Painting an AIR DRY clay sculpture with ACRYLIC paint: Airbrush and Hand-Painting Techniques

Hi guys and welcome back. Today I'm going to be painting this little guy that I sculpted a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to be using a combination of airbrushing and handpainting techniques. Let's get started. This is all the materials and tools I'm going to be using. I've got acrylic paint, brushes, my airbrushing compressor, mixing cups, water, super glue and a little bit of fake foliage along with hairspray, which I'll show you a little bit later on how I'm going to be using that. I'm going to start by basing the whole sculpture out in a light yellow. And for this paint job I'm only going to be using acrylics. I'm going to be using a couple of reference photos of real mushrooms to inspire my colour scheme. In that sense, even though most of my artwork is fantasy, they are always inspired by nature and therefore rooted in reality. Once my base layer is dry, I'm ready to start adding some of the airbrushing details. Don't be intimidated by the airbrush. It is completely possible to paint your sculpture just using traditional handpainting techniques. In fact, I did a tutorial on that last week, which I'll link to in the description below. The next step I'm going to do is adding a colour wash, which is just thinned down acrylic paint. And I'm going to brush it into all of the deep points. I'm going to do a small section at the time and then with a rag I'm going to wipe it off the high points. I actually feel like it's gotten a little bit too dark now with the colour washes. So I'm going to take a little step back and just lighten up the base tone. Painting a sculpture is always a process of back and forth, slowly building up the layers and adding depth and detail. Now I'm going to take the thick foliate and I'm going to be integrating it with the sculpture. The colour is quite bright and unnatural, so I'm going to start by giving the grass a little bit of an age wash, just like we did with the sculpture. Now for the very last touch, I'm going to add a layer of gloss to the eyes and to the top of the mushrooms for a realistic finish. Normally I would use a two part clear resin or a gloss varnish to achieve this look. But seeing as we're still in lockdown here in New Zealand, I haven't been able to stock up on my normal supplies. So, a lack of better, I'm going to be using hairspray. I'm just going to spray the hairspray on a piece of cardboard and brush it on the surface. It won't be as doable as the resin would have been, but it will achieve close to the same finish. If you found these tips helpful, make sure to like this video so that I know what you like and I can create more stuff like this. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below. And if you do want to see more like this, why not subscribe and you'll get notified as soon as the next episode comes out. See you then!