Airbrush Bible (Air Skool)

Above my skill level but lots of information

I purchased this as a present for my son-in-law. He was very excited to get it. It looks very nice and he said that it included information that was important to him.

If you are interested in the most bottom of the barrel use of an airbrush, then by all means this is a "bible".You will find it full of very worthy details on all the most mundane uses of an airbrush from motorcycles, vehicles, trashy neo-fifties cheesie pinups, body painting, etc. (Should have stuck with Wonder Woman she was at least more compostionally challenging).It will give you excellent detailed how to steps for the absolute rock bottom applications of airbrush art, and you will easily become the hit of any flea market or swap meet, no doubt about it, the details are very well illustrated, logical, and plentiful.There are more precise details than in most Airbrush magazine articles, all steps are broken into substeps with very decent image sizes and practical descriptions. Each step is a lesson, not just an ego trip by the artist.It is great shotgun coverage of a plethora of techniques with keen insights and pragmatic no nonsense non theoretical discussions. All articles are detailed with great clarity. The best part is there are more images than text when it comes to the actual doing, so it is not all words and no pictures...a great job.It is a great book, that I regret buying, if you are looking for an airbrush bible, that would be more subtle, polished , and geared toward art the way books on pastels, watercolors, oils, acylics, pencil, etc are , then this book is not it at all. Other than some mechanics of airbrush use, I dont think there is much here in terms of the fine arts, that doesnt mean it cant be used as an intro, its just the types of images are more in the pop image category.The images covered are the typical stereotypes that have plagued airbrush art since they were invented, so just be aware if you are in the babes, bikes, and skulls crowd then "THIS IS YOUR BOOK"...buy it.Even if at that level, if you think it might be detailed out to be in the Giger league, or in the books even in fantasy art book league that would be like the Boris and Julie type of image(but with an airbrush) , that is out of scope of this book.This book is chockfull of one trick pony, single image airbrush one shots, but there is very little if none at all on multiple image composition, as you find in any other "bible" equivalents like you would find in other art books.Most images are copied over singular images, very little on composition with an airbrush, more on technique....There is a lot of stencil and frisket approaches, but none of the contributors seems capable of knocking out a really decent complex image using freehand painting composition, and completing an on the fly total work.One would expect that the absolute fundamental requirement in a "bible" book , would be how to master in detail, and control an airbrush for free hand work.Most of the demos are by trace and fill jockeys.....but damn good ones.I suppose if you were a budding Olivia you would find it usefulIf you thought that it would have technigues (bible) that are more in the league of other media fine arts books or bibles this is not the right book.There are better books if you are looking for the photo realistic use of airbrush as well, which is another mundane rut the airbrush has gotten itself into.There is enough here if you wanted to extrapolate over into the use of airbrush for photo retouching, and there is enough here that if you wanted to mimic airbrush in a program like Adobe Photoshop, this would help in understanding the basic things you would convert over as far as generic "airbrush style techniques".The book doesnt cover digital paint programs, but the steps are so well laid out, it would not be hard to use it as a "bible" to mimic the manual airbrush look. The approach to an image making workflow would be similar, so this book could be used as a digital painting workbook as well. It would define the basic imaging requirements for an equivalent digital exercise to get the airbrush look. Any new digital paint or Photoshop user wanting to use the digital airbrush would learn a lot of core imaging precepts from this book, with or without a digital Wacom tablet.Would also be a good point of departure from the concepts of friskets to digital layers and masking.from tempera came Botticelli, from fresco came Michaelangelo, from oil came Leonardo, from engraving came Durer, from etching came Rembrandt,from airbrush came....chicks, bikes, and skulls, ...oh my!!!.....with the exeception of Giger, he tried to push it out of the gate of state fairgrounds.As far as a step by step book goes, this book is quite good, most step by step books jump steps, or have images but not how they got there, what this book does cover well is every required detail, there are no skipped steps, and it is not a catalogue of Artists galleries, with very little how to, from that perpective, it is concise.

Lots of Great info

Not what i was looking for should have a better info

The book was loaded with good information, and I loved the illustrations. The motorcycles were fabulous, and I would recomend it to everyone

No techniques shown, no description or training helps. Basically a "see what I can do" photo op.

very good for biginners

The book was very useful as in advice on how to do things but could have been going into more depth easpecially for the beginners who are new to airbrushing.Over all the price is about right but very interesting reading.

This is the ideal book for anyone just starting to airbrush. It starts out showing techniques to get you operating an airbrush with a good level of accuracy, and ends up describing projects you can undertake. The perfect introduction. Would reccomend to anyone.

Excellent book

Good quality easy to follow reference for airbrush users.The only slight criticism is the apparent over emphasis of body painting.

To learn a new technique is to love