Click on the thumbnails to see a larger image. Production notes can be found at the bottom of the page.

In the field of advertising, when you find a means of connecting with people, you take advantage of it. So considering that my previous blog posting, “Thirty Years of Illustration,” got triple the readership of any of my former posts, I decided to write another article along the same lines—that is, looking back over my career as an illustrator. I promise not to repeat myself (the film Rocky was good and Rocky II was palatable, but then Sly made the disasters Rocky III, IV and V).

For the first 20 years of my illustration career almost all my work was done using an airbrush. Most people wait 20 minutes into my airbrush stories before politely asking what an airbrush is, so I thought I’d explain the tool. Listeners get hung up on the word “brush” when there isn’t anything resembling a brush on the device. Think of an airbrush as a tiny, highly accurate paint sprayer. It looks like a silver writing pen (see photo, above right). On the top, or off the side of the front end of the brush, there is a small paint reservoir about the size of a thimble. This holds the paint that is sucked up into a stream of air that is released when you push down and pull back on a lever mounted on the top of the device. The airbrush is hooked to a small compressor by a nylon-coated rubber hose, which provides its pressurized air source. You can spray the paint in widths from a pencil-thin line to an 8 to 12 inch swath of paint depending on how far you pull back on the lever and how high the airbrush is held from your working surface.

But for the most part you don’t just paint freehand. There is a time-consuming process of cutting both adhesive stencils (called friskets) and non-stick stencils (acetate, in different thicknesses) to mask off areas you don’t want to spray onto. Friskets give you a clean, sharp mask and acetate stencils give you a softer edge, since a bit of the paint will work its way under the non-stick acetate. Think of a car getting painted. You need to mask off the headlights, chrome details, windows and tire wells so you don’t get paint on them. For instance, if I were illustrating a person’s face I would mask off everything but the flesh-tone areas of the face, including the teeth, hair and eyes, since I wouldn’t want flesh-colored paint on them. After spraying the paint to get the desired result, I’d work back into the artwork in order to add highlights, define shadows and do other detail work. For that I would use fine-tipped paintbrushes and colored pencils. Sometimes I’d add highlights by erasing or scraping off paint with an Exacto blade. You can run several different kinds of paint through an airbrush but I always used gouache, which is a water-based paint resembling watercolor, but made more opaque with a chalk-like substance. Back in the day, I used to have four airbrushes hooked up at a time, each with a different color so I didn’t have to constantly spend time cleaning them and changing from one color to another.

Airbrushing isn’t for everyone. It requires a lot of skill, patience and concentration. And this is where it gets weird. Ask my family or fellow employees how tidy and organized I am. My work area is the messiest in the office. But for some reason, the minute I picked up an airbrush I became Mister Neatness and Perfection, with the patience of a saint.

Reflecting back on how challenging the medium was, for the first year I airbrushed I almost always walked away from client assignments secretly hoping that I could just pull off the illustration at all. The third year I remember congratulating myself for not messing up on a project for the first time. Later of course, I had total mastery of the medium.

Now that my work is digital it almost seems too easy. There wasn’t any Command Z with my airbrush, and today’s illustration work gets done much quicker. But I keep in touch with my past in that I work out all my digital illustrations by hand on tracing paper.

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Top: This engine and transmission was one of the highest paying illustrations I’ve ever done in my career. Originally created for inclusion in a GM brochure and trade show display, it was later blown up into an 8 foot poster and hung behind the desk of the chairman of the board at GM. Medium: Airbrushed gouache. 1988

Second: In my opinion, the most versatile airbrush is the Iwata HP-SB. It was a trusty workhorse that was good for both fine detail work and laying in broad areas of color. I painted the engine and transmission with this one.

Third: This painting was done for the cover of Jotham’s Journey, the first book in a trilogy I illustrated. The books were fictional adventure novels about three children who were present at the birth of Christ. I hired a 12-year-old model from Detroit to serve as the main character Jotham, and borrowed the period clothing from a local church’s theatre department. After publication, the book had a very loyal following and last year got republished after being out of print for nearly 10 years. Medium: Airbrushed gouache. 1996

Fourth: This is an interior illustration for the second book in the Jotham series, entitled Bartholomew’s Passage. I was given the manuscripts and asked which scenes I’d like to illustrate, which was very nice of the art director. This drawing shows Bartholomew washing the floor of his master’s house. Medium: Airbrushed watercolor. 1996

Fifth: This illustration was done for a book entitled The Forever Feast. I bought all the food items and photographed them together to get a sense of scale. I then shot each element up close for detailed illustration reference. The idea was to do a realistic illustration, but stylized in a way that made the image hyper-real. I had agreed with the art director to leave the top two-thirds of the illustration sky for his title type treatment. In the end the publisher decided not to use my illustration, but I got paid. Medium: Airbrushed gouache. 1995

Sixth: Although I did a lot of realistic work, I also enjoyed assignments that were more graphic. Here is an illustration I did for a magazine’s Questions and Answers page. The art director wanted a contemporary take on Rodin’s classic sculpture The Thinker.  Medium: Airbrushed gouache. 1997

Seventh: I ended up doing a lot of work for family magazines. This article, aimed at fathers, was about switching from work life to home life. Medium: Airbrushed gouache. 1997

Eighth: The cartoon on the left was done shortly before I switched from airbrush to digital media. The one on the right is a digital illustration with similar subject matter. I thought it would be interesting to show them side-by-side. Medium: (Left) Airbrushed gouache. 1997. (Right) Vector. 2000

Tags: airbrush, Dave Hile, illustration

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