A little more art history, this image predates the previous post by three years.
'Throat', acrylic on masonite, 1992.
On my eighteen birthday i was given the choice of an airbrush and compressor or a car, lucky i chose the airbrush as i would probably be dead or horribly disfigured by now. Anyhoo, you may or may not recognise the early influence of H.R.Giger here. A very curious man who according to the biographical entries which accompanied his series coffee-table books could not pee or shit separately, he had to evacuate both his bowel and bladder at the same time. Weirdo.
What i found intriguing about Giger at the time was his freestyle use of the airbrush, exposure to his work seemed to free me of the restrictive nature of masking. A technique which was heavily peddled by the conventional texts of the time, of course these were instructive texts which hadn't changed much since the twenties when the airbrush was developed.
Thus, my early airbrush efforts became a combination of drawing, brushwork and freestyle airbrush. Thematically i was also guilty of blatant rip-offs of Giger's work, i'm fairly sure he didn't notice, i was only a college student living in the ass-end of the planet after all.
i have recently returned to the airbrush after much time away and am very much enjoying it.