can't explain why, but airbrushing provides an enjoyment that few other things do,
in the same .... Working from photos is a vital part of creating Photorealism.
The Airbrush Venturi - 2012 Advanced Method Course • What does airbrushing mean to you?
If you are reading this, it means that you are one of a number of people that came to Airbrush Venturi to “learn to airbrush” and ended up staying with us and falling in love with it. You are fast becoming like the teachers of Airbrush Venturi, who started out in the same way as you. For them, airbrushing became a very powerful force in their life. Airbrushing moves them in ways that few things do. They can’t explain why, but airbrushing provides an enjoyment that few other things do, in the same way. You know yourself, when you airbrush you can lose yourself for hours. The ability to really lose yourself in your airbrushing calls for powerful skills and knowledge. You will have done the Venturi Method and possibly even trained with other teachers, you might have bought books or videos, surfed the net, etc, all in search of knowledge, with limited success?! By now you will clearly understand that “more” does not mean “better”. It is the quality of the knowledge, the effectiveness of the techniques that matter. Finding the right knowledge is the key. While the Venturi Method is considered the most comprehensive airbrush course in Australia, you know yourself, there is so much more to know, and we consider it just an “introductory course”. In every group of beginners there is always a small inner core that genuinely connect with the airbrush and connect with what we are trying to do . . . to build a genuine community of airbrush enthusiasts. We think that you are one of them. We know that there is so much more that we can offer our really enthusiastic students, but it takes time to explore the possibilities. We tell everyone that the Method is truly universal, that it enables you to be able to do wildlife, landscapes, fantasy art, cartooning, automotive illustration . . . anything. But the reality is that knowing which parts of the Method and in what combination to be able to create complex images like wildlife and landscapes is not simple. This requires advanced training. Our answer to this problem has been the development of the Advanced Method Course.
• The Advanced Method Course?
This course will transform the realism of your airbrush artworks. We will explode your understanding of what you are capable of with an airbrush forever. In your Method training you were taught each of the five units of knowledge but you were given very little experience in how to work with each of them and how to combine them is all sorts of creative ways. The course should be called “The Process of Finding Answers Course”. What is really special about this course, that sets it apart from everything else, is that the entire course focus’s on giving you a “Process of Investigation”. Everyone thinks that a skilled airbrush artist looks at a photo and immediately knows how they are going to paint it. This is NOT the case. Skilled airbrush artists are in fact people that consciously understand the choices (or strategies) they have available and work through them to FIND the “answers”. . . thinking on their feet and experimenting and adjusting as they go. Not only will the Advanced Method Course teach you to decode images better then ever before but it will teach you how to airbrush a comprehensive range of image types, on a range of different surfaces using a range of different paints . . . giving you a “diverse confidence” in airbrushing. We are looking for a small group people to develop into our elite community of airbrush artists, people that are really going to make a difference to the future of airbrushing, by creating artworks that are more skilled and creative than ever before. Would you like to be a part of this?
The End Goal - Annual Cafe Exhibitions
In 2012 we are shifting the course in a powerful new direction. We expect ALL students . . . ALL . . . to exhibit their artworks at separate cafes at the end of the course. (Above is a digital mock up of what we are expecting you to achieve). The idea behind this is very powerful. It will deeply effect the way that you design and execute your artworks and will create an end goal that has been missing from the course for a long time. This is an underlying principal that we want to imbue in all our Advanced Students with . . . to have a real purpose to their artworks; to exhibit them.
The Course Outcomes:
Picture yourself . . . ONE year from now . . . having completed 10 major artworks! That’s a lot of artworks - advanced artworks at that - all done roughly in a single weekend! You are about to do more airbrushing in one year than you ever have and probably ever will for many years to come. You will start the course as a trained beginner and will leave a confident airbrush artist capable of airbrushing virtually anything. 1. Tiger & Landscape 2. Elephant & Landscape 3. Dolphin / Turtle & Seascape 4. Crab & Seascape 5. Birds Flying & Vista Landscape
6. Birds Perched & Out-of-focus back 7. Automotive Illustration B&W 8. Automotive Illustration Colour 9. Scale Package Portraiture 10. Sudden Death Portraits
All the photos of students work you will see were done by people who started the course only having done the five units of the Venturi Method and were not very confident . . . but a year later they are confidently creating artworks like this. If you can meet all four requirements on the back page of this brochure and you really want to take your airbrushing to an exciting level then this course is for you. Tony Vowles
The Airbrush Venturi - 2012 Advanced Method Course Working from photographs is NO less creative than looking at something from observation. In fact anyone that suggests that one process is more “creative” than another is narrow minded. Working from photos is a vital part of creating Photorealism. Having said this, copying a single photo “blindly” is not being as creative as you could be. While you will have to make thousands of small creative decisions to build each part of the artwork, the result will not inherently be your own design . . . and this is important. You should want the final artwork to be an expression of yourself and not simply a copy of a single photo. The Advanced Method Course requires you to build artworks from multiple images, to create an artwork that tells more of a story and ensure that the artwork is unique to you.
The Course Structure:
The rapid development of the Venturi Method over the last decade (released Feb 2003) has meant that we have had to make enormous changes to the Advanced Method Course. The 2012 course is no different. Once again significant developments will see us push the limits of what we can teach you. The images have been carefully selected to challenge you but also to ensure we are able to set accurate assessment criteria’s, crucial to you measuring your learning. There are separate notes for each weekend, each being a mini course in its own right. We supply the images for you in advance of the weekend, giving you time to develop your own unique design before the weekend. We are happy for you to use your own background images just as long as they fit the same outcomes that the weekend is focussing on. Having said this, no artwork must be started before the weekend, because we will be mapping out unique creative paths with each.
It is important for your artworks to “tell a story”. Imagine this artwork without the car in the background at Phillip Island? If you didn’t know who Jason was, painting a portrait of him would not help. The car is vital to telling the story of who he was. Given that he has since died, the artwork should have been more “memorial” in content.
The Airbrush Venturi - 2012 Advanced Method Course The Sequence
W1. Land Animals - Fur
The course is broken into: 2 units - Land wildlife 2 units - Water wildlife 2 units - Air wildlife 2 units - Auto Illustration 2 units - Portraiture
• Artwork Theme • Surface & Ink
The course picks up from where you left off with your Method training, starting with Fur based wildlife with the Tiger. This artwork specifically introduces double action texturing, forcing you to paint thousands of fine double action strokes, all varying in length and thickness and all inter-layered with transparent colours. Every artwork teaches you to use specific parts of the Venturi Method in unique ways. The Elephant, Dolphins, Turtle, Crab, etc all require different parts of the Method to be used in unusual and creative ways. With all the wildlife artworks you are required to created a wide range of landscapes that vary from simple out-of-focus textures, to landscapes and vistas at different times of the day, and season. All artworks are done on MDF to ensure that you can endlessly rework the artwork until you are satisfied. We will also be introducing several important masking techniques that were not taught in the V. Method.
- Tiger & Land-scape - MDF with O & T inks
• Introduction to D.A. Short Stroke airbrushing & fur textures • Advanced training is creating realist textural form • The role of “Linking Dimension” in realism
W2. Land Animals - Hide • Artwork Theme • Surface & Ink
- Elephant & Land-scape - MDF with O & T inks
• Introduction to hide textures • Introduction to “surface colour mixing” • Creating “Linking dimension” over textures
W3. Marine Animals - Below Water • Artwork Theme • Surface & Ink
- Dolphin / Shark / Turtle & marine-scape - MDF with O & T inks
• Introduction to underwater scenes (especially distance) • Introduction to the underwater palette • Perimeter masking techniques
W4. Marine Animals - Above Water • Artwork Theme • Surface & Ink
- Crab (& Frog - homeproject) - MDF with O & T inks
• Introduction to creating the illusion of “translucency and transparency” • Expanding on creating the illusion of “Linking Dimension”
W5. Avion Animals - Flying • Artwork Theme • Surface & Ink
- 3D cut-out of bird mounted on backboard - MDF with O & T inks
• Introduction to the 3D Cut-out artwork concept • Introduction to feather texture strategies • Introduction to the rules of distance in vista landscapes.
. . . Ring 1300 AIRBRUSH for more information (1300 247 278).
The Airbrush Venturi - 2012 Advanced Method Course Increasing Difficulty
• The course starts off with the easiest artworks and gets harder and harder, until at the end you are doing realist portraits with a transparent ink on the white of the paper; “sudden death”! Airbrushing on cotton is dramatically different and requires a precision and control because of the limited ability to error correct. Made all the harder because we are going to take the use of stencils off you and make you airbrush the artwork 99% freehand. Although we will be introducing the use of “slide guides” (the airbrush equivalent to Mahl Sticks). • Creating family portraits in sepia and charcoal will be one of the hardest things you will ever learn to airbrush because you cannot error correct or create negative space with white ink. It is right the first time or you throw it away and start again. All sorts of “tricks” (one of least favourite words) will be shown to you, that will help you through the difficult situations that we will place you in with each artwork.
W6. Avion Animals - Perched • Artwork Theme • Surface & Ink
- Kookaburra’s & Close-up Land-scapes - MDF with O & T inks
• Introduction to tree textures • Introduction to out-of-focus backgrounds • Introduction to “underpainting techniques”
W7. Automotive Illustration - B&W • Artwork Theme • Surface & Ink
- Auto Illustration / B&W Background Car - Cotton over MDF with O & Protex inks
• Introduction to airbrushing manufactured products (eg cars) • Intro to working on cotton with O and Protex • Intro to creating surface finishes (matt, satin and gloss)
W8. Automotive Illustration - Colour • Artwork Theme • Surface & Ink
- Auto Illustration / Colour Foreground Car - Cotton over MDF with O & Protex inks
• Introduction to airbrushing manufactured products (eg cars) • Intro to working on cotton with O and Protex • Intro to creating surface finishes (matt, satin and gloss)
W9. Portraiture - Scale Package • Artwork Theme • Surface & Ink
- Artwork Scaling (A1 - A8 wallet sized) - Paper with O & T inks
• The pattern to image deconstruction from A1 - A8 • Visual Scaling & Assessment at all sizes • Introduction to creating different scale of textures
Having used the word, every “trick” is taken from the systems that you were taught in your Venturi Method training but weren’t useful yet and you would have missed their potential.
W10. Portraiture - Sudden Death • Artwork Theme • Surface & Ink
- Sepia “Sudden Death” Portraits - Paper with only T inks
• Introduction to primary sequence - positive space portraiture • Creating transparent mixes that “change colour” • Introduction to double edging, rolled form and chiselling
. . . Ring 1300 AIRBRUSH for more information (1300 247 278).
The Airbrush Venturi - 2012 Advanced Method Course Joining the Advanced - Applied Method Course:
Admission to the Advanced Course is not automatic. We are not looking for “talented” students, we are looking for students that are going to put the most time and effort into the course. We are looking for people who are willing to really put the commitment and energy into learning as much as they can, regardless of whether they think they are talented or not. Ask yourself the below questions to see if you are the type of student that e are looking for. Q1: Minimum Training Requirements: Completion of the full Venturi Method A - E?
Yes
No
(catch-up training required)
No
(in the process)
If not when and how will you have the units finished?
Q2. Complete Portable Equipment Kit: Will you have a portable kit to bring to class? Yes
If not, what do you require that is fundamental to being able to complete each project?
Q3. Permanent Airbrush Space: Do you have a permanent airbrush space?
Yes
No
(still building it)
If not, how do you propose to be able to complete each project ?
Q4. Will the course artwork projects be completed and will take priority over any commercial artworks? Will you ensure that all course artworks take priority over all other airbrush artworks for the period of the course?
Yes
This is not negotiable!
To Enrol:
Before you enrol, you need to speak to your teachers and they will discuss it with you. The enrolment form has these same questions on them as above, and as part of the enrolment process you have to agree to these terms to have your enrolment accepted.
Course Fees:
The course cost is $1960.00 for the 150 hours. Payment can be made over 4 payments of $490.00 each (deposit and then each month for the first three months of the course). Past AMC students can do an even more advanced training by doing additional courses with an extra discount, at $1500.00 (payable in four $375 lots - quarterly).
