Panel Art

by Patrick Charuel

 

Required materials: Airbrush: Infinity 2 in 1

 

-SG 100

 

-Pearls powder

 

-Paints: Auto Air and HOK

 

-Auto-air: transparent paints

 

-brush Mack 000

The painting is done on a metal panel, I sand the panel with 320 dry paper followed by cleaning the surface with acetone. The panel is primed with 2 coats of 1k primer. After allowing for the correct drying time I sand the primer with P500 grit paper to get a perfect smooth surface to airbrush on. I clean the surface with tack cloth and degrease it one more time with a very soft Upol degreaser. For my base color I spray two coats of root beer pearl candy base coat reduced 1/1 with fast thinner.

 

To use as a template for is project I print a copy of my tribal design and cut the inside part out. Using 3M reposition able glue I spray a thin coat over the back side of my tribal design.

I cover the entire panel with transfer tape and stick my tribal design over the transfer tape. With a reduced black I outline the tribal and remove the printed design. We now have our design transferred onto the transfer paper on our panel.

With a hobby knife I cut slowly and carefully the design out and remove the inside part leaving me with the area where paint will be applied open.

Using a mix of white and brown I add a little color to my flames.

Here is a picture of flames as they look up to this point. To give the flames a bit more depth I add some shadow areas.

Now I'll start working on the wolf which will be at the bottom of this panel. As I did with the tribal flames I cut print a wolf head off to use as a template. I cut my wolf head out and spray a coat of white; I allow some of the over spray to go under the paper template.

Because my wolf head is over the flame design there is some flames edges impossible to cove. As a base color I’ll start out with white followed by a coat of 2 part clear to get a perfectly flat surface over the entire design. After drying I sand the surface with 1200 wet grit paper.

I spray another coat of white over the plane surface to get my wolf base coat.

With a reduced black and printed picture as a template I outline the main parts of the wolf: eyes, mouth and nose.

Here a picture of the outlined design.

With thin black I quickly place the darker areas.

With round brush and white acrylic paint, I start laying in the direction of the fur.

I come back over the darker areas and paint a new coat of fur.

With transparent black and brown colors I add the final color to my wolf. The use of transparent colors allows the fur to be visible even after layers of dark colors.

Here a close up picture of the fur.

To keep a soft effect I’ve decided to paint the pin striping with cooper color. In this manner the entire panel will stay the same color scale and no part will pop up. For this striping I will use Brush Mack 000.

I start on one side of the panel. I do it without any drawing as reference and just let my imagination give the way to my brush. This first design will be my reference for the next side of the panel. One thing more: Working over a cleared surface can save you in a case of mistake, just wet a towel with thinned mineral sprites and wipe the design if you're not happy of it.

With tracing paper I trace my reference design with Stabilo pen and transfer it on the other side of the panel.

Here the result of the first pin stripe design. To pin strip curves I always use one of my fingers as a compass tip.

I continue my pin striping again I don’t use any sketch for my pin striping design; I'm just focus on following the flame curves and movement. And then I trace it to transfer it on the opposite side of the panel.

I spray two coats of 2 part polyurethane clear, the panel is sanded and buffed until I get a glass surface. 

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