Airbrush Lesson 3 – Practicing your Shading Skills

In this airbrush lesson, we will cover shading and rendering a sphere putting to use the shading skills you learned in the last lesson.This is another one of those airbrushing basic skills you’ll need to have down, so it’s second nature to become proficient with your airbrush. Written By Don Johnson.

Here are all 5 Airbrush Basic Lessons

• Airbrush Lesson 1 – How to hold and use airbrush
• Airbrush Lesson 2 – Dots and Lines
• Airbrush Lesson 3 – Practicing your Shading Skills
• Airbrush Lesson 4 – Using Dagger Strokes
• Airbrush Lesson 5 – Practicing Your Airbrushing Skills

What you will need to complete this airbrush lesson:

• double action airbrush,
• airbrush ready colors,
• round template,
• paper,
• easel.

I just used a round piece of plastic as a template feel free to use anything round you have on hand. With airbrush ready paints (Golden Airbrush Colors, Com-Art) and using a gravity feed airbrush 10 to 20 PSI should work fine for this lesson.

Step #1) Secure you round template to your painting surface, paper in this case. This is accomplished much easier standing up with your paper mounted on an easel virus’s setting down.

Step #2) With the color you’ve chosen to use, airbrush a nice even circle around your template. Notice off to the right where I’ve tested my airbrush by spraying some color before start to work on the good portion of this painting. It’s always a good idea to test your airbrush to ensure it’s working correctly before applying color to your project. Also notice I follow the contour of the round template and did not apply color by airbrushing a crossed the template.

Step #3) Continue to apply color until you have built up a nice even dark tone around the template.

Step #4) Pull the template off your paper and your painting should look as pictured above.

Step #5) Continue to build your colors up keeping in mind the direction your light source is coming from and following the contour of the sphere.

Step #6) To help control over spray keep your airbrush directed inward, into your sphere as pictured above.

Step #7) Build your color up slowly until you are happy with your results. Pictured above is my completed sphere.

Here is a video that covers this airbrush lesson, I hope you find it helpful.