by Michael Cacy

As you know, the airbrush is the perfect tool to render many types of textures. This article is a step-by-step description of the process used to figure out how to render a specific texture that I had never been asked to depict. While this exact texture may not come up in your work, the problem-solving process required for this project may open up avenues for solutions in your work one of these days.

The 11-by-16-inch illustration called for an 18th Century sailor in a wool tweed vest. (This art was painted in transparent airbrush acrylic on a smooth, hot-pressed illustration board surface. Stripes in the shirt were applied in color pencil.) A number of materials can be used by an airbrush artist to suggest fabric textures. In the past, I have sprayed through window screen, cheesecloth, knits, a synthetic fabric mesh called “tulle,” and a variety of other materials from the fabric store and elsewhere.

Window screen could yield a pattern suggesting the weave of tweed (and I used it to paint a "style test" to see how it would look), but the resulting mesh pattern would be larger than the scale of this artwork, so I was forced to try another option.

Step 1
To achieve a mesh pattern at the proportion of this illustration, I chose a material that I have used for textures on previous projects-drywall mesh. That's right, the stuff you would apply over a crack in a wall to plaster over. The type I like has an adhesive tack on one side, and is available in various widths. (Shown here are two-inch and six-inch rolls.) This material can be stretched, distorted, or even doubled over to suggest folds and other interesting effects. Because one side is adhesive, it will stick down as a mask to the working surface until removed.

Step 2
The scale of the woven pattern in the drywall mesh is actually twice the scale of what is needed in this instance, so I carefully positioned one piece of drywall mesh over another in such a way as to achieve a pattern half as wide (a finer mesh pattern). As you can see in the previous photo, my drywall mesh was white when it came off the roll. To make positioning easier to see, I temporarily adhered it to a scrap of card and airbrushed it black before I started working with it. In this photo, you can see one piece of mesh mounted to another.

Step 3
With frisket film protecting the art as a mask, I revealed masks from the chest area on each side and an area of the vest below the arm. The direction of the "weave" of the tweed fabric is at different angles for the lapels, so these areas must be worked separately. A double layer of drywall mesh covers the exposed areas to be painted.

Step 4
The first areas have been painted, and with the mesh removed, the resulting pattern is clearly established. Since more than one area remains to be painted, carefully attempt to gauge the amount of paint you spray through the mesh, so that the pattern will appear consistent, area to area. Peel up only a corner of the mesh if you need to double check yourself. Should you remove the entire section of mesh, and then decide later that the pattern is not as pronounced as you would like, the odds are against you of getting the mask back where it came from initially.

Step 5
Because drywall mesh is not actually an "art material," once an area has been painted, it’s a good idea to rub gently with tape at this point to remove any adhesive particles that the mesh may have left behind. Otherwise, you may encounter problems later.

Step 6
Since one of the things that characterizes tweed is that it’s woven with "heather" or variegated yarn, darker dots have been randomly added with a color pencil and a fine point permanent marker to make this texture believable as tweed.

Step 7
Now, with the shadowed areas beefed up and transparent colors applied (I used transparent sienna brown with a little moss green) over the texture, the vest is complete. No worries that texture has disappeared in the deeply shadowed areas. An important rule to remember is that texture and detail are evident in light, not in shadow, regardless of what subject matter you paint.

Michael Cacy is a world-class illustrator whose career spans more than 30 years. A recipient of the 1997 Vargas Award, Cacy's client list includes Iditarod, Nike, Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, and many more. His video/DVD, Illustration Cheap Tricks & Special F/X, is considered one of the best airbrush instructional presentations ever made.

Reprinted with permission from Airbrush Action magazine.