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This is just a random quesiton. I hope it’s where it ought to be.
I consider myself a pretty lousy artist overall. I draw stick animals, my trees look like weeds, you get the idea. However, i feel like with my airbrush, I can do pretty well. And I LOVE airbrushing. I could do it for hours ata time if my daughter didn’t require attention/food/clean diapers, and if the laundry would fold itself.
recently, well, a couple months ago, I was e-mailing a gal about model horses, and she lit into me. She told me that people who airbrushed cheated, and that SHE deserved more money than I did because she painted her horses by hand and in oils, and it took her a month to basecoat a horse, as opposed to me, whom it takes 5 hours for a real booger.(don’t do them too often). She also proclaimed that her paint was more exspensive, at which I kindly pointed out that my air brush and compressor setup was $400. She said my paints were cheaper though, and over the long run that ads up. 😕
SO, I just thought i’d toss that out there. I know a lot of folks here paint the PYO’s by hand, and I have one(well, started) one by hand, and started a coupel AB’d. I always went by the finished product, but what do YOU think. Does it cheapen it to know that someone airbrushed something?
Please don’t worry about offending me, I’m just curious. I’ll keep doing my thing, and it’ll either work or it won’t 🙄
I’ve never tried to airbrush, so I can’t say how hard or easy it is. However, I think, especially on small areas, you put plenty of work into accuracy with an airbrush as well as with a paintbrush. And for the overall end appearance… Personally I like to see some brush strokes. (Not too many; you might remember my recent complaint about my own blending on the Kirin scales.) But I think brush strokes do add life and texture to a piece. With airbrushing, you have a nice, smooth, machine-made perfection.
So all in all, it’s in the eye of the beholder. Some people like absolute perfection. Others, like myself, like a little natural touch of randomness. The market determines whether the price is justified – and you sell your airburshed pieces pretty well, don’t you? 😉That is always a dilemma. I can see both sides of the story but in the end…being a professional artist, you do need to look at your final product and profits. If someone spends 35 hours painting painstakingly by hand-blending and their horse sells for $300…but you can do the same quality paint job in half the time due to an airbrush and get the same price….your profit range is better for your work amount. As for paint…always try to get the best quality you can in any case…something to last, and factor your paint cost into your price. There is often a lot of jealousy when it comes to stuff like this. Artists can get real pissed off when they put in a ton of hours and somebody else takes half the time they do and sells for the same if not a better price. This causes the artist taking more time to really get furious and possibly quit…but from a business standpoint, hey, you HAVE to work towards your profit margin if you’re going to make it as an artist living off your trade. If the other artist wants to keep doing what she/he is doing and make less…that’s their problem. Most non-artists can’t tell the difference and therefore probably don’t care. They see something they like and want and buy. They don’t know the time involved in most cases…it’s the look and quality they want. It’s a shame another artist told you off…has happened to me…but if you don’t bend like the willow you’ll break in the long run. Take for instance traditional media. It’s starting to be replaced by digital media because it’s generally faster (not in every case but you get my drift). So, I bought software and hardware to keep up and also find a faster way to do artwork to keep my profit margins up.
How does it look when it’s done? I’m very firmly of the opinion that results matter more than methods.
If you end up with a lovely work or art, how you made it doesn’t really matter. (Well, unless you’re just copying directly from other people, then it’s not that you made a lovely work of art, it’s that you made a lovely copy.) But anyhow, airbrush, pastels, acrylics, they all have strengths and weaknesses, and they each, in their own way, can produce amazing reults. It’s what the artist puts in that really makes a difference though.
I mean… you could hand somebody with no taste at all an airbrush, and they’re produce cruddy art. Blended well, perhaps, but still cruddy. Likewise somebody with skill and taste will produce something beautiful, whether they’re using airbrush or working by hand.
I think people should use whatever methods (paint brushes, airbrush, leaf, etc.) and painting products (acrylic, pastel, leaf, color pencil, etc.) they want if it creates the look they were hoping to achieve.
If you feel like you can make finished pieces that look how you intended using your airbrush, then more power to you. Don’t feel guilty if that is the method you prefer. Personally, I usually use both in my PYOs and I’m hoping to add pastels to future pieces. I’ve found multiple methods in one piece best achieved what I was aiming for.
I might respect the time put into a piece that took 200 hours to paint a million layers by paint brush or have elaborate patterns only achieved by brush strokes, but it won’t make me pay more or want it in my house if the end product isn’t appealing to my personal taste. So, I guess as long as I like the end result, it doesn’t matter what method the artist used to make it.
I think it totally depends on the end result. I have two peices now that have both paint and airbrush. One is a little cloudy and you can tell its been airbrushed. Its still nice, but I was a liiiiittle dissapointed in the end result. I recently got Lokies, and until she said something, I had no idea she even used airbrush on it. In the end, its up to what works for you and what you are good at. Im sure its galling for some hand painters to see others crack out a job in half the time, but hey… its their descision to keep hand-painting. Dont let one ranter get to you. Maybe she was having a bad day.
i agree i have dome some air brushing and done free hand i think the one who lit on you was just jealous. maybe she saw some of your work sell for what her’s does 😛
we do what we are good at alot of times i love air brush work because it tends to blend smoother and for base coating it is quick and i’m sure there are plenty who use air brush, brush stroke, pasters, and colored pencils on a single piece (btw personaly I don’t care for oils much) use what you are comfortable with, what you are good at, don’t be afraid to dabble in other things tho. BTW Bf said whenever he cooked it burned or was bland or bad i showed him a few things and he discovered “grilling”
oh lord and now mr “i can’t cook” cooks more at his place than i do at home, and he does excellant cornbread and grills like a champ. i think combos can work well if you are patient, worst case strip and redo or bagan sell for bodie price
Personally i know i have got to experiment with blending i have seem some JUST georgous work on here and i thought i was an ok artist i am down right jealous and i bet some people here had never painted in thier lifeI think I was on the right page then. I kinda figured it was more about the end product then how the peice got there.
I know the gal who said what she said. I’m not the first person she’s gotten crazy on. She’s kinda just out for airbrusher’s in general. She didn’t discourage me, she just made me wonder.
I’ve seen some lovely airbrush horses not sell for a dime, and some junkers sell for more than they were worth. Some artists likeChris Nandell paint entire horses by hand with oils, and will never change(BTW, AMAZING when done right, I had one once til someone offered me double what I paid).
Personally, I think I’ll just keep trotting along being me. I do my best work with an AB, and I often wish that the entire peice could be done like that, then I wouldn’t have to break out a paint brush at all. I have really shaky hands when I paintbrush, but not when I Ab. Go figure.
Honestly….gosh. I mix al my own paints, and make my own colors because no craft store I”ve ever been to has every color I’m looking for. But, while I do use excelent quality paints that have cost $5 fora small bottle, and the different medians, and all that, I have come to find(in my personal experince)
1-the most populars color in the world only lasts me a month, if i’m lucky(I started buying some of my browns in HUGE containers). Each horse takes 8-15 layers of airbrush paint. So, as I did tell that lady, i still have cost.(she was thinking I blasted the bay’s with brown, then black shading, not so….)
2-I still buy paint brushes, which I’m really hard on for some reason. Probably the 15 layers of white per sock. guess the brushes get bored too. Not to mention, repairing my compressor, general airbrush maintence(needles and tips get replaced every month or so, it gets oiled once a month, seals get replaced once a year, different cleaners to take care of it, ect ect ect)(and of course the actual cost of them!!).
She did, for a moment, make me feel cheap, til I pointed all that out to her. Course, then she shot back”well, you can still SELL your airbrushes” at which time i just stopped talking.
I donno. I just like to know folks thoughts. I have seen some airbrushed peices on paper that, done with masking and whatnot, were just KILLER. One guy asked me to paint his motorcycle, showed me the pic he saw in a mag.
But, I think that an AB, in the right hands, sure can add some niceness to a peice. I’ve noticed even on windstones, the parts that I got to AB are FAR better than what I had to do by hand(check out my newest wolf when his pix get approved, his wings are very pretty, the dog part stinks 🙁 ).
Greater Basilisk wrote:– and you sell your airburshed pieces pretty well, don’t you? 😉
Yes, I can’t complain. Things are slow now, but I’ve been making the house payment, the heat bill, and a couple credit card payments(total about $700 a month) for the last several months while hubby was not making enough. I felt very blessed and lucky to help, but I sure am glad that time is over(gosh i got burnt out)
There’s also a point that wasn’t mentioned: everyone does things at a different speed. For that particular artist, a paintbrush piece might take her 100 hours, whereas someone else might do the exact same thing in half the time. Same thing for airbrush; we all have our rhythm.
If you feel comfortable with an airbrush and like the results (and so do your clients), then 😛 at her. Chances are she might have tried the airbrush at one point and found she sucked at it and was very resentful. Some people will not accept that they can’t be good at everything.
Me, if I had an airbrush, I’d probably paint everything but the statue!
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmummm really I do not for the most part like airbrush work. It tends to over-spray….Like on the siamese flapcats. Where the tail is sprayed dark …and it sprays teh rump too. I don’t like that look. It looks sloppy to me. Spray paint also can look grainy sometimes…this is particularly noticable on the breyers.
But done well..and with a lot of control..I don’t mind it at all. Most windstones I own are painted that way and I would not change them for the world.
So I guess its all about the end results.whippetluv wrote:ummm really I do not for the most part like airbrush work. It tends to over-spray….Like on the siamese flapcats. Where the tail is sprayed dark …and it sprays teh rump too. I don’t like that look. It looks sloppy to me. Spray paint also can look grainy sometimes…this is particularly noticable on the breyers.
But done well..and with a lot of control..I don’t mind it at all. Most windstones I own are painted that way and I would not change them for the world.
So I guess its all about the end results.I agree, when the overspray is out of control it looks like crap. I either mask, or use it to my advantage, but I recently upgraded my brush, so there’s almost no overspray 😀
A lot of my horses used to be grainy. I’ve found thats just casued from the painter being in a hurry and blasting the paint. I used to be able to paint a horse with 4 layers “suffice” but it was grainy and crappy, and it only took 20 min. Now I’m far more concerned with quality, and showing them, so they take forever spread overa few days.
Honestly? Use what you’re comfortable with, and what you’re good at. Pick up a copy of ‘Airbrush Art’ magazine and look through it.
I’ve seen some *amazing* things done with an airbrush, and a fellow that has a shop in a mall in Paducah KY has some paintings of Dodge Vipers up among the T-shirt samples he does and they’re pretty awesome. Having used an airbrush, I know they were more work than spraying a base coat and then shading. He’s got gradients in the track/road, swirls in burnout smoke and all other sorts of coolness that you’d be hard pressed to achieve with a paint brush.
It’s all in what you’re looking for, usually. Don’t sell yourself short just because you use an airbrush and don’t let that chick get to you.
Rusti wrote:Honestly? Use what you’re comfortable with, and what you’re good at. Pick up a copy of ‘Airbrush Art’ magazine and look through it.
I’ve seen some *amazing* things done with an airbrush, and a fellow that has a shop in a mall in Paducah KY has some paintings of Dodge Vipers up among the T-shirt samples he does and they’re pretty awesome. Having used an airbrush, I know they were more work than spraying a base coat and then shading. He’s got gradients in the track/road, swirls in burnout smoke and all other sorts of coolness that you’d be hard pressed to achieve with a paint brush.
It’s all in what you’re looking for, usually. Don’t sell yourself short just because you use an airbrush and don’t let that chick get to you.
Wish I lived closer, I love seeing that inda stuff
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