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| The airbrush class was in Louisville, Kentucky. (That vintage fur coat weighed a ton!) (Are you sure it doesn't make me look fat?) :-) |
As I have written before in an older blog, I fell in love with the airbrush when I was a teenager. Years later, while working in a photography studio, the opportunity to study airbrushing presented itself. I attended a three day seminar in Louisville, Kentucky, and I was hooked! Later I would be teaching the airbrush technique.
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| This "template" is from the original pattern from the long ago airbrush course. If I were to airbrush her right cheek, I would paint right along the edge where it meets her cheek. |
The airbrush instructor was an older gentleman from Chicago. He had a book of the art of Alberto Vargas and told us we should be able to paint similar figures (yeah, right! :-)) using two template patterns he gave us in class. Some details to the paintings are done with a brush and watercolor.
Alberto Vargas, (1896-1982), was a Peruvian painter of pin up girls. His dad, Max, was a famous photographer who taught him how to use an airbrush. At a very young age, I was studying those figures and thought I had never seen such beautiful painting. I think it was my dad's boss who gave him a yearly subscription to Playboy when I was young. ( I sneaked and looked at the magazines just to see the Vargas girl, I could not imagine how someone could paint so beautifully)
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| My first "official" airbrush painting, I won a second place award out of 660 paintings at the Dulin Sidewalk Show in Knoxville, Tennesse, in the 1970s. I really needed this at that time in my life. |
Years later when I was able to attend the class, it was exciting to me when the airbrush instructor used a book of Vargas pin up art as a perfect example of what could be achieved with an airbrush...the Vargas girls I had admired for years.
Back to the beautiful art of Alberto Vargas ...
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| Jane Russell, 1942 |
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| I adore the art deco influence in this early Vargas portrait. Notice the lines reflected in the compact's mirror, I thought "how clever" to repeat the deco design that way. Those elongated fingers ... I simply love this painting. |
