Well, if you could even call it a real project.
I've been wanting to start practicing airbru****ng for a while as some of
you
may or may not realize.
This past weekend, I decided I was finally going to do something about my
computer case.
Sanded it down to bare metal, and started painting. I did this with the
internals stripped out for their protection, but with the case assembled
with sides attached for continuity.
Yeah, I know, some of what I used was createx, some was some other stuff,
Apple Barrel or something like that, and maybe one more odd brand. About
half of what I used was pearlescent.
The Createx was labelled as being for airbrush. I noticed some of it was a
bit thick and needed to be thinned and some was perfect. The other stuff
was
not suitable for spraying out of the bottle, but was thinnable.
Turns out thinning paint and getting the right consistency isn't as easy
as
it seems. It's very easy to get it too thick or too thin, and hard to
repair
the damage once you start spraying and find it's not suitable.
I wound up with a couple of runs. In a couple of spots where I was trying
to
spray the fronds at the top of a palm tree, the paint I was using had been
mixed too thick, and the spray was unpredictable. It would spray
intermittently, and when I pulled back on the trigger to feed in extra
paint, it would just spray out a lot all at once and looked really
horrible.
I wound up wiping it all up, and turning the "tree" into a lighthouse.
I did the same scene on both sides.
When I went to do the red light at the top of the lighthouse, the paint I
had was way too thin, and ran as soon as I sprayed it. That messed up part
of the "light" I had at the core of the lighthouse. I wound up dabbing the
red light with a q-tip, and the same for the light on the one side.
Turns out, I had 2 runs, one barely noticable, and one that's about as
obvious as a sore thumb.
I kinda figured screw trying to fix it as that would pretty much trash the
whole project and I'd have to start from scratch.
When the whole thing was dry, I clear coated it with a spray can of xylol
solvent based acrylic gloss.
My intent was to create an evening beach scene with the sun setting.
Having
spent more than 17 years on Florida's west coast, I'm quite familiar with
sunsets. It didn't quite end up that way, but the result was still quite
nice. Especially since this is the first time I've really done any
airbrush
work.
Started with a base coat of flat navy blue.
Mixed my own orange with red and yellow, and got it a wee bit too thin,
that's what ran on the one side that stood out. On the navy blue, it
looked
more brown than orange. Sprayed the back half with that most intense in
the
upper rear corners and top rear.
I just added a hint of a flourescent reddish pink that was noticable, but
not totally obvious at first glance. Covered the whole case with that.
Took a bright yellow and sprayed what was initially intended to be a sun
over the top of the orange area in the upper rear corners. I just started
spraying lightly in a circle and kept filling it in. By the time I
completed
the project it looked more like a moon than sun. I'm quite content with
the
appearance though.
I mixed some white and yellow for sand on the shore, and blue pearl, and
green pearl, for the water. Sprayed the shore first, and then laid the
water
over that, fading it as it overlapped the shore.
Mixed a couple of browns for the tree trunk. Since the fronds were a
disaster, I wound up using that same brown to cover up the mess as the
body
of the lighthouse. On the side I q-tipped the light, I had a run of this
paint, but it wasn't till the whole thing was dry and clear coated that I
noticed it.
For the lightroom, I just sprayed an area of black, and then overlaid
pearlescent white for the focal point of the lightsource, and created a
"beam" from there.
I sprayed a bit of the black and the blue green of the water over the
"sun"
to mute it down so it wasn't quite so intense.
I added some light streaks and touches of black to the water to create a
sort of chop effect.
Since I used pearl in MOST of the paint, there's quite a bit of a sparkle
to
the overall texture.
The setup I used was a Badger 175 Crescendo running about 50 PSI on carbon
dioxide.
I sprayed the navy blue using the large tip and needle, , a couple of the
other areas I sprayed using the medium, and the rest was with the fine
tip.
Pictures will be taken and posted or sent directly upon request. Feedback,
critiques, etc appreciated.
Allan.
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