film that can be cut with an Exacto knife, which you can then peel up in little sections to paint small areas at a time with crisp edges. Essentially, the plastic makes a stencil that you carve up into any shapes you want.) The reference image I drew previously is below:
In order to transfer the reference (on a print-out) to the frisket, I had to divide the print-out into a grid of 1-inch squares and copy it very roughly over, drawing onto the plastic frisket with a fine sharpie. The frisket was actually 8.5 x 11 inch sheets tessolated, resulting in a grid of 2-inch squares and a rough coordinate system.
2. Cut along aaaalll the edges that border two different colors, as traced by the sharpie. Using an Exacto to do this is really the only way, but it's a pain in the ass to cut the plastic frisket without also cutting the paint job of the car underneath. This is one of many very difficult skills that go into professional airbrush work, as I've come to see...
Okay, so steps 1 and 2 probably took 4 hours, and I haven't even touched the airbrush yet. This has all been preparatory work so that I can begin the airbrush in step 3.
3. Start painting the skull. As I said, the purpose of the frisket is to let you airbrush with the aid of a "do-it-yourself" stencil. The way this works is, you peel up one chunk of the plastic, paint it in, cover it up with the sticky-backed plastic again, and move on to the next piece. I did this for about 60 pieces of the skull, which I'm realizing now was way overkill. The snakes were probably 10 pieces each, much easier to manage. After the snakes, I did the swords and the handles on the swords.
I'll take this moment to point out something I learned: airbrush is an unforgiving medium and extremely demanding of your patient focus. At all times, there are a dozen tiny, lazy mistakes you can make that will set you back several minutes, hours, or ruin the entire project. You can't let your guard down, like, ever.
The frisket itself is a prolific source of such opportunities. Frisket, remember, is sticky-backed plastic; once you're done painting a spot, you are supposed to put the frisket back onto the painted area you completed. There's always a chance that the frisket will "lift" some of the paint you just put down. The shape of the piece of film you are replacing is like a puzzle piece. It fits the Exacto-cut edge of the rest of the film in a perfect, key-in-lock fashion. If you don't line those edges up perfectly, then there will be a hair-width exposed line on one edge of the film piece. This crevice will inexorably be filled with paint overspray, putting a color down in this hair-width trench where it shouldn't be.
Anyway. In using the airbrush, you are constantly removing and replacing these little pieces. It takes a lot of diligence to line up every piece as exact as it should be. I frequently ran out of patience and did it poorly. Every single place that I did this - that I DECIDED to be less than patient - the painting had a visible error in it as a result.
4. Once the base colors had been painted on all the stenciled work (about 6.5 hours, I think), I lifted all the frisket away and did my favorite part - the highlights and shadows. The skull was originally just grey, and now I was able to add this deep blue to make the shadows pop. After that, I used white to make the teeth and fangs shine a lot brighter.
This part of the project is very climactic and exhilarating, because it is by far the fastest and most challenging step. You've invested about 10 hours in the painting. This final step multiplies the vividness and life of the final product - but a freehand airbrush mistake can cost you the entire project. It doesn't have to; if I was smart, I would have used clear coat between the base layer and the highlights/shadows. That way if I messed up a shadow or something, I could use paint thinner to wipe it away without damaging the base layer under the clear coat.
Turns out, I'm just so good that I did the highlights and shadows without making any mistakes. Booyah!
Woot. All for a mural that will ultimately go through a demolition derby, and come out looking like it met a trash compactor. But somehow that's totally appropriate. I'm not emotionally attached to the picture, but I'm proud of it. It was an accomplishment and came out much better than I hoped.
So far, the car has these murals:
- A flaming, insane-looking rabbit head (VERY crappy)
- A deep crow (pretty crappy)
- Some ghost-flames (crappy)
- Skull Snakes (badass)
I finished the skull/snakes today. Over 2 weekends, I reckon it took a total of 12 hours (excluding the time it took to draw the original design and the time spent acquiring the materials).
The final product:
The steps involved:
1. Copy a print-out of the guide drawing onto frisket film on the hood of the car. (Frisket is a sticky-backed transparent plastic film that can be cut with an Exacto knife, which you can then peel up in little sections to paint small areas at a time with crisp edges. Essentially, the plastic makes a stencil that you carve up into any shapes you want.) The reference image I drew previously is below:
In order to transfer the reference (on a print-out) to the frisket, I had to divide the print-out into a grid of 1-inch squares and copy it very roughly over, drawing onto the plastic frisket with a fine sharpie. The frisket was actually 8.5 x 11 inch sheets tessolated, resulting in a grid of 2-inch squares and a rough coordinate system.
2. Cut along aaaalll the edges that border two different colors, as traced by the sharpie. Using an Exacto to do this is really the only way, but it's a pain in the ass to cut the plastic frisket without also cutting the paint job of the car underneath. This is one of many very difficult skills that go into professional airbrush work, as I've come to see...
Okay, so steps 1 and 2 probably took 4 hours, and I haven't even touched the airbrush yet. This has all been preparatory work so that I can begin the airbrush in step 3.
3. Start painting the skull. As I said, the purpose of the frisket is to let you airbrush with the aid of a "do-it-yourself" stencil. The way this works is, you peel up one chunk of the plastic, paint it in, cover it up with the sticky-backed plastic again, and move on to the next piece. I did this for about 60 pieces of the skull, which I'm realizing now was way overkill. The snakes were probably 10 pieces each, much easier to manage. After the snakes, I did the swords and the handles on the swords.
I'll take this moment to point out something I learned: airbrush is an unforgiving medium and extremely demanding of your patient focus. At all times, there are a dozen tiny, lazy mistakes you can make that will set you back several minutes, hours, or ruin the entire project. You can't let your guard down, like, ever.
The frisket itself is a prolific source of such opportunities. Frisket, remember, is sticky-backed plastic; once you're done painting a spot, you are supposed to put the frisket back onto the painted area you completed. There's always a chance that the frisket will "lift" some of the paint you just put down. The shape of the piece of film you are replacing is like a puzzle piece. It fits the Exacto-cut edge of the rest of the film in a perfect, key-in-lock fashion. If you don't line those edges up perfectly, then there will be a hair-width exposed line on one edge of the film piece. This crevice will inexorably be filled with paint overspray, putting a color down in this hair-width trench where it shouldn't be.
Anyway. In using the airbrush, you are constantly removing and replacing these little pieces. It takes a lot of diligence to line up every piece as exact as it should be. I frequently ran out of patience and did it poorly. Every single place that I did this - that I DECIDED to be less than patient - the painting had a visible error in it as a result.
4. Once the base colors had been painted on all the stenciled work (about 6.5 hours, I think), I lifted all the frisket away and did my favorite part - the highlights and shadows. The skull was originally just grey, and now I was able to add this deep blue to make the shadows pop. After that, I used white to make the teeth and fangs shine a lot brighter.
This part of the project is very climactic and exhilarating, because it is by far the fastest and most challenging step. You've invested about 10 hours in the painting. This final step multiplies the vividness and life of the final product - but a freehand airbrush mistake can cost you the entire project. It doesn't have to; if I was smart, I would have used clear coat between the base layer and the highlights/shadows. That way if I messed up a shadow or something, I could use paint thinner to wipe it away without damaging the base layer under the clear coat.
Turns out, I'm just so good that I did the highlights and shadows without making any mistakes. Booyah!
Woot. All for a mural that will ultimately go through a demolition derby, and come out looking like it met a trash compactor. But somehow that's totally appropriate. I'm not emotionally attached to the picture, but I'm proud of it. It was an accomplishment and came out much better than I hoped.