Skull Mastery: A Complete Airbrush Tutorial

before we jump into this video there's a couple things that I wanted to mention the first is to apologize this is completely uncut this is 100 start to finish you will get to see me paint this entire skull from beginning to end in real time I haven't cut anything out when I started filming this I had three cameras set up one on the actual saddlebag cover one a little bit further away where you can just see me working and another one pointed at my cleaning station where I cleaned the brush to change colors for some reason about 10 minutes in the camera pointed at the cleaning station malfunctioned and quit working I didn't realize it until I sat down to go through the footage I've left that footage in because I was still talking while I was cleaning the brush and changing colors but you won't actually be able to see what I was doing I apologize for that other than that you get the full video this is starting from just a black panel and working up to this point I use a paper cut stencil just to get the placement and the size of the skull where I want it I will put that up on the screen it's my original sketch along with a picture of the final result so that you can take a screenshot of that if you wish and then you can try painting the same skull on just a black panel if you choose to do so this is pretty much freehand that doesn't mean that you have to use only freehand techniques you're more than welcome to use masking or stencils freehand Shields whatever you choose to use what works for you is ultimately what you should use I do use a freehand Shield a handful of times but for the most part this is all freehand airbrushed so I hope you guys get something out of this if you do remember to like subscribe and share let's Dive In hi I'm Trevor with Wicked art studio and in this video I'm going to show you how I go about painting skull on a saddlebag lid for a motorcycle using the techniques and really the style that I've developed over several years it begins with a basic sketch and in order to come up with my basic sketch I generally use a skull replica I'll leave a link in the description below where you can get one of these as well as all of the other products that I use in this video the cool thing about an actual skull replica is you can Orient this in any direction that you want the jaw is spring loaded it actually opens it has all the cracks and other details in a real skull the other nice thing about this is you can set it up in your studio in whatever orientation you like and you can see how the light reflects off of it so you get a good idea how to paint your shadows and your highlights I'm going to set this up off to the side where I can see it while I'm actually painting that looks pretty good so using the skull replica I come up with the sketch for the design this is the original sketch that I came up with for this saddle bag from here I will make photocopies of the sketch that way I can cut out a paper cut stencil in order to get the placement that I want and just give me some guidelines as far as initially putting the skull onto the painted surface you can make your stencil as detailed or as plain as you like if this is something new to you you may want to add a lot more detail for me I've been doing this for 30 years I don't need a lot of information in order to begin painting initially I just have basically the darkest areas cut out of this stencil when I'm drawing my skulls I will generally exaggerate certain features for example in this particular design it's elongated it's a little bit longer than it would actually be and that's just to put my own style and spin on it I've got one of the photocopies up here so that once I remove the stencil from the surface I still have that as a reference and I also have my skull replica off to the side so at this point we're ready to start putting paint onto the surface I store my airbrushes wet so I will empty out the plain water that's in the brush now and I already have paint mixed up because I've been working on other parts of this motorcycle prior to recording this particular video so I've got paint mixed and ready to go the first color I'm going to use is createx illustration neutral gray number seven this is reduced about one to one so one part paint to one part reducer and I'm not real scientific when I go about reducing the paint I just pour in about what looks to be close to a one-to-one mix and then I can reduce it further from there if needed or I can add a little bit more paint to thicken it up if needed one to one usually works really well for just about everything I do so I've got that stirred up and I can pour just a little bit into my Iwata CMC airbrush test the spray just a little bit on the backboard of my easel first step I don't need Super detailed spray coming from the brush we're just going to Loosely put some paint onto the surface in order to map this out my air pressure is set right about 20 psi so initially I can fold this main portion of the stencil up and out of the way and I'm going to just dust some paint on the entire surface working around my stencil very lightly this doesn't require a lot of paint it's not imperative that the stencils stay right next to the surface I can fold that back over now what you could do at this point is clean your airbrush out and put some black in the brush in order to get these darker areas I'm not going to do that because it's just more time I'm just going to put a little bit more paint into all these dark surfaces just to map them out so I know where they are still very light I don't need a lot of paint on the surface should be good we can lift this up take a look yeah I'm happy with that so I'll go ahead and remove my stencil and set that aside thank you so at this point I'm going to start building some texture into this design first thing I'm going to do is wipe this down with a tack rag really quickly just to make sure it's clean so to build the initial texture I use a combination of a lot of squiggly lines dots and even just some lines for a larger area like this I'll pull the airbrush back a little ways and just start putting paint onto the surface overlapping the same areas numerous times you'll notice I'm not working the action on the trigger at this point I've opened the paint flow up and I'm just letting it flow right where I have it's set I get closer to the actual Edge of the skull then I can start working some lines in here to really Define that edge I'm not worried about making it perfect because this portion of this skull will be slightly out of focus good to have focal variation in your artwork just slight focal variation it doesn't have to be really fuzzy but I want the outer edge on the top and probably on this right Edge to be just a little bit fuzzy like it's out of focus and then the areas in here will be a lot more in focus a little more detailed and I'll work this texture right up to those lines we just created if you need to get a little bit closer you can do so if you do go outside of the lines it's not detrimental at this point because we will come back in with some black the same color of black that I used for the base coat on these parts and we can always clean that up if we need to I like using this neutral gray number seven because it's a very light shade of gray it's actually pretty close to White it almost looks white when you have nothing else to contrast it to other than the black so once you put your white highlights over this color along with the other shaded colors that we'll have on this the white really stands out and your highlights pop very nicely we'll get down here to sort of where the bridge of the nose is looking at my sketch to see where all my lines are I can rough those in with this color make sure you watch for tip dry you can tell just by the air flowing it was getting a little bit of a whistle so I knew I had a little bit of tip dry beginning to form and in this area I'll add some lines and this is working off of my replica that's where I'm getting the information as well as the fact that I've painted a lot of skulls over the years so I kind of understand how they look and where the different details are located if you're not as familiar with them like I said it's a good idea to either have a photo reference or that skull replica model really is nice to have and you can spray a light fog over these areas as well to brighten them up just a little bit more and although this is an opaque color with it the reduction ratio being pretty close to a one to one you kind of lose a little bit of that opacity so you can get you can cover what you've already painted if you put too much paint down but with just a light fog it'll brighten it up but you're not going to lose all of that texture that you put underneath and the reason that I like to build texture in this initial base layer of paint is because it actually makes the process go a little bit faster you could just as easily start with either the same gray as just a straight base coat or even use white over the black when you're working on a dark color like this the downside to that is most people would mask that off and you're going to work with hard masked edges because it's going to take a number of coats of paint to really get a uniform coverage over a really dark color like this there are other ways that you can mitigate that really harsh taped Edge but at the end of the day they all take more material as far as paint is concerned and they also require a little bit more time because you have to go in and mask things off this is not a super fast method of painting a skull because in the end it's a very detailed very texture rich way to do it I don't personally refer to it as realistic because I tend to like my artwork to still look like artwork when it's finished but it is a very believable way to do this again on these larger areas I can back up a little bit and put larger texture into the design so again remember this is going to be slightly out of focus as we get farther up here this by pulling the airbrush back and putting larger dots on here that just plays into that slightly out of focus look times I'd use use only air from the airbrush to dry the paint that I've just applied working on the edge the outline again this doesn't need to be perfect and then right back into creating some of this underlying texture I can outline around the eye socket no socket and these other shadowed areas just so that I don't completely lose them once the texture starts being worked in around them foreign Right Above This eye socket I'm using just lines to kind of build this color and as I get closer to the inside then I'll start creating texture on a smaller scale using the same technique that I've been using up to this point to make the texture smaller all I've done is I've moved the airbrush closer to the surface and I can and add some of those lines back to it overlapping the same areas several times in order to brighten it up and it also helps you fill any darker spots that you might create when you're doing this again you can fog some color over what you've created in order to lighten that area up or even even that out some see I'm going to spit up above there right there part of it came off there's still a small area there that's again no big deal we're going to come back in with our base coat black and go around the outside outline of this in order to clean that up but also keep it very fuzzy foreign this is generally lines as opposed to the dot texture so I'll go in and work some lines into this area so you're always paying attention to the flow of the actual skull knowing that this is going down and then protruding out to the tip of that socket it's also very important to understand where your light source is coming from anytime you're painting something in this case my light source is coming basically from the top right corner can I add a little bit of dark texture in here just to tie it in but primarily on the bridge of the nose you're dealing more with lines you can see this is very loose I'm not worried about making these lines exact and go back and clean that up later same thing on this section kind of behind this eye socket I tend to use more lines in this particular area as opposed to the dots and as it starts coming back up and meeting the rest of the top of the skull then I'll transition it back into the dot texture particular area right behind this highlight will be pretty dark it's in Shadow I just want a little bit a hint of some texture in there so this is very loose but it's also relatively quick compared to trying to paint individual dots and eventually you get really the same kind of effect this is just a faster way to get there you'll notice how right above the eye socket I got a little bit closer with the airbrush it's got a little more detail this area will be a little more in Focus compared to this area up here and then I try to blend that out a little bit so it looks like it flows naturally into the out of focus or the less in Focus areas hopefully you can see it overlapping the same area multiple times just crazy random patterns like this really gives you nice texture to start with and I can brighten this area up just a little bit my fogging some color over it if you see areas that have a little bit larger darker areas than what you really want you can come back in and add a little bit more and again varying the distance that you're actually spraying from is going to vary the size of the texture that you get top half looks pretty good there fill this will area in a little bit and some more lines right now at this point these lines do not show up very well which is cool because it's a very subtle way of adding some different texture into the same area that we've been working if you really want to make them stand out we can come back in with some black later and shade one side of them to show Shadow and that will look like almost a little bit of a scar on the skull or a small indented area right now the top of this a little bit more towards the back and back down here again working more with lines at this point there will be a little bit of a crack right in here somewhere doesn't need to be exact again at this point I'm just kind of marking it so I have an idea where I want it so that I don't forget it later and for the most part this eye socket will be just black which is not really realistic at all but there will be a little bit of some reflected shadows and highlights here at the edge so I can add just a little bit of somewhat detail in here using lines to kind of Define this area maybe some dots or dot lines I guess this is what this really is because I'm not technically spraying just dots and making lines and then where the airbrush stops temporarily get that dot but it does build a really nice base of texture again down on the side of the nose it's usually more lines than it is dots so again understanding the flow of the bone structure that you're working with will help to make it a little more believable you can see how nicely this color is spraying my Dew won't very thin tight nice lines there's a little bit of a crack normally right in this area where you can still see most of the black so in order to leave that area so that I don't lose it later I can work some lines up to it but I'll leave a little bit of that black showing there you can just fog some color in try to clean the tip dry off of my brush and now I can still see that separation there if you need more separation than that you can leave it darker in that area if you need to this portion here right below the eye socket before it gets to this shadowed area again is generally more lines I'll put a little bit of dot texture in here but for the most part these are all lines notice how I'm angling them as I come around the bottom of the socket the lines are going up into this area so come around the bottom of the cheekbone I'll angle them more downward again I'll add a little bit of the other texture in here as I get away from being right next to the eye socket this area will be more in Focus so they can be closer to the surface a little bit tighter really to do this I'm just shaking my hand around sometimes and that creates the texture I'm not worried about my lines being exact all going in the same direction if you make it a little bit chaotic to where it's almost doesn't look like it should make sense it actually makes it more believable because it's not so contrived same thing on this area I'm gonna work more in lines working quickly I'm not trying to take my time with this this is just the initial base layer of the texture you will still see a lot of this when this is finished though if there's something that you don't like that's okay you can go back in and cover it up or change it too a little bit of dots in here to kind of give me that transition where all my lines were going in different directions so get down to the area where the teeth would have been let's get this bottom of this cheekbone in first this is more dot texture here foreign just slightly right there that's not a big deal this area right in here is going to be very heavily shadowed and you can fog some color in here to brighten this up just a little bit for the area we get down into where the teeth would be I didn't put any teeth on this particular skull it's all going to be just kind of jagged broken so I can come down here and kind of loosely map that out doesn't have to be exact ly I just want a rough idea of where I want things to end and in this area again you get a lot of lines as well as the dot texture in between where the roots of the teeth would be so keeping in mind your light source you can see how I have this little curve curving up like my finger so this side of the curve is going to be in light because our light source is coming from up here the back side is going to be the shadowed area I'm not going to build all of the Shadows in on this initial layer so you want to keep that in mind when you are painting throughout the rest of this I like to use a mixture of both lines and dots down here in this area near the bottom of this is where things are going to be more in Focus so I'm a lot closer to the surface there's also generally a crack coming down from the bottom of the nose socket that will be somewhere in that General vicinity again it doesn't have to be exact at this point just keep in mind where things are going to be located there's also this little protrusion area on the bottom of the nose socket I can paint in with just some lines that goes up kind of back into the cavity of the nose for the socket anyway good enough for that and then I can continue with creating the texture down here as well as Loosely outlining the nose socket there and this again it's kind of a transition I'll have lines transitioning into more of the dot texture this area is going to be very dark in Shadow again remember the light source is coming from up here so I'll work a little bit texture off in to this area but for the most part this is going to be very dark you'll a lot of this will be the same color as the base coat and then it'll gradually Fade Into the highlighted areas of the skull so just a little bit of loose texture just to create the idea that there's something there back there in that shadow I might tighten this area up just a little bit it looks better and then my shadow line here I'm going to work this texture out here a lot smaller that will kind of Define where I want that line to be same process just opening up the paint letting it flow and then randomly moving the airbrush around lightly fog that over to brighten it up a little bit moving down again I like to use lines as well as the dots down here closer to the where the teeth would be notice how I'm using lines in different directions again you don't want this to look too contrived you want to make it believable so using Randomness really helps to sell that idea so heavy with the paint right there had a small spider not a big deal you can continue going over that same area and it'll start to disappear and all the other texture that you're creating brighten that area up a little bit some air to dry that again remember we've got lights and shadows highlights and Shadows on each side of where these teeth would have been I'm not worried about creating that now do you want to keep that in mind later this takes a little bit longer to cover a larger area when you're working closer to the surface but again you can see the difference between the small texture that you get the slightly larger texture and then the even larger texture on the top if you created all of your texture exactly the same it just isn't going to look as believable so it's worth taking the extra time that it takes to do this and in the end you don't have to add as much texture with the other shading colors which is only going to be black in this case and then the highlights will be the final highlights will be with pure white so once this initial layer is really kind of built in this process goes quite a bit faster there's usually a little bit of a hole right there underneath the cheek add a little bit of some detail around that area because that will probably show slightly time this is finished this part of the cheekbone would be curving back in around that area again I highly recommend either using the skull replica so that you have a real three-dimensional model to look at to give you the direction when it comes to things like this or even a really good photograph photographic reference or a couple of good photographic references really helps to make your work more believable to take it to that next level if you're trying to replicate what you're actually seeing in nature versus just trying to make it up off the top of your head when you've done a lot of skulls it's not terribly difficult to make it up off the top of your head I've been doing this for 30 years now and skulls have always been a big part of the custom culture and custom paint jobs so that is one thing that I have painted a lot of the skulls and I actually enjoy I know not everybody is into skulls I actually really enjoy painting skulls because there's a lot of different elements that you can add to a skull it's a lot of texture there's a lot of different form shapes as far as the way that the skull is shaped so you can work on really building a three-dimensional looking painting versus something flat all the little cracks and details and you can really put as much work into something like this as you want so they can be very simple to paint or they can be a lot more complicated it all depends on what you want to work on or what your client wants at the end of the day see I'm working on some lines here because this is the separation there's a little bit of an area on the right side of this nose socket and then this is going to curve back up and we're basically going to paint the same area that we did on this side underneath the eye socket on this side so again I'm using more lines in this area because that's the way the grain kind of works on a real skull and it will curve up I'm about out of paint and we'll have a little bit of the outline of the skull showing on the outside of this eye I'm going to have to add a little bit more paint to my cup make sure you stir your paint when you have some mixed previously and it's set for a little while because it will start to separate I'm going to try to get just a little bit of paint into cup I'm not going to need a lot more test it on the backboard of my easel and we should be good we can start using lines to build a little bit of this area around the eye socket on this right side using lines brushes not spraying super cleanly at this point I'm not terribly concerned again this is going to be a slightly fuzzy a little bit out of focus area by the time this is all said and done just creating lines overlapping the same area over and over again until I build up the brightness that I kind of want the preliminary brightness that's not probably as bright as it's going to be in the end and work some texture down lower probably need to reduce this paint just a little bit more again this area here is going to be very dark and in Shadow but it will lighten up as it gets closer to the edge so I can add some texture in here so we'll have something to show where the shadow gets lighter have the same little hole over here underneath that eye socket that you would have here but I don't think you're probably going to see that one it's going to be really dark up in there maybe I'll add a little more texture up in here just to just in case also add some lines maybe a little bit of dots right there next to the edge of the nose or just squiggly lines and dots this is a better way to describe that add a little bit more color in here to brighten this edge up and I can finish adding the texture very bottom should have been a little more careful with the outline at the very bottom of this I normally am but again we can clean that up with the black it's not detrimental but we've been a little bit less work if I had taken my time just a little bit more okay I'm adding some lines up in here fog it in a little bit to brighten some of this up again you can see I've left a darker area right here so that I don't lose where I want that shadow to be that looks pretty good one thing that I do want to do quickly is just run a tack rag over this because we're spraying a lot of paint it's low pressure so there's not a ton of overspray I'm putting paint on the surface relatively softly as well so just to make sure any loose overspray is removed point I can clean my airbrush out quickly just using plain Water Rinse it out just use a paper towel and wipe out the excess I'll put water back in the brush one more time and I have an old paint brush that I use kind of clean out the bottom of the cup I can empty this out one more time and we should be good to go to our black so this is the same black that I used to base coat all of these parts to begin with it's wicked black maybe jet black I don't remember for sure but this also is mixed about one to one with 4011 reducer and it's probably a little bit too thick for this particular airbrush this airbrush has a 0.23 millimeter needle and nozzle set again I'm spraying it about 20 psi I can test it on the backboard of my easel it was spraying largely okay but if I want super fine detail I'm probably going to need to reduce it a little bit more first thing I'm going to do is clean up a little bit of the overspray around this outside edge you'll notice that I may I'm aiming the airbrush away from the skull because I want the overspray to go outside and that will create for the fuzzy slightly out of focus Edge that we're looking for the top portion of this skull pretty close to the surface this is more difficult to do when there's a camera right in the way that looks better clean up some overspray on this back side around the eye socket I know you can see on camera or you can probably see on camera the overspray outline where I'm spraying this color once the Clear goes over this that will disappear provided you're using the same color that you use to base coat it this is the same black that these parts were shot the base coat width and I can work on cleaning up some of these areas down here on the bottom of it I'm paying attention to my reference that I have from a drawing up above these areas to kind of have that curve in them like they're once or teeth in this area plaque for whatever reason just to get tip dry more often than the other colors I've been working with lately not sure why that is and this doesn't have to be exactly like the drawing again we use the paper cut stencil just to get the rough outline and then I can make this however I want it to look just as easily as I can make the drawing look however I want it to look foreign just cleaning up some of the overspray from the edges that looks better we'll probably have to clean those up once or twice more throughout this process most likely I will around this area because I'll be a little bit further away and I want this to be slightly fuzzing out of focus down at the bottom unless I mess up probably won't have to mess with those anymore so now we can start filling in the eye socket and the nose socket same thing just working freehand I'm going to begin really darkening these areas up you can absolutely use a freehand Shield when you're doing this if you would like for example on the bridge of the nose there that's going to remain pretty Sharp when this is all finished so you can use freehand Shield to keep that edge nice and clean and that's very sharp and in Focus as opposed to this up here and that's what I was talking about when I said focal variation earlier on I'm probably for the most part going to work this completely freehand because we will be coming in and working that area again so at this stage it's really not necessary to keep things super sharp and clean you can always clean it up later if you need to but it is an option and it gives you practice at working with your freehand Shields as well so if that's not something you're used to working with it's not a bad idea to practice if you are going to use freehand Shields can keep in mind your focal variations you'll get a lot more believability out of your work if you have some very sharp and in Focus areas along with some other areas that are not quite as in focus very similar to watching other YouTube videos where they have better cameras than I do and you'll see the person's face in the video is super sharp and in Focus but in the background it's a little fuzzy and out of focus that's exactly what I'm talking about incorporating into your artwork and it will add believability or tip dry working freehand like this takes practice let's face it freehand is King if you get to the point where you can pretty much freehand anything you want with your airbrush then you will be able to paint really anything that you want be unstoppable slight hole down here remember perspective too this side of the skull is actually farther away than this side of the skull so that hole is going to be a little bit smaller compared to the one say on this side when looking at my skull replica they're pretty much the same size on that replica now you can change it up you don't have to make them both the same size or the same shape if you don't want to again that's where your own artistic license comes in you have the freedom to paint this however you like start working in a little bit of the shadow in this area this is a very black black as you can see from this eye socket if I'm going to start shading areas heavily I'm really going to want to really over reduce this color because it will get really dark really fast but I can fog just a little bit in to kind of start building that shadowed area up same thing on this side very lightly fogging this color in I want to get super carried away so I'll actually come in with a different black after this color and there is a specific reason for that this black again the pigment I think is slightly larger in the wicked colors compared to the illustration colors so you don't get quite as crisp and sharp detailed lines as easily I'm not saying you can't do it with the wicked colors because you can generally takes a little more air pressure to push it through the airbrush for something like this I like working at the lower 20 psi air pressure because it doesn't create a lot of overspray it keeps your work a lot more clean in the end you can see I'm getting some nice small lines keeping this clean but this color doesn't do this as consistently I don't know if you can see the tip dry on the end of the needle or not it also tends to get tip dry really fast so if you notice that the paint is not flowing when you pull the airbrush back to a point where the paint is normally flowing and you probably have a little bit of tip dry that line was not small little again we're still in the very early stages of this so I'm not looking for perfection in any of this we can go back and clean steaks up relatively easily if we need to and now I'm more or less trying to block in the really dark areas and this doesn't have to be nice straight perfect lines either you can make them a little rough and ragged like they 've been aged or broken it's completely up to you as the artist I want to try to get some fine lines with this color I don't know whether it'll work or not it's not working out really well I'll probably use my other black to get the really nice detailed lines so now I will continue to fill in this socket and cereal right behind it is going to be very dark and in Shadow as well darken this up some back to the eye socket let's see I just got a little bit lower than what I really wanted that's okay this portion kind of this area here is still within the eye socket but you're still going to be able to see a little bit of it time it's said and done this is where you really start to build the form is adding some of your shadows into the shape of the skull it starts to really develop into what looks like a three-dimensional piece as opposed to a one-dimensional painting cleaning the tip dry again and notice that the brush was not spraying when I was pulling the trigger back far enough that it would normally be spraying and that looks pretty good half tempted to try putting the crack underneath the nose socket here don't know that that's a good idea not really so I'm going to change to my other black from this point so I can clean out the airbrush same method that I did before using some water doesn't need to be cleaned extremely well because I'm going right to Black again but this time I'm going to use createx illustration black I'm sure some of you are wondering why I would switch to a different black and there's a couple of reasons create text illustration black has smaller ground pigments so you can actually get better detail with the illustration black the illustration black is also a transparent as opposed to an opaque so I can get better gradations in my Shadows with the illustration black compared to the wicked base coat black that I was using previously again that was mixed about one to one with 4011 reducer I'm going to add even more reducer to the airbrush cup so that I can get those nice gradations and get a really transparent version of this color I can back flush the airbrush in order to mix that reducer in and then spray it on the backboard of my easel to make sure getting good spray characteristics the reason that I don't really like using this color a lot and why I don't use it only against this black base coat background is because this tends to get a little bit of a brownish tinge to it so I can start building some of the Shadows into this skull overall there's going to be a little bit of a shadow in the top side of it getting a little bit darker as it goes back maybe a little bit of a shadow right above the eye sockets this is very very light you don't want to overdo your shadows extremely easy to come back in and add more paint if you need to it's not as easy to lighten everything back up if you go too dark there's nothing wrong with putting this super light wash of this color over the entire skull because we'll come back in with the neutral gray number seven once again after this step and build up some of our highlights and texture even further with that color again so I don't mind going in and spraying a very very light wash of this color over the entire area now I'm going to really get strategic and start building some of the Shadows up where I want them this area at the top of your eye sockets is going to be darker underneath because our light again is coming from up above so I'll get a little bit closer kind of make this a little bit fuzzier we also have the crack we're going to put over here this color will give me finer lines I think again it's difficult to do this sometimes with a camera right in my way that looks pretty good got a couple little lines coming off of that that was just for added detail it's not necessarily the way it would really be working on extending the Shadow from this sort of hole here forward as well as bringing the shadow up around this portion of the eye socket and till it kind of rounds out above the nose Bridge which also has a very fine crack going around it this color gets tip dry relatively easily as well build a little bit of a shadow above that crack build the Shadow from this eye socket going up as well might be some little holes another little cracks and Imperfections in this area so you can do the same thing with this color that we were doing with the neutral gray number seven when it comes to building texture you want to make sure it's nice and over reduced right now I'm doing the same thing I'm a little bit further away allowing paint to flow and I'm just randomly moving the brush around and it's building some very light shaded texture I think this is still a little bit dark to get closer I would want to over reduce it even more than what I have at this point pry that's not too bad so I can get some of that Dot and line texture with this darker color doing the same thing that we did with the gray same thing with those lines you can actually add just a little bit of a shadow to some of the lines that we created and make them really stand out a little bit more there's generally a lot of little lines right above the bridge of the nose both light and dark that I like to incorporate in my skulls as well as little holes you want to make sure color is reduced nicely when you're doing this type of detail work and then it's flowing well it's very easy to get a little too much color and wind up with a place you might have to repair and some more Shadow with a little bit of texture in this area that is pretty dark gonna add a little bit more reducer to this same thing I can back flush the airbrush in order to mix that in spray it for a minute to work what was in the fluid nozzle out and we'll see what we got here I just spilled paint all over the airbrush if I've got too much paint in the cup which is a downside to working without a lid CMC doesn't come with a lid that actually covers the entire brush it's open on the top foreign not a huge fan of I don't generally airbrush with the lid on anyway so it's not a big deal but and I bought a lid from an hpcs or just about any of the other brushes will fit this airbrush as well now I've cleaned up my mess see if we can carry on here look a little bit of a shadow in this corner now it's really light which means I can get better texture so again doing the same thing that we did with the gray I've got the paint flowing decently and I'm just randomly kind of shaking the airbrush around foreign General texture that we did with the gray earlier very lightly don't want to go super dark with this you want it to be light kind of blending in with what we've already created and I'll again go over this one more time with the gray as well so we'll push some of this back we might even bring some of it forward with a little bit darker mix if we need to still easier to add paint later as opposed to make it disappear or lighten an area up now I can get some really faint lines in here bring a little bit of this texture up a bit higher doing the same thing but now I've moved a little bit further away with the brush so these are not as small and as defined as what we were just doing a minute ago maybe a few little lines just to give us something a little bit different foreign is going to be slightly darker on this upper edge of the eye socket because that's a rounded surface it's curving back underneath the top of the skull and a little bit on this right side you can also use a texture effect stencil when you're doing this to add some of this texture I've kind of gotten to the point where I really prefer just doing it freehand but stencils work really well for this too I can go in and kind of create this crack Bridge of the nose clean this one up a little bit I'll put more texture here darken it up pretty much a shaded area pretty heavily same thing that's curving inward our light sources coming from up here foreign really brownish this is tinting or gray underneath and that's why I like this color it's sparingly for these details but I don't like how it turns it that kind of a brownish color so come back over this actually some of this with just the Wicked Black and push the really dark areas back a little bit more kind of get rid of that brown sort of tinge put some little holes and divots in along this little bitty lines really up to your own imagination how far you actually want to take this or you know what you're looking at if you're looking at a replica or a good photographic reference I mean you can add as much detail into this as your as you really want I mean it's there are no rules sometimes less is more keep that in mind it's not hard to overdo it if you get too carried away I'll add some of these lines a little bit darker above the nose kind of curving them upward just a little bit it kind of gives it a little bit of a meaner look if that's the book you're looking for just remember to follow the grain of what you've already created that's a little muddy and a little messy in there that's okay we can clean that up when we come back in with the white I'm sorry the gray create a little bit of a shadow for the top of this eye socket bone comes into the skull there a little more our crazy dot line texture that area maybe even a little bit of that on the top of the nose Bridge of the nose I'd like a really nice crack with the top of the bridge of the nose as well but I'm actually going to use an even different black for that which we'll get to a little bit later this right now I've got this reduced so much that you would have to go over it so many times in order to really get a nice Dark Shadow and I don't want to risk screwing it up continue building up some of these shadowed areas side of the bridge of the nose add some texture into this area this is more or less lines here very faint lines because again this color is really reduced this is probably close to 300 percent reduction and a little bit of dot texture or crazy dot line texture in here kind of closer to the edge of the nose there the reason I'm working on that dot texture a little bit closer to the very edge of the nose because later I'll come back in and get a nice highlight kind of coming around the edge of the nose socket probably not completely around it but in strategic little areas and that will help to sell that then we've got this shadowed area underneath start building in some of this very lightly and always go darker you don't want to start out too dark you would also have because this is another part that again is wrapping around and then deeper and then coming back out so you would have a little bit lighter Shadow toward the very highlighted Edge compared to where it gets really dark behind it build a little bit of shadow in around it and we'll come back in with the Wicked Black to really darken up the darkest areas and this area but I can also use this color to fade that shadow away as it comes out this color will still get very dark the more layers you put on the darker it's going to get you want to work in very light layers though especially when you have it reduced as much as I've got this color reduced because it will be a lot easier to get blowouts and spider the paint when you're working with a really over reduced color like this take your time build it up and layers might add a little bit of a hole right here at least an indention I blew that out a little bit that's okay I guess Shadow right in here probably some shadowing up in here with some texture a little dot texture dot line texture a little bit of a Shadow right above that area to kind of show maybe like that's got a little bit of an indention on it same thing remember I was using a lot of lines painting the initial colors in this section so I can add some lines in here as well more texture down here a little bit of the dot texture on the bottom side where it's closer to the shadow dot line texture whatever we're going to wind up calling all of this start building up the edge of this Shadow a little bit more with some of this texture using this color as well kind of helps the transition same thing I've got the air in the paint just flowing I'm just randomly rapidly moving airbrush around create some of that texture I have some lined with this color above in the highlighted area or the area that we'll have more of the highlights some little dots here and there help to tie it into everything else that you created same thing on this other side we'll have some dots on the side that's closer to the shadow not a ton there's not a lot of surface area to work with here this will primarily be just some highlights it's not going to require a lot of work to sell the idea there darken up this Shadow a little bit so it fades more in clean that up and then we can work on Shadow underneath this side again this is going to be very dark I will darken that up with the actual Wicked Black Moor a little bit I need to add a little bit of this color up in here again that's a very dark shadow when it's all said and done we'll darken that up with the wicked and this is just working things back and forth kind of really just working it until I'm happy with what I see again you can add as much detail as you want or as little detail as you want completely up to you and this still looks very rough at this point really start coming together once we get to the gray again and just a little bit of a shadow right here at the end that edge that you can still see on the other side of the nose socket will be very thin aren't building up our shadow on this side again this will be very dark and some texture with this color moving out closer to the edges where the light is still going to hit it good for this area here on the side of the nose it's kind of transitioning down to where the teeth would be again I'm going to work in both lines and our DOT buying texture [Music] gonna be a shadow underneath the bottom of our nose socket that little protrusion sticks out I usually like to make the bottom of the socket look like it's sticking out just a little bit as well as it does even on the skull replica you can see that bottom Edge juts out just a little bit I'm not worried about being completely anatomically correct but I do I think just adding little details like that just gives it more interest it makes it look you know more three-dimensional compared to just not adding any of those shapes in just gives it a little more interest makes it more interesting to look at makes people kind of take another look and go wow might have some holes up underneath and again I like to add there's some really fine lines down in this area too necessarily going to be anatomically correct but it adds interest in remembering shadows and highlights at this point so I'll add more of this color on the shadowed side as well as more of the texture with this color on the shadowed side you know completely keep it off of highlight side but there's definitely going to be more of it on the shadowed side a sort of dark texture slowly Fades as it goes up and fuel just darker a little bit more defined sort of cracks here and there redefine some of the Shadows if you need to I think that looks pretty good from this point so from here I can wipe it down with a tack rag I'm going to clean out the airbrush and go back to I think the Wicked Black to really reinforce this some of these Shadows before we go back to the gray so we'll evacuate all this paint that I have in the cup this time which was a lot because it had a lot of reducer in it wipe it out quickly with paper towel a little bit of water doesn't need to be super clean because we are going to go back with black that should work so this again is the Wicked Black mixed roughly one to one with 4011 reducer I am going to over reduce this color a little bit not nearly as much as we did the illustration black I really like these little one ounce cups with lids too when you're working on a big project and you need to keep paint for a couple days these work great and I just use popsicle sticks as you've seen to stir my paint back flush the airbrush see if that works all right now I can really start reinforcing these really dark shadows I get this color to spray halfway decently [Music] foreign I actually got that hole up a little bit higher than it should have been it should have been right about there we'll clean that up later because you're really not going to see the hole anyway this is going to be pretty dark probably even going to carry the shadow all the way down and then fade it this away so in order to really get a nice even blend I want to aim my airbrush in the direction that I want the blend just really hard to do with the camera right here I'm gonna go back to the top work on Fading it down first you can see obviously it's very dark up here and then I wanted to gradually get lighter and lighter as it comes down so you'll still see some of this bone texture here and throw a little bit of texture in this really dark color I want to stay pretty close to the shadow this is still very dark it is over reduced slightly but not incredibly it's still really dark that looks pretty good now we can move over to this side you can even add a little bit of this color to this whole just to make it really the same Darkness as the rest of the really dark areas as opposed to that kind of brownish looking black a little bit of a shadow here that could be darkened up kind of wraps around into this other shadow and even very lightly darken up some of these other shadowed areas that we created and adding some of this again just kind of evens out this black compared to the black we just used the illustration black which leaves more of that brownish looking color on the surface same thing I'll work on a little bit of texture with this color including dots and lines fighting tip dry again foreign this color I don't really like to do create super fine detailed lines with it because it's not very predictable right now I'm being a bit dumb and trying it anyway as you can see it bit me right there I got a little bit of a blowout kind of spotted on me we'll clean that up with the gray when we bring it back the next step and for the super fine cracks and things with the black I will usually come back in with illustrational opaque black again the illustration colors the pigment is ground quite a bit smaller so you can get a lot finer detailed lines more control using the illustration colors compared to the wicked colors the wicked colors work really well and a mid-range airbrush like the Eclipse hpcs which has a 0.35 millimeter needle and nozzle it's not super bad with this 0.23 but it can be pretty frustrating at times let's add just a wash of this in our shadowed areas down here along with their shadowed areas bottom of the eyes or the top of the eye sockets working very lightly it's kind of dusting the color in right along the edge to get that nice blend like it's curving up and around and I think that looks pretty good maybe just a hint some shading up there you can see I added that really faint little line there probably come back in and put a highlight on that just to make it look like it's kind of a scar in the bone tissue or something to that effect Maybe darken up this area here it's a good idea to step back away from your work from time to time and view it from a distance too because a lot of times you'll see things that kind of stand out or jump out at you that might need some attention that you may not necessarily see when you're right up on it at painting distance pretty happy with this so far I think might add a few little holes and blemishes more than what we already have just to give it a little more character [Music] [Music] Darkness area just a little bit more of that I think I'll clean the airbrush out and go back to the illustration Gray so we can empty out what we have in the brush using some water again to rinse this out wipe it once with the paper towel add some water one more time work it with my old yucky paint brush and empty this out that should be good enough it doesn't have to be 100 perfectly clean although we're going from a black to a very light gray there shouldn't be enough paint residual paint left in here to contaminate our Gray stir up the gray one more time and then pour a little bit of this color into the cup it is a good idea to always spray your airbrush immediately after cleaning it regardless what cleaning agent you're using I was obviously just using water but there's still a little bit of residual water left in the front of the brush and if you immediately go to your work and try to spray this color it's normally going to be a little bit runnier from the get-go so it's a good idea to evacuate any water on something other than your project before you actually go back to painting so at this point I didn't add any shading to the inside of the nose socket whoops let's go I can do that but at this point wipe this down with tack rag just very lightly this is not something that you scrub on it's just very lightly brushing it over the surface and then we can come back in and really start bringing out our highlights and other details so I'm going to start right here at the bottom of this eye socket just imagine where your highlights are going to be because again the light source is coming from this direction for this particular piece so we'd have a pretty good bright spot right below this socket and I'll use a combination of lines as well as dots and you want to keep it on the top side this is coming out from inside the socket which is grabbing the light but then it's rolling back under in this really dark shaded area so I don't want to get highlights down here where that shading is rolling back up keep it on the top side where the light is going to catch it go over the same area multiple times to really brighten it up remember this is not the final highlights come back in with pure illustration white to really punch out the super bright areas probably have a little highlight on the bottom side of this little hole like so and you see how that really gives it that three-dimensional effect I mean it really looks like there's a hole there rather than just a black spot now we have some highlights Above This Shadow down here so adding our little lying dot texture right above the shadow will help to make this area look like it's coming out and then has a shadow underneath it as well as blow it have a little bit of a highlight same thing we don't want to get too far over into this rounded area up here that has all that shadow as you can see I just spidered that ever so slightly there it's okay I'll come back in with a black and clean that up things are going to happen when you're painting like this Stakes are going to happen I make mistakes all the time it's just a matter of how you go about repairing those mistakes remember I was using lines here earlier as well as some dots same thing so I was adding little lines in that area there's always also doing the little line Dot type texture just to give it a little bit of added believability more texture is all that is a little bit of a highlight underneath this crack brighter area directly above it I really need to be over on this side of the camera to angle my brush correctly in order to get a nice sharp line there one thing I can do come in with a free and shield I just barely hit this Edge I don't want to put a lot of paint on here because I don't want it to be super sharp and I don't want it super sharp for long distance but I can use that freehand Shield just to add just a little bit a nice clean looking highlight Edge there and then I can blend that in by adding a little bit of our dot texture dot line texture I'm going to have to come up with a better name for this I'll add just a drop or so of reducer to this mix because it's slightly thick it's not spraying quite as easily as I would like for it to there we go I could add some more highlight in and around what we just created with that freehand Shield and it makes it less noticeable same thing on some of these holes and a little bit of a highlight underneath them this one's a little bit closer to the shadowed side so I don't want to get carried away with that thing maybe very faintly add a light highlight to that darker line we have up here and remember that's slightly out of focus I don't want a real sharp clean line up there and then this gonna have some highlight going up over this eye socket and pretty much this general area so I'm painting slightly above the bottom of the top of the socket adding the Highlight up here again with one of this dot line texture it's randomly moving the airbrush around while color is spraying and add a few lines very close to the surface I want these because these are more highlights I want them to be pretty Stark and contrast what we've created previously maybe a little bit of a highlight along the edge of that hole maybe a glimpse whoops that was more than I wanted actually that doesn't look too bad I just wanted to I just to glint of a highlight on the front side of it and just like we did in the very beginning you can lightly dust over some of this to brighten it up even a little bit more and keeping the airbrush farther away we can bring some of the Highlight up I want to blend those finer areas into a little bit larger areas coming up so find that happy medium adding some faint little lines here and there just to add character that's all that is more interest something else to look at fog in some of these other areas again these are not the Final highlights these are highlights and they look very bright right now wants to the pure illustration white goes on these actually are not quite as bright as you think they are and some more lines with this gray above Bridge of the nose use this to highlight some of these other lines that we created earlier or to clean up or change some lines we created it earlier altogether same thing on the other side above the eye start working in some of our DOT line texture for the highlights there I'm keeping these a little bit above the actual socket just because it kind of gives it more of a brow look like a mean evil look in my opinion from that end just a little bit probably have a little bit of highlights more in the center of this one kind of fading that upward just a little bit fading upward more with generally fogging color in rather than building fine texture because again this is more out of focus up top I have some finer texture down here and gradually work it Up and Away fogging color in leaving a little bit of a darker area in between this highlight and the highlights that we created there again that just kind of sells that a little bit of more of an evil look it's the outer edge needs to be lightened up a little bit I can do that with lines as well as some dots remember we want to keep this Outer Edge a little bit lighter I'm actually aiming my airbrush in toward the skull to keep the overspray off of the base coat to get some on again it's not a big deal you can still come back in with your black and clean that up if you need to maybe have just a little bit of a highlight right along this Edge not perfect you see I kept that very loose and that just gives it again more interest makes it a little bit more believable [Music] on this side above the eye now I'm working a little bit closer and a little bit more precise I would say compared to what we were doing in the initial layer of this color so I want a little bit of a highlight on this Edge but still slightly out of focus I'm trying to stay within the lines but still keep it a little bit blurry if that makes any sense whatsoever maybe a little bit of a highlighter right blue a dark spot and I'm not really liking that we'll probably cover that back up here in just a minute Okay so add a few little highlights here and there and those darker shadowed areas very minimal though it won't get carried away Bridge of the nose is going to be highlighted area obviously because it's coming outward a little bit more here foreign surface as well so it's rounded all the way around so it's still even though this side is more in highlight still going to have a little bit of a shadow there to make it look believable here's another good spot where you could use freehand Shield to really get a nice little highlight off the edge of that rounded curve there so that's an option up the end of that a little bit this color is not spraying nearly as well as it normally does it's a little bit better get some highlights coming out the side of the nose socket here again I'm not going to carry this all the way down every inch to add some here and there that looks pretty good A little bit lines in here wow again small lines not all going in the exact same direction foreign will help to make it a little more believable on this side get some highlights and in this area it's a little bit wider than I would have liked but we can clean that up with the black cardinal rule that I've preached in many videos I always spray your brush activate the air somewhere other than pointed at your project just in case there is stuff left on the front of the needle and there was because I just sprayed a little bit of this gray right in that area it's okay we'll clean that up with the black but it's a good habit to get into a few little highlights down here realistically this should be slightly out of focus it's the side that's further away so I can pull the airbrush back a little bit and kind of fog some color back in there to erase mask some of that finer texture that I just added same thing right here speed could spot four -hand Shield just to give a slight little really nice clean sharp highlight and a very small area notice I didn't carry that highlight all the way up here or all the way down there it's a very small strategic spot now we're back in the area that is we're in focus so we can get some really nice finer texture going in this area always remembering the light source of light highlighted areas are on this side the exception of directly underneath the nose socket where it's in Shadow not gonna hurt to have a few little highlights up there in the shadow but you don't want to get carried away and lose all of your shadow I'm cleaning up that crack in the middle of this area it was too well too wide before so I used this gray to kind of tighten that back up just a little bit and I can come in with the illustrational plague plaque and punch that out some if we need to again this is kind of that area where I get into a combination of lines and the line dot texture I like adding both foreign just evening out lighter areas that was a little bit lighter here what I just created compared to these two tips so I added a little bit more of this gray into those areas foreign texture up in here so this is very sloppy sloppy but still calculated as far as creating some of these lines and texture I mean it's this area is not exactly what you see in the skull replica because it has all the teeth it's not all broken out it's not elongated it's there's nothing wrong with using your imagination to add elements to your art you still want it to be somewhat believable that looks pretty good I think we'll come back in with the illustration black one more time to kind of push and pull some of these areas where I screwed up for one I didn't have any shadow on the inside of the nose previously not real happy with that one need to darken up this corner a little bit again and maybe work on this transition here fix my little mistake there I think I also want to clean up this area up here really quickly just add a little bit more paint brightness up just a hair add some darker areas and that texture didn't quite look like the rest of it around that same area slightly fogging color on brighten up the top of the skull and wipe it off with the tack rag one more time foreign let's clean the brush [Music] [Music] clean the airbrush a little bit better this time around because I am going to go to a black next and I don't want it to be a gray because we've got gray mixed with the black so take an extra minute to make sure that most of the Grays out of the airbrush gravity feed cup [Music] that should do it and now I'm going to change my mind quickly I'm going to go to illustration opaque black first just to clean up a couple of little cracks and holes on this skull same deal this is reduced about one to one 40 11 reducer the opaque black again has finer ground pigment sprays better through the detail brush or brush with a smaller needle and nozzle compared to the wicked colors so I can use this color to really kind of fix up the cracks and I want to fix up the one thing you'll notice the illustrational pink black is it's super flat so sprayed next to all this other black that we have on this particular piece you can really see the difference how flat this color is when it comes out it looks funny in this setting because it is flat compared to the other blacks on this particular saddle bag cover once you clear over it you're not going to notice that this particular color though really lets you put some super nice fine cracks into your skull and I just like putting a few here and there in different places [Music] just to give that little bit extra detail in some of these areas shading with this color it's a little bit of a risk because it is this is an opaque black it will drown out everything underneath it relatively quickly if you're not very very careful I'm not saying you can't shade with it I'm shading with it a little bit you do want to be pretty careful doing so because it's not hard to go a little bit too far too quickly we'll bring some of this Shadow out a little bit further to help transition where we have the texture and don't have the texture and I think pretty happy with that so now I will switch to the illustration transparent black and we're going from one black to another so it's not incredibly important to get this airbrush super clean the only difference is I don't want an opaque black I want a transparent black for this next part so stirring up the illustration transparent black one more time I will add just a small amount of this color airbrush cup Maybe a little bit too dark see I can kind of reinforce some of these Shadows blending this out just a little bit clean up this Edge a little bit of texture to that little bone work on Fading it out a little bit because that's in set deeper into the socket so the light's only going to hit the front portion of it a little bit of texture just a little bit of the ice so good bone that you can still see Force this Shadow a little bit more this really needs to be reduced a little bit more than it is very lightly adding some more shadow in between these areas where the teeth would be we're nearing the end here this is really just cleaning up minor details and really making everything just suit your liking as the artist the formal detail all of that is pretty well established this is just fine-tuning really more than anything else really darkening up the shadow on the inside I think I'm pretty happy what we have here that looks pretty good I think I'm going to switch to our white next really pop in the highlights and we'll call this one finished there are a couple little specks of this gray on the Outer Perimeter that I'll need to clean up with the Wicked Black other than that we'll move on to the highlights and do those first because there's a chance we might get some more specs outside of the lines doing the highlights so I'll clean out the airbrush moving from black to white so I'm going to do a pretty good job of cleaning the brush [Music] again this is illustration opaque White mixed roughly the same about one to one with 4011 reducer just like all the other colors that I've had pre-mixed I find one to one works really well for most of what I do can always add reducer directly to the cup if you need it a little bit thinner at times where I want the paint to be a little bit thicker I'll usually go with a two to one ratio meaning two parts paint to one part 4011 reducer test this out it seems to be spraying all right so we will come in and really build the highlights up now same process the one thing I'm going to do differently now is I'm receding so where we have all that neutral gray number seven highlighted stuff going on before I'm not going to cover that entire area with this pure illustration white I'm putting the highlights and pretty much the center of all of those areas but it is the same process I'm creating those little line knee texturey dots just by randomly moving the airbrush around rapidly you can fog over this the same to brighten an area up more if you need to kind of bring some of this highlight up into the center of it but farther away we don't have those super fine texture in this more out of focus area it's okay to have a few more in focused there at the front but towards the back quite a bit lighter and a lot less defined bring some of this white into the lines here in these areas very kind of strategic and not strategic but using the less is more approach I want to overpower everything that we've already done being mindful of tip dry color is really not spraying as nicely as I would like for it to might need to thin it out a little bit more I think I will add just a couple drops 4011 reducer back flush that see if that works any better really see how bright this white is compared to the Gray highlights that we had previously again I'm just using this color to accentuate what we already had to really make the highlights stand out I want to paint over everything that we created with the gray I'm going to add to it subtly example on that one I didn't carry that highlight all the way up like we did the gray just got the very tip of the highlight with the pure white maybe a little bit more some highlights right in this area I think that looks pretty good and that gives you kind of the basic idea how I go about doing this now I would come back in with my black Wicked Black clean up any overspray on the Outer Perimeter of the skull we'll clean up a little bit of the eye sockets but aside from that I'm pretty happy with how this looks again it's completely up to you you can work this a lot more if you wanted to just clean the airbrush out really quickly so that I can switch back to my Wicked Black that should be good enough there's a quick stir a little bit of color in the brush and we're ready to get back to work test the spray and clean up that little speck and the top side of this eyeball needs to be cleaned up a little bit white over spray really got into this as I said you can continue to work things back and forth add little details and change things as much as you want for the most part that's how I go about painting a really nicely detailed textured skull without using subtractive techniques that's all 100 airbrush 100 freehand or what I consider freehand anyway so I hope you all got something out of this I hope all of that made sense I know this was very long video I apologize for that but I really wanted to show the process from start to finish so hopefully you've enjoyed it hopefully you've learned something from it once again I'll leave links in the description below to all of the products that I used throughout this video if you have questions let me know in the comments till next time I'm Trevor with Wicked Art Studio I will see you all then

Channel: Wicked Art Airbrush Studio

Views: 52,939

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Id: AuzcH0XhOFE

Length: 212min 7sec (12727 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 10 2023