Fails

emack

Double Actioner
I thought I'd share a laugh with tonight's fails.
First, the bird. All was going well... then it got hard. When it went south I used it to practice a little.
Then I grabbed a blank board and just had at it... Was shaping up when something went horribly wrong .... I grabbed a paint brush to mess around with the paints, seeing where it would go...... ended up needing some therapy after that thing.
A strange night of painting, but got to listen to tunes and chill.... still better than working. Enjoy!
 

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Thanks for sharing!

What are you having the most trouble with? Maybe we can offer something useful.
 
Thanks for sharing!

What are you having the most trouble with? Maybe we can offer something useful.

Thanks for the offer to help... I'm using the wrong substrate to begin with. Water color paper is too rough for smooth results.... Couple that with a medium nozzle air brush (Iwata CN4500 medium)... and lack of experience.... and wha-lah. I am learning a lot as I go tho... and getting used to the airbrush. The hardest thing for me is shading and detail. I just bought a new Harding Ultra 2.0 to help with detail work... experience will just have to come on its' own. I should watch a few videos on airbrushing as it could expedite my learning curve... but for me it's as much about the journey.
When I want to feel productive I grab my camera :)
 
Your head is in the right place, and the Ultra will hopefully help. If you haven't watched any videos yet, there are a ton of useful ones on youtube. Just plan on spending some time watching them. Check out Airbrush Ninja's tutorials. They helped me a lot.

Shading/shadows are rough at first. It's easy to lay down too much paint too quickly and ruin the whole thing. Keep in mind that you can always come back and add more. For the fine lines, that comes with trigger control, which comes with practice. There's also an element of getting the paint reduction right. The figuring stuff out part of it is fun for me, maybe not for everyone, but it's part of the process. Practicing the fine lines helps you get better at aiming the brush, and the trigger control helps with everything else.

Keep going!
 
every day is a good day if your not at work !
Having fun is the important bit, if its not fun then there is no reason to keep smacking your head with the painting you just messed up !

Don't get disheartened, we've all been where you are and for some of us it only feels like yesterday.

I enjoy a challenge, that's what kept me going in the beginning, I've always enjoyed being creative so this was just another outlet for that creativity.
I got hooked early and as soon as I realised I was trying to paint the whole image all at once and that was the wrong approach I started to slow down and take the picture apart.
I start with the background, get that done. then slowly move to the foreground.
like Karl said, let us know what exactly you are having trouble with and I'm sure you'll get suggestions from many different sources.
 
Thanks guys, I find the time spent airbrushing to be relaxing. No frustration at all. I wouldn't be posting fails if I didn't see the humor in them. It's always fun to see where a image is taking you, often in a very different direction from conception. I'm used to this, as a photographer images seen through the view finder often come out very different than what I intend. That is what the Delete function is for. The take away from failure is to learn from it.
Enjoy a photo I took yesterday...
 

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You’ve got the right attitude so you’ll be fine. Just one step at a time is all it takes.
Great photo !
 
Yep, great shot!

In my experience, not as an airbrusher, but in life, it's good to have goals and aspirations, but when diving into something completely foreign to you, expect to fail, at least at first. Learning from those failures is what make you better at it. Sometimes you don't get better and it's time to move on, but give it a solid chance before that happens. You might surprise yourself!
 
Airbrush art takes a lot of planning in advance. You have to think about exactly what you want to portray and what all the elements are going to be such as texture, color, lighting, action, etc. and carefully plan a lot of that stuff in advance.

Finally don’t be so hard on yourself. I get where you are coming from because I am a perfectionist myself and want everything to go perfectly on the first try. And if I don’t get that I get pretty discouraged quickly. In truth though, every single project that you do is building up a library of knowledge and confidence toward the next one. If you didn’t like how certain things went, ask yourself why you felt they went bad, and what would be a good techniques that would work better in the future. Even the best artist in the world make mistakes; they just never tell you where they’re located on their pieces.
 
Airbrush art takes a lot of planning in advance. You have to think about exactly what you want to portray and what all the elements are going to be such as texture, color, lighting, action, etc. and carefully plan a lot of that stuff in advance.

I love this reply. I was thinking the exact same thing over the last few days watching a guy do some acrylic hairy brushwork on youtube. You could tell he had a plan, but it seemed much more freeform in layering and freeform shapes.
Dru Blair did an interview on youtube with Tim J.L. Smith. It was pretty good and had some discussion about how artists think, that really opened my eyes.. because it's exactly how I think. Which is usually in a self deprecating way.
 
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