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Airbrush Lessons Index

Lesson One

Lesson Two

Lesson Three

Lesson Four

Lesson Five

Reducing Paint

Fine Lines, Detail

Detail Trick

Auto Art

Airbrush T Shirts

T Shirt Lettering

Fixing a bent needle

Fixing Airbrush Tip

Airbrush Cleaning

Airbrush Cleaning Two

Airbrush Basic Article

Paint Strainer

The Basic's

Paint for Airbrushing

What is a airbrush?

Types of Airbrushes

Airbrush Repair

Sticky Airbrush Trigger

Using airbrush templates

Airbrush main lever Replacement

Airbrushing a Star

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Here we will go over quickly the use of stencils for airbrushing a design. Using stencils like this one made by Beyond6 and sold by Sata USA makes getting into the world of airbrushing, custom painting very easy for just about anyone; no drawing skills required. This flaming skull stencil measures 5 ¾ by 3 ¾ inches and is actually marketed for body art use but can be used on any number of other surfaces such as helmets, bikes, t -shirts, models etc. ; its use is only limited by your imagination. In this example which took me about 5 minutes at the most I pretty much stayed with the basic design as out lined by the stencil but do not let this stop you from making your own changes to the design. Add more flames, change the eyes, add a cool back ground the possibilities are endless and best of all NO drawing skills are required on your part. Ray at Beyond6 has given to a guide to go by it's up to you to expand on that and make it your own unique design.

This same stencil was given away FREE to everyone who subscribed to Airbrush Technique Magazine at the time issue #14 was published (July 2006). Thank you Ray and Sata USA for making that possible.

Pictured above is the Beyond6 Flaming Skull stencil; laser cut and made of a plastic like material durable enough to last for years. As you will find out many of the stencils marketed for airbrushing today are made of very thin material and do not last very long, not so with Beyond6 stencils these are quality stencils which you will get years of use out of.

To help control over spray while using a stencil of this type you will want to form a frame around the stencil using masking tape. Doubling the tape over after you attach it to the stencil will ensure no glue backing is exposed to cause problems. You want the masking tape frame to be just off your painting surface to deflect overspray from the surrounding surface as you airbrush. Taping the stencil in place on all four sides will in most cases just expands the border and you will get noticeable over spray on your surface; leave the tape lifted just off the surface to avoid this.

Now for the fun part adding color to bring our stencil design to life; you can at this point position the stencil where need be on your painting surface and using several small pieces of tape secure it in place. In this example the surface being airbrushed is just news print. If it where metal you could use small magnets to hold the stencil in place.
My airbrush of choice for this little project is an Iwata HP-CS and paint Golden Airbrush Colors which is water based paint spraying at about 12 PSI. The first color I airbrush is yellow into the flames; when using a stencil like this use the least amount of air pressure as necessary to give you good paint atomization and spray square into the stencil. Spraying from either the right or left side will in most cases lift the stencil and cause paint to get under the stencil cut out. So be sure to spray square at the stencil; by square I mean straight at the stencil not angled to either the right or left side.

My next color will be red which I will spray selectively into the flame licks concentrating or directing most of the red toward the bottom of the flames letting it fade up into the yellow producing an orange color. At this point you can add some color to the eyes and teeth if you like also.
Moving onto the skull black will be the next color airbrush but in just a small amount so it actually produces a gray on the surface. I out line the skull, nose and eyes with a light shade of gray produced by the black I'm spraying very lightly. I think it will make the eyes more interesting if we do not fill them in completely with black so leave yourself some of the surface color in the eyes.

When I secured the stencil to my surface I did so just at the top so it became hinged onto my painting surface which would make realigning it easy if I had to. Flipping my stencil up you can see we have a pretty good start on the design; never once where we called upon to use any drawing skills.

Now it just a matter of free hand airbrushing to finish up the design; remember to keep your airbrush pointed into the design to help contain the paint within the design. That's a long winded way of telling you to control your over spray. At this point you can really make the design your own by adding to the skull whatever you like. You will find free hand airbrush much easier on hard surfaces if you use a gravity feed airbrush like the Iwata HP-CS, HP-B, HP-C or Sata 3 airbrushes and fairly low air pressure setting.
I kept my design quick and simple just adding some shading using black, a few cracks in the skull and wisps of smoke coming out each side drifting off toward the top.

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