TUTORIAL: Airbrush Style

I tried painting using airbrushes in the beginning of the process just like how I did long ago in order to compare the result with the paintings I have been doing lately. I thought that maybe someone liked this style or wanted to know the steps. // Photo by David Vance // Model: Philip Fusco

1. Sketching and drawing of course!
2. Blocking in base colors (the average color for each part) on separate layers so that you have something to work on (in case you don’t want to paint out of the area for example) and work with (so that you can smudge or mix colors better for example)
3. Using airbrushes to establish the darkest and then lightest areas on the skin (adding two more values)
4. Adding more values; here I added the lightest light because it made me see what I was going for or see the forms better
5. Using a correction layer to adjust the contrast to make it pop!
6. Painting smaller shapes/forms with more value variation
7. Dealing with the hair a little bit more (more values & detail). At this middle stage, I merged all layers of the character (skin+hair) so that they didn’t look so separate from each other.
8. The rest is to work towards smaller forms and detail until you’re satisfied! Mind the soft vs hard transitions between planes/values. I tried adding hatching at the end to make the image less computerized.