Pittsburgh

I have my plane ticket booked. That, for some reason, was the most nerve wracking part. Lots of what if's coming into play. I honestly am just excited to get there and get started. To really knuckle down and get some serious experience under my belt. I'll be excited to be able to get back to posting about other artists and less "this is what I am doing". Sure, that's good stuff to the 4 readers I have, but there's so much to airbrushing that needs to be shared. I hate spot lights...

The east coast is a different creature all together. There's a lot I will have to figure out and get used to. I'm a one step at a time type of guy and I'm not sure that fits in so well over there. But, I also know that I'll be fairly close to some outstanding artists and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to doing some interviews, etc on some of the little known but should be knowns. This whole thing is really just one step further in my quest to paint the planet.

Todays Video of the Post is brought to you by me, cause it's freaking late and I'm tired:

Oldie, but a goody...

Pittsburgh? Pensyltucky? WTF?

So I got a job offer in Pittsburgh. Some folks that read this may remember me talking about this a while back. Well, the job is still on the table many months later. More than that, the job is just as good. How good? Well good enough that I'll be moving there sometime in the next few weeks.

The **** you say!

Well, these things happen. The reasons for going are many and varied, but why don't I talk about the ones that may apply to what this blog is about: airbrushing.

The job means that I would be making money while I furthered my career. It also means learning from someone who has been around for a while and has some tricks up his sleeve. Sure, it's Pittsburgh and who the hell is in Pittsburgh airbrushing? Well, that's the point really. Not many.

There is a lot of opportunity for me there, a lot of chances and a lot of things that could go wrong. Sink or swim sort of thing, and for some reason I do well in those situations if I put my mind to it. I will have to work for my food but I will have to do it with airbrush in hand. Have airbrush, will travel.

Today's Video of the Post belongs to: ArtLoversStudio18

July 4th at Latus Harley-Davidson

I had the good pleasure to be invited along to this event out at Latus Harley-Davidson for the weekend of the 4th. The event was all about Jason and Garage 31 doing some airbrush tattoos but he was down with me putting up some of my work for people to see. Overall the event went really well. Set up wasn't too bad, nothing was destroyed, and we had a lot of fun. There weren't as many people as there were last year, from what I was told, but to me it went really well. They had the Wall of Death there, which was incredible all on it's own,

as well as plenty of bikes, plenty of food, and plenty of people wanting airbrush tattoos. I also had the pleasure to meet Marshall Parks an extremely talented artist who is pushing the limits of Auto Air paints on a regular basis. I'll be writing more on him in another post.

I wanted to talk a little more about airbrush tattoos because that was the focus on the event. I fell in love with this stuff. It was great interacting with people, I can tell that there is a little bit of extra cash to be made during down times, and it was something new. The final result actually looked pretty close to a real tattoo and it was easy enough to do some freehand airbrushing on everything from arms to heads.

The paint we used was Body of Art by Temptu. It was an 8 oz bottle and ran around $34. We also, through out two days of airbrushery, didn't even hit the halfway mark (and we didn't just keep the airbrushing to skin). It's an alcohol based paint and sprays a little on the thick side, but adding a little rubbing alcohol to it seemed to loosen it up quite a bit. We were using the Iwata Eclipse CS. One thing I did notice was that if the paint sat for more than 20 minutes it would separate. It didn't take much more than a couple swishes with the cup to get it mixed up again, but we did burn through some ink before we knew it was happening.

We stuck to some simple stencils that Jason had put together but every now and then we would do some freehanding on ourselves to draw attention.

The process was pretty simple. Apply some rubbing alcohol with some cotton swabs to get rid of any oils. Dry that area with the airbrush (this also gets the person receiving the tattoo comfortable with the feeling of air on their skin), lay down the tattoo, then put some baby powder over it. As long as the person doesn't scrub heavy in the shower the tattoo will stay a couple days.

So now I'll be looking into making something like this happen. It's great fun and it will get my work out there while earning me a little extra money. Just one more thing I can do with my airbrush.

Today's Video of the Post is coming to you from Kustom Shop