Airbrush Step by Step (english) Magazine

28 June 2018

Don´t be shy! Here at the editor’s office of Airbrush Step by Step magazine, we are in touch with artists from all over the world, day by day. And actually, the German artists are a 100 percent what the rest of the world tells about Germans in general: They are much more critical, fussy and scrupulous than their artists' colleagues from other countries. How many times we have been hearing phrases like „no, I am not good enough“, „I don’t dare“ or „I need some more time for this“. Overmodest, perfectionist or lacking self-confidence – what ever you want to call it. At least at exhibitions, trade shows or at airbrush beginner classes, seeing the amazed and admiring faces of the ordinary people, some airbrush pros realize what level they might have already reached. With pros, that's (just) nitpicking. The artists featured in this issue have no reason at all to be shy and – look at that! – we also got three German artists in here: Andreas Werner takes the challenge of photorealism and paints a glas bottle of Whiskey with all its reflections, transparencies and many details. Wolfgang Gerstemeier tried to capture an image of Koi fishes in his garden pond, which turned out to be a very ambitious project – right at the beginning from getting a good reference photo. Pia Achtenhagen is not the classic airbrush artist, but her art of building models of phantasy animals is not less intricate. It’s the airbrush finish that makes her models coming to life. Looking at airbrush artists from all over the world, you find that love for detail, diligents and self-challenging attitude with all of them. Let’s take Colombian Rafa Fonseca: He painted such a lovely and gentle portrait of his grandfather. Spanish artist Hugo Maciel put a lot of effort in creating an effectful swarm of bats, just to enhance the Joker portrait on a shirt. Last but not least, the European „queen of photorealism“, Marissa Oosterlee, shows us in the interview how airbrush art can still be highly in demand even for TV promotion purposes, if you just put that much portion of talent and care into your artwork like she does. So the message is: Keep it going. Believe in yourself. Accept critics, take it as an advice and learn from the pros to improve your own abilities. But you may also accept admiration. Be proud of what you are capable of. Because in any case, it’s so much more than just ordinary people can do! Have fun with this new issue and with learning, admiring and trying! The ASBS Team