Safetygoat

learning to spraypaint freehand

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

For some reason or another, I’ve decided to learn how to spray paint.  Obviously, I really should have taken this up in my rebellious teenage years. That way I wouldn’t have to compare my stuff to a blindfolded 4-year old’s. This weekend I spent some time learning about shading and shadowing, and here’s my process. I’m not exactly proud of this work (she looks kind of weirdly proportioned) but it really taught me a lot about how spray paint works, and what I can and can’t do with it (yet!). Luckily I took a picture at every phase of the works.

Deciding shape and colours

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I went searching through my old sketchbooks and found this strange character I had drawn, and decided to base this piece on that. I first roughed it out in white, and then decided I was going to use my purple and cream for this piece. I worked on the background’s basics first as well.

Basic shape and shading

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I put the initial cover of the cream on the face, with the purple over top. It needed highlights, so I used the white and sprayed it on diagonally to get the shading effect. I think this is how the experts do it…a few of my strokes looked fantastic, but then if you lose your angle and spray straight on, you get blobs and smears. It’s definitely a technique I want to master!

Reworking

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At this point I took a step back, and realized that the chin was a strange shape and the forehead was much too small.  Also, it looked more like a girl, so I just went with the flow, and put some long hair on her. This is just a training exercise, so I didn’t mind moving away from my initial idea.

Adding black

This is where it all went wrong I think. The black was quite heavy, and she was quite washed out. I had also now layered up the paint quite a bit, so it was running down from her nose and whatnot. I liked the way it looked coming from the hair, but coming from the nose is well, not good! At this point, the eyes seemed quite heavy as well. I decided that maybe I would just create a base, and use my fat paint marker to do the finishing borders.

Back to the drawing board!

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So I brought it back to the base purple and layered the cream back on top.

Highlights and starting outlines

I just brought the white highlights back in, just in specific places, and began to create outlines on the background. At this point I had a huge problem, because the drips hadn’t dried properly and for some reason the cream colour was sticky, even when it was dry. Also, my nibs have started to block up. I’m going to have to figure out how to take care of them better! Again, it’s a learning process.

The final product

The lips got messed up, and I’m not very happy with the eyes, but it’s okay, I guess. I’ll have to be careful in the future with the marker, because once it gets paint on it, it goes a bit freaky!

My second spray this weekend

It’s fun to have the paint running! I love fish!

spray paint art