Airbrush Step by Step (english) Magazine

27 June 2019

This is the title of Steve Gibson’s article, who is introducing you to his Grisaille painting technique as well as to the "Grisaille Grey Master Set" which he has developed together with Createx (p. 50). The US artist takes advantage of this very old painting technique which has already been used by the old masters such as Giotto and Rembrandt. By combining it with the CMYK color system known from printing processes, he is transferring the classic method to this day and age and makes it usable for airbrushing techniques. However, the phrase "Tradition and Modernity" can not only stand for Steve Gibson’s technique, but also applies to many other aspects of the airbrush technique as well as to this very magazine issue: From the art historical point of view, airbrushing is surely a modern technique. But looking back from today, it also already has a tradition of more than 100 years, while it technically has not changed much. However, airbrush production companies show from time to time, that there is still some space for improvement. Lately, the US based airbrush producer Badger has done some fine-tuning, in order to once more improve its fine art device, the Sotar airbrush. The airbrush technique itself has the special characteristic to easily "adapt" to modern surfaces and motives. 100 years ago, nobody would have ever dreamed of motor bikes, planes or helicopters (which have actually been invented around the same time as the airbrush) to be painted with an airbrush. Two impressive examples for this are shown by Iryna Bershadska, featuring her "X files" inspired motor bike tank (p. 4), as well as Christian Erhart, painting helicopters and air planes for the Austrian Armed Forces (p. 30). With fine art painting, portraits have always been classic. Despite of modern photography, painting portraits has nothing lost of its appeal. For Australia based artist Paul MacDonald, it means a challenge at any time. He found a very distinctive motive in the portrait of boxing legend Mike Tyson (p. 16). Luckily, artists today have a big assortment of paints to choose from for any surface, any motif and painting tool. Only in this issue, we will introduce to you four different kinds of paint for airbrushing (p. 24). This is wishing you lots of fun with the new issue and a bunch of creative ideas for your own painting projects. The ASBS team