Airbrushing!

I'm starting to get over my terror of airbrushing and look forward to it instead. It helps to keep in mind that if I find a new way to plug the airbrush up, and subsequently find a new way unplug it, I've learned something new and made progress. This particular go round I found that what I thought was one piece of the airbrush was actually two pieces. Paint can dry in there and plug things up. The two pieces unscrew from each other, and I can get in there with a dental pick. All is good.
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Above, Maxine before any airbrushing, modelled by Uncle Nathan and visiting with his two dogs. The dogs don't know what to think.

I was very happy I kept detailed notes on which paints I mixed to get the colors for Max, as it made coming up with those same colors for Maxine that much easier. Yay for notes!
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​First step in adding color- black paint airbrushed around the eyes, inside the ears ,around the nose and the front of the lower jaw. Last time I hand brushed the paint around the eyes and had a hard time controlling the texture. In other words, the paint wanted to glop up in the worst way. As long as I was meticulous about masking out the eyes and teeth, the spraying went well enough, except that it was too easy to get carried away and next thing I knew, there was more paint around the eyes than I really wanted. I was not entirely happy with Maxine's Goth look at this point.

​Second step- adding dark brown to the edges of the ears, between the brows and along the top of the nose. Some of the brown on this mask is the color of the fur and some of it is paint, I felt pretty pleased with my color matching abilities here.  I've also added more black to the insides of the ears.

Third and fourth step- adding grey paint around the underside of the muzzle and the lower jaw, and adding a little bit of cream colored paint under the eyes and on top of the cheekbones. I've also added yet more black to the inside of the ears, and more dark brown around the eyebrows, the edges of the ears, and along the bridge of the nose.





















A side view, which shows the grey on the muzzle and the lower jaw a little better. I've also airbrushed a little of the cream color between the tan area on the bridge of the nose and the white area of the muzzle to soften the transition between these areas a little.
























Fiddling and foodling. Here I've added more black to the area around the nose, and more brown to the bridge of the nose and between the eyebrows. I've also added some brown around the black shading around the eyes, with the hopes they'd tie in better visually to the rest of the mask. One thing I like about the added black above the nose is that it helps pull the viewer's eye away from the black around the eye, at least that's the hope anyway.



















And TA DAAAA!!! All done!!! I'm pretty happy with how she came out.