Spray-Paint Art Secrets - Lesson 2

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

Second lesson: planets

Supposing you've got everything you need for spray-paint art, now let's start (learning how to make) planets and backgrounds.

A classical spray-art background is made with a coloured sky and many planets. Planets must be drawn before sky, and everything else must be drawn after them.

The first thing you must do for drawing a planet is draw a circular spot of paint, a little bigger than the planet you want to draw. Then you must get a piece of newspaper, scratch it (crumple it up, then unfold it) and put it on the paint, before the paint gets dried. Then pull it (the paper) away, cover the planet with a round shape that doesn't touch it except for the border, of course and draw the sky use an only colour for now. Pulling away the round shape you should obtain the planet.

Ok, it's not a very nice planet, of course, but if you can do this you're not far from a good result. Next thing you can do is a two-colour planet: once you've drawn the first spot, draw a second one over it, then repeat everything you've done for the first planet. Don't worry if you waste some sheets in these first attempts. You can obtain many different results in drawing this kind of planet by varying the order of the colours, or by using more than two colours I've never used more than four colours, I think the result isn't very good using too much colours. Another way to vary the result is drawing half-spots, instead of round spots, and combining them together, or drawing bands, to obtain an effect similar to Jupiter bands. Another way to get something different is letting get dry the first layer of paint before drawing the second spot, so that, instead of the white of the sheet the first layer will emerge when you pull away parts of the second layer with the paper.

Ok, now you know many ways to get different planets. There are some others, but these will be enough for a lot of different planets. Another possible enhancement for your planets will be the shadow, remember to put it on the opposite side of the light source of the drawing. Don't draw a strong shadow, remember to moderate the amount of the black paint you put on the paper. If you want to try something difficult, try to draw a shadow of the same colour of the background this doesn't mean you must draw a black background, I mean that if you draw a dark blue background, the shadow must be of the same dark blue. Why? If you look at the moon, its dark side is always brighter than the rest of the sky, never darker. This is reality, so why should we draw darker shadows of the planets? Ok, I know, I succeed in drawing such shadows only one time on ten... If you have a very good (good spray control) white can spray-painter's second best friend, you can lighten the other side of the planet only use it on very big planets, small planets would be very bad if drawn this way. The best format to learn planet drawing is probably 20cm diameter, not bigger. My planets can vary from 2.5cm to 28cm diameter. This is all about planets.

Background sky. This is probably the easiest part of the drawing, unless you want to reach very high results and you have got an airbrush. A common and general purpose sky is basically a shade of coherent colours, generally from black to white, passing for the characteristical colours you want to draw. Start from black, then the intermediate colours and finally white. The sky must be drawn after you've covered the planets, of course. Never touch the planet cover while you're drawing the sky. To make the colour shade smoother, you can use white and black after you've drawn it with the other colours. So the process will become (e.g. for red-orange sky): black, red, orange, yellow and white, then black again (quick and not much paint) and white (just as with black). Remember to keep the sky coherent with the shadow of the planets: light should enter from the same side of the drawing.

There are many other things to draw in a background, but I'll explain them in another lesson, about advanced arguments if they aren't too advanced for me, of course. Ok, what does our sky lack of? Stars. Take your white can, put it in vertical position, and push lightly on the button. You mustn't spray at full power, small spots of paint must fall on the paper. Shake the can very well before this operation. Comets are done by reversing the can and pushing the button on the paper. Be careful! Everything must be very dry, before a comet. I always draw it when I've finished my drawing. This is all about planets and skies. Next time, rock

To go onto the next lesson, click HERE.