Spray-Paint Art Secrets - Lesson 1

Thanks again to Michele Albrigo for providing these lessons. Hopefully you will find them useful and informative. (Items in Parenthesis are my comments/additions)

This is the first lesson of the spray-paint course. Here I'll describe the tools you need for painting, along with a brief description.

Primary equipment: all you need for a drawing.

Spray-cans: Basically, everything can be done with two colours, black and white. This is probably the best solution if you want to learn with few money. Personally, I suggest to buy black, white and grey. Grey can improve the quality of some elements, such as sky and planets. Obviously, these three colours allow you only black/white drawing. To produce colour drawings, you should also buy blue, red and yellow, which, if correctly mixed, can give you any colour you like. Anyway, drawings can be greatly improved with green better, emerald green, or any other strong green, orange and violet. There are also other less useful colours, that you can use for more realistic landscapes. They are brown and light blue. A particular mention is for metal colours those with small metal particles in them. I tried them myself, but the results have never been satisfactory. I also have never seen many drawings made with them except for a pair of pyramids made by Adam Hartman, who used gold. It was gold, Adam, wasn't it? (It was a metallic gold, and I really enjoyed the results.), so if you wish you can try this way of painting, and let me know the results. What you absolutely need is a transparent spray-can. This will be used to wet the colours where they are now dry, in order to be able to work them again. The quality of the cans mustn't be very high. Of course, good cans can improve the drawings, but you surely don't need 10$ cans, when you can obtain a good result with 5$ cans. (These are Italian $...in the states you should be able to find spray paint for 1 or 2 dollars a can.) Use them (expensive paint) only if you are very good at spray paint, if you sell your drawings and don't mind the cost of the cans. Always buy cans of the same kind (brand), avoid acrilic colours they don't mix as well as nitro colours, shake them very well and don't use a lot of paint.

Thinner: Always have a bottle of nitro thinner, to clean your instruments and your hands wash them with soap after washing them with thinner.

Saucers: You need some round-shaped saucers to draw planets. They must be empty, possibly clean and with a thin border, to reduce their impact over the paint. Better if you provide them with something to take them off the drawing paint can make them slippy!. (In other words, don't use very shallow plates that you won't be able to lift off of the paper...I've had very good luck using multiple sized tin cans)

Adesive tape: Use paper-adesive-band, and only on the back-side of the drawing. Buy a 2cm wide tape, you don't need a bigger tape. (Tape is used to keep your paintings from blowing away, but make sure you only tape on the back so you don't mask part of your canvas.)

Bindakote paper: Probably paper is the most important element for drawings. Most of the times, your results will be strogly related to it. The basis for your drawings must be very smooth. A comparison term could be the ink-jet printers' photo-quality paper, but, of course, this kind of paper is VERY expensive. Personally I use Bindakote paper, wich has one smooth side and a rough side. Drawings must be made on the smooth one, of course. Another solution is poster paper used by Adam Hartman, but I think it could be too light, and paint could have a bad effect on it (it works OK for me, it is cheap, and I've never been able to find Bindakote paper.) If you can find it, Bindakote also Eurokote can be the best solution: cheap, heavy and smooth. It is similar to poker cards paper.

Newspaper: To draw planets and rocks, you need some pieces of newspapers. Avoid those with colour pictures, the old big black/white with few photographs newspapers are the best. I'm not sure, but The Times should be published in this format. Tear them in 10cm wide bands, and use them for planets and rocks. Use a wider band if you want to try the other technique for rocks which I don't use, because I'm unable to do it :((( ).

Paintbrushes: Yes, you'll also need them. Buy three small different sized paintbrushes, they will be very useful for trees, grass, sharp mountains and many other things. Always remember to clean them with thinner at the end of your work, or you'll have to buy many paintbrushes...

Spatula: Spray-painter's best friend. With a good paper and a good spatula, spray paint is very funny, and results are good. You need a spatula used for oil painting (some stores call these painter's knives). Buy the smaller spatula you can find, or the second size. It must be about 2.5cm long and 0.8cm wide. Smaller spatulas are very difficult to use, bigger spatulas can reduce your ability in small details. It must be flexible, just a little more flexible than a credit card. Every spatula needs some time before being correctly used, just as cars... I still use my first spatula, because every other spatula doesn't poduce the same results, because white areas are full of small lines, due to the small irregularities of the spatula border.

Wooden tablet: This instrument is very useful for all the times you need a straight line e.g. fog, light rays, etc.. You can use a piece of paper, instead of it, but your lines will never be straight. If you want to draw curved lines, use the border of a drawing sheet, if you want to draw straight lines, use the wooden tablet. It must be at least as wide as your drawing sheet for me, 50cm, it must be at least 10cm high to avoid paint come out from its upper border, and its lower border should be thinner than its upper. You'd also better put two smaller tablets at its edges in order to make it easier to keep it vertical during use. (I'm not sure what he meant here.)

Nylon supermarket-bag: A supermarket bag is useful for drawing the leaves of the trees and for the high grass. Change it anytime you change the colour, never use it two times.

Secondary equipment: all you should have.

A table or a place where you can paint without worrying of the paint. A respirator: long use of spray paint can produce cancer. You have 2 solutions: you can paint in a very windy place, where paint is taken away but painting is very difficult, or you can put a respirator on your face. Better use respirators made for spray colours. They are quite easy to find. Anyway, it's your choice...

A box: to put all your tools in

Another box: to put all your drawings in

Yet another box: to put all your white sheets in

A place where drawings can get dry it will take about 3 hours, a day for perfect and complete dry

To go onto the next lesson, click HERE.