May 22, 2007: "Painting of Tica" - this is not a photograph

[milkfish]

I like how the "3.5 hour" image makes Tica look as if she has a layer of shaving cream on. Maybe that's what the painter needed to do mainly, leave off the subject's beard and mustache.

I have a couple of airbrushes myself and have used them a bit for work. I can picture how he could use the airbrush in laying down the base colors and blending the broad areas of shadow and highlight, not so much the details like the hair.

Subtle nuances created by an xacto knife, an eraser, and some colored pencil can build convincing skin texture. The etcetera technique also helps the believability of the skin and hair texture. Fine hair is created using my shield-reveal technique, and my split frisket technique. Airbrush constitutes about 99% of the image.