Sunday, November 27, 2011

Paint!!! Glorious paint!!!

Well after a few weeks of not being able to paint, I am back at it and EXTREMELY happy about that!!!
I put the studio back in working order on Friday of this week. I gave it a good cleaning, set the easels back up and added a couple new airbrushes to the family! More about that in a bit....

   My friends came from Barcelona and spent a week here with us in chilly Indiana.
I picked them up at Chicago Midway on November 10th. As my luck would have it, I was fortunate enough to be able to enjoy driving in our first snow of the season! Well snow wasn't all I encountered. During the drive west , within the epicenter of the much touted Lake Effect zone, I encountered, sleet, snow, rain and ice balls. Needless to say, it was an exciting drive there! Once I arrived in Chicago, it was dry as a bone...that figures!   
   It was nice to spend time with my friends again. It was a busy week and hopefully they enjoyed their stay in the Midwest, which I lovingly refer to as '2 hours from anywhere'...lol!
The week included a trips to our Amish country, the little local gallery I show at, day trips to Chicago and Michigan City. We had a small party a couple days after they arrived. I invited a couple artist friends, personal friends and family. I had my homemade pizza assembly line going! It was a FUN night! My friend Jerome drove his new custom car from Cleveland, Ohio and camped out here for the night. It's always a pleasure to have Jerome around to keep everyone laughing!
We also had an early Thanksgiving dinner. My turkey, my second ever, turned out just awesome!

Below is a picture of myself, David Naylor and Jerome Borris spending the afternoon painting on Sunday, November 20th. We were all a bit worse for wear since the party was the night before and no one got much sleep!


We were all just winging it and doodling away. It was fun!


   I am happy to be back to normal at my studio. I packed all the bedding away and set the studio space back up again. It's nice to have it all clean!
I recently purchased two used airbrushes from Ebay. One is an odd side feed, pen style model from Taiwan that appears to be vintage and not very common.
 I have to say, once I got it hooked up, it atomized and performed superbly! The hose connects to the back end of the handle and you hold it like a pen.
I was able to pull some very fine and delicate lines however the thing that I am not so keen about is that I can't remove the needle cap since the needle/nozzle cap is an all in one unit. Removing it renders the brush unusable.  It is difficult to be able to get the needle right on the surface in a particular spot when your not able to see it. It's trigger is a progressive action, not the more common double action. This means it sprays more like a paint gun in that you pull back for air then back more for paint.
All that being said, this thing atomizes like a fine powder puff so it will have a use in my collection. The sweetest part, it only cost me $30.00!!! :D

The other airbrush I also purchased was the Paasche V model. It is Paasche's line of detail airbrushes. This particular model is a side feed. It's gravity feed sibling is the Paasche Vjr and I  have one of those as well.
What I find funny is that most airbrush artists who claim to be worth their salt, consider this brand of brush to be worthless, old technology. They would much rather easily pay 8-10 times as much for something that does, in my opinion, the exact same thing! That's marketing for ya!!!!
Honestly, I can get this brush to do what my 'microns' do easily. I took this brush straight out of the box, hooked her up and pulled some amazing detail! Yes...all this coming from such a maligned industry dinosaur! ;) To prove my point, look for yourself...

Here's the Paasche V right out of the box.
Compared to Paasches most popular VL, the V and Vjr, have short and smaller bodies which in my opinion, are much more comfortable. The tip is the detail tip which I understand from what I have read, just for you techies, measures to be a .15mm.
I think the one modification I will make, is I will file down the needle cap so that the needle extends out and I will be able to remove dried paint. In other words, I'll make a 'paint picker, cap.


Here's the detail I was able to get with  Createx Wicked acrylic paint reduced at a 10:1 ratio (reducer:paint) and 15 psi of air pressure. Now I don't profess to be able to write script well at all with an airbrush, in fact I suck at it!  However the results I got from this little $45.00 Ebay gem  were amazing to me! So take that big dollar fancy schmancy airbrushes!!! I'll keep my frugal behemoth right here! ;)
I have since added this newest baby to my regular 'Big 3' line up!!






Yesterday was spent working on the final details of 'The Boots'.   I should have it done or at least extremely near done this week. My goal is to complete it this week.
I am so happy to be back painting in my quite little studio!! I am happiest when I paint so this has been a great week!
 Until next week...keep the canvas wet and your hand steady! Happy painting everyone!

Kathy

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