I own an Airbrush and I now know how to use it!
So i bought an airbrush last year and I think I may have played with it....twice!!??!! I decided I seriously needed to learn this most awesome tool as the potential it could add to not only my business but me as a person is HUGE...I love to learn new things and this was one I REALLY wanted to know about!
So i checked out various airbrush courses that fellow body painters were doing, and then looked at various standard airbrush courses and decided, that I didn't want to just learn about body painting, I wanted to know about different means and canvases, different styles, what would be used to airbrush...say...a motorbike or a general picture...what paint would i use, what techniques could i use that i could adapt to body painting?
So i went with a guy I found in Essex, London called John O'Callaghan. He had over 30 years of airbrush experience and has worked for some of the most prestigious people. He also only offered one to one courses which is exactly what I wanted. I wanted ALL the attention! I didn't want to compete with others or feel shy asking questions if I wasn't getting it like all the others! I wanted to learn EVERYTHING!
I booked in on a 2 day course over two saturday's - a beginners and an intermediate. My husband, Steve came with me and we travelled to John's home. We were welcome by John and his partner Mel and their very hyper German shepherd Luna!
After introductions, we got to learning, firstly going through the basics of an airbrush, how to take it apart, clean it and put it all back together..including my own airbrush so I knew it inside and out!
We practiced dots, lines and other various techniques before breaking for lunch (toasted sandwiches - yummy)! Once lunch was finished, we got to stencils and John had pre cut an eagle stencil which he then showed me how to paint using the airbrush and techniques to get a feathered look etc.
The end result which I was pretty pleased about!
The second Saturday we learned more techniques and how to acheive different textures. John decided he could teach me how to airbrush his Tiger...so with ALOT of help from him, we managed to complete this on canvas!! How amazing is that? There is no way I could've done it without John's help but I was pretty chuffed with the result!
Overall the course gave me a huge buzz to continue to use my airbrush - I am no pro...yet but I can achieve what I set out to do and believe with more practice it will be one of my best tools I use!