This past Saturday May the 28th I was presented with the opportunity to Airbrush a Canucks jersey by my boss Karen at Blanche MacDonald. The reason behind the request was so that they could put together promotional material for an upcoming fundraising the school would be doing for Canuck Place. My experience airbrushing and free hand painting a Canucks jersey last Saturday left me feeling the airbrush addiction coursing through my veins again.
It’s been at least 2years since I’ve picked up my airbrush for anything but beauty, fashion and bridal make-up. Not that I didn’t want to, but I never had or made the time. If you’ve ever done a body make-up you know it’s time consuming to say the least and requires not only prep but hours to complete.
Note to self #1: Bring an assistant, because cleaning, mixing etc takes precious time away from the flow of the execution of the finished product. #2 : Make sure you and our model remember to eat and stay hydrated, the last thing you need is to lose momentum. #3: keep your poor nude model warm with a space heater at the very least. You may melt and sweat, but suck it up, the poor girl is naked and has cold wet air/paint blowing onto her skin,I used a mixture of products such as Ben Nye for the blue base and green panels and Skin illustrator white for the highlights and banding. My favorite is the Ben Nye Magi Color Liquid paints. The paints are beautifully designed with an incredible color range. Their highly pigmented paints dry quickly to a smudge and water resistant finish. It has a great consistency and creates an amazing level of opacity, which is ideally what you’re looking for when body painting. No one likes to see splotchy color coverage with skin color showing through. You want it to really look like your model is wearing the garment you’re creating. You can apply with a brush, sponge, or airbrush. I diluted my paints with 10% Final Seal for better airbrush fluidity.
I started by stippling liquid latex in 3 layers, with transparent powder between each onto the nipples rather than using pasties. Next I started by blocking out with painters tape where the colored bands were to be placed and continued on with covering the majority of her torso in my base of Canucks blue. After removing the tape I free handed the green and white banding. I then took the stencils that Justin Ewart had created for us to use. Starting with “Vancouver” in skin illustrator white, and free hand painting to clean it up and add the highlight.
Then moving on to largest section of the Whale “C” in White, Jenna and her assistant Paula came to rescue to help me hold it in place across my models chest and breasts. We applied a layer or prosaid to the exposed area to ensure a better level of opacity of the skin illustrator white. We then took our 2nd stencil with the whale face and applied a mixture of Ben Nye blue, with a splash of black to create our navy blue. Last but not least I applied to final stencil of the bursting ice, mouth and eyes. After which I went over the entire area touching up and painting the crack in the ice and navy border free hand.
Now it was time to take shields and block areas to create my depth and shadow along the armbands, and green banner across the mid-section to give it dimension. Then my favourite and most fun part was free hand airbrushing the depth and shadow to the entire jersey, creating muscle definition emphasis and desired areas.
Last but not least I free hand painted a small white color as an undershirt to the jersey and took foundation that was 2-3 levels deeper than her skin tone and hand painted in a defined edge and blended it out to create shadow as if the garment was actually hanging.
What you see is then end result of hours of work, sweat and nearly tears after many a fumble on my station and losing ounces of paint more than once, lol!
Hit Blanche Macdonald’s Robson campus for Face Off Fandamonium 2011 every home game day throughout the Stanley Cup Finals. On every home game day (dates below), grab your friends and come down to the Blanche Macdonald Robson Campus between 11:30am -5:00pm and take your pick from our Makeup, Hair & Nail Menu! All in exchange for a donation to Canuck Place Children’s Hospice!!!
Go Canucks Go!!!
