Creative art and design

I recently purchased the Motorbooks Workshop: How to Master Airbrush Painting Techniques written by JoAnn Bortles of Crazy Horse Painting. First of all, let me say that this is a very good book. Someone who is very advanced in airbrushing might not think the same thing, but for beginner and more advanced users, this book really is a good choice. After fixing up the garage/studio and some other things around the house, I finally found more time to paint.

There is plenty of free airbrushing info on the internet. More often than not though, the info is incomplete, or you have to have a paid subscription to the site in question to have access to full article. That might be worth it in some cases, but looking for free information on how to airbrushing can be quite time consuming. After some more sales (thank you buyers) I had enough extra money to buy the Motorbooks Workshop: How to Master Airbrush Painting Techniques. Price varies a little at different bookstores or sites, but I paid 25 dollars at Barnes & Noble and let me tell you, it was money well invested.

The book covers many different areas ranging from beginner to advanced techniques. It also talks about airbrush equipment and supplies, custom artwork and stencil and freehand techniques. On the backcover is the color coded index system (there is of course a regular index too). The “inset” or highlighted notes have that for background color in the different chapters. The thought behind that was good, but for the blue and brown index tabs, it does make it harder to read and more of a contrasting shade of that color would have been much better. It is still readable though.

Author and artist JoAnn Bortles does an excellent job in conveying the information in both an interesting and must read manner. I must say that I barely wanted to put the book down for anything once I started reading. There are many pictures with helpful captions as well.

This was a “Motorbooks Workshop” and Barnes & Noble had put it in the transportation section for cars, not in the art section. This might be something to consider if you go to a brick and mortar bookstore to buy this book.

Although the book is a “Motorbooks Workshop” it doesn’t just relate to painting on metal. The techniques can of course be applied to many different surfaces. Great reading, good advice and the many pictures makes this a worthwhile book indeed. It will save me hours of searching for free information on how to airbrushing.

Five stars for this book!

Until next blog post,
Kanweienea Kreations

I got some more painting done today. Yesterday I painted some cabinets with red spraypaint (Sherwin-Williams, and it was good paint too). I used red paint inside the cabinets as well. I also airbrushed some on them. Later they were of course clear coated. Today, I painted the top of the old cabinet blue. It is still drying so I can’t clear it yet, but will get that done here later today. I also painted a dragon on the mailbox. I didn’t have an outlet close so I couldn’t use the airbrush for that one and thus I handpainted it instead. Here are the results.

Mailbox dragon. Handpainted and clearcoated.

Old top was faded, grey white laminate color. Now, it is a pretty blue. For how long with paints, who knows...

Front of one cabinet

Front of other cabinet. Camera did not pick up details on this one.

Until next blog post,
Kanweienea Kreations

Where we lived before we only had offstreet parking. One day someone took the passenger side mirror off the car. Not cool. There was plenty of room to drive by the cars on the street where it had been parked. Anyways, we had the mirror replaced with a plain black mirror since that is all the car shop had. Now, they said oh take it to a paint shop, they can paint it for you the color of the car. How much would that be, we wondered and they said probably about 400 dollars or so. For a mirror? You kidding me? Point in question, it is one of my projects to paint the thing myself. It is only the back of the mirror.

I still need to get some sort of tshirt/jeans board up in the studio. We figure a sheet of plywood might do. The way things are set up now, I had to take that mirror outside the garage (since I was using a spraycan not an airbrush gun). Also painted some old pegs for the pegboard while I was at it. Dear hubby wanted to save them if possible and since I already painted the pegboard, I figured painting the holders for it wasn’t too much of a stretch.

First, I scuffed the back for the mirror. Alright, that went fairly well (first time I scuffed anything). Ok, went outside, and wind… and there was a hair, or something arghhh. Ok, wipe it off, wash it scuff it get the paint off… start over… oh boy. Then I was thinking I was gonna paint something on the mirror but decided to just leave it plain color and clear coat it. I don’t have one of those fancy vinyl cutting machines (for stencils) nor did I feel like sitting there with a knife cutting a stencil. Freehanding I do fairly often, but doing so now would have meant the slightest mistake start over. So for now it will be plain color for the mirror.

On a sort of different note, why does it have to be so hard (seems impossible) to find a mask that is smaller than the standard medium? The one I have now is a bit too big. I need one that can filter out the right stuff too, so just a plain dustmask won’t do.

As a side note, (hm many notes here now I guess) it is good to keep turpentine handy. Doesn’t smell good, but it gets that paint off. I was looking a bit silvery there at one point. After painting it outside I carried it in, to clear coat it.

Here are some pics, enjoy. Sorry no pics of the “silvery” me, I didn’t want to get paint all over the camera lol!

Scuffed plastic back of mirror. First try.

Some of the supplies. Used spraycan this time for silver paint.

Here is the result. Clear coated silver back for mirror.

Until next blog post,
Kanweienea Kreations

Well we got the garage walls painted. I chose a white sapphire from Behr (very impressed with their quality paints by the way). According to the paper sample it was supposed to come out a very light blue. Well, it did darken upon drying, but it is still whiter than I thought it would be. Still, I think it looks nice. We are hoping to insulate the garage before the winter and then I might choose a different color. Still, the light color will help with making it brighter to work in the garage, ahem studio. Especially since we are going to have to block off some of the glass block window. The shutter fan (12 inches) arrived the other day. Hubby helped paint the garage walls. He preferred to not be posted on the internet (sorry, I tried, I really did). Therefore I concealed his looks accordingly. Let me know what you think @kankreations on Twitter!

Here is my hunny bunny (pun intended) helping paint the walls. As you can see the yellow cream color (yucko!!) is getting nicely covered by the Behr paint. The slightly darker white you see is the paint that was behind the pegboard that had been there. Whoever painted the garage before had not painted behind it.

Garage walls painted.

As you might be able to tell, the tiny bit of blue in the white sapphire paint is being “picked up” by the dark blue colored floor

Until next blog post,
Kanweienea Kreations