the colonists by nick pounder

What an interesting portfolio you have. I love all the futuristic images. Well done! How do you find the airbrush?

Many thanks, well, I'd never used one before so I spent a few weeks just messing about with it with bits of scrap card, making masks and trying different strength dilutions of paint. To start with, the airbrush was not completely air-tight, and the solution to this is to buy some plumbers PTFE tape (that ultra thin white-tape) and all you do is wrap some round the thread of the connections and re-screw on the connectors... worked like magic. Next problem was getting the dilution right. Too thin and I had a problem with water running. Too thick and it spurted out unevenly. Actually some more things I can add which might be make good tips: To do the spiral galaxy at the top, I hand-drew a 'double spiral' (which is what galaxies are, not single spirals) onto a piece of thick card. I then stanley-knifed out the spirals to get a template. This was then not temporary glued onto the canvas (which would give a hard-edge effect) but instead held aloft with giant balls of blu-tack! This gave a fuzzy edge. Then the template was removed and the rest of the galaxy was done manually, but the template gives you precisely the right shape to work with. Secondly, to get the curve of the planet, I screwed in a large eye-bolt inside the shed and tied a long bit of string on with a pencil tied on the end; the string I guess for this planet was about 6-7 feet long, and using that you can get a perfect arc of curve.

Middle nebula: I sprayed a fuzzy white line using the airbrush quite close to the canvas. Then I sprayed over it from much further away, with white, to give the wider fuzziness. I then sprayed blue from afar on the top of the line to give a two-tone effect. Thereafter, I added the areas of black 'dust cloud' manually with brush - but guess what - the sprayed-on white mixes quite readily with the black , even when dry, I guess due to the small particle size, and made for very easy blending, almost like oil. A nice discovery. Once the gas clouds were done, I added the stars. To do this, you spray a fuzzy white blob from varying distances from near to far. Don't do the point start itself with the airbrush. Make them nice and random. Then the actual 'star' tiny blob of white is added afterwards with the brush.