Pathways to Industry
Every single industry that has ever required colour to be applied by hand has taken up the use of the airbrush as part of its skill set.  The airbrush has been used for all areas of commercial and fine art, photo retouching and restoration, theatre, television, movie, animation, and used in hundreds of different manufacturing industries, from the Ford factories, for the wood-grained dash boards of Model T’s through to fishing lures, mannequins, pottery . . . an exhaustive list of the uses of the airbrush commercially would require a small book.

Click on the “Pathways to Industry” booklet to open a pdf about the main commercial uses of the airbrush currently.

Commercial use of the airbrush is as big now as it has ever been.  Despite the downturn in its use in illustration and photo retouching, most other industries have in fact grown.

The biggest growth has been in commercial Custom Painting.  The use of the airbrush to paint cars, motorcycles, helmets, bicycles, boats, surfboards, jet skiis, windsurfers, snow boards, fridges, furniture, computer bodies, and even letterboxes, is bigger now than at any time before.

There is still a considerable number of illustrators / artists using the airbrush, as you will see in industry web sites such as the Illustrators Association of Aust (www.illustratorsaustralia.com/) or the equivalent in New Zealand (http://www.illustrators.co.nz/index.html) and the Australian Cartoonists Association (www.abwac.org.au/).  In fact the use of the airbrush has gone through a resurgence, as artists increasingly become frustrated with the ability to be individual with the digital versions of the tool on software programs like Photoshop, Corel Draw and many more. 

The use of the airbrush by signwriters and painters + decorators has grown rather than declined. The airbrush was always only a small part of these industries and while the use of traditional tools such as brushes for signwriting has plummeted, the use of the airbrush has grown alongside the development of the computer – (just google “airbrush signwriting” to see the hundreds of entries).

The airbrush is still used as a manufacturing tool for homewares and mannequins (they are all still airbrushed).  It is very widely used for shop fitting and fit outs for restaurants, retailing, gaming centres, museums, aquariums, hospitals, etc.  This is one of the biggest growth areas of the future.

The airbrush continues to be used for a wide variety of specialist applications from porcelain restoration, taxidermy and museum displays, commercial model making, fine art etching plate preparation with aquatints, restoration of art and manufactured goods like cars, clocks, etc

Airbrush use within the fine art community has slowly gained more and more acceptance. The airbrush has featured in the worlds most high profile art competition, the Venice Biennale, for Australia’s entries twice in recent years, with Howard Arkly and Patricia Piccinini.

In the 1980’s the future of airbrushing was under a cloud.  Everyone thought the computer was going to replace everyone’s jobs, regardless of what airbrush application.  But the fears people had, never came true.  In fact it has grown alongside the use of the computer. It is the only hand tool that can apply colour as “photorealistically” as the computer.

 

 

The history of the first mass produced airbrush.
While it has been established that F.E Stanley designed the first ever “airbrush” it was never made.  It took a man by the name of Liberty Walkup to develop the first airbrush to be ever manufactured and sold. And as they say “the rest is history”.

This booklet was prepared by the Airvolution magazine team in conjunction with the academic and historian Andy Penaluna.

The information has been carefully researched by My Penaluna and peer reviewed, and as a result the information in this booklet is considered to be accurate.

The airbrush developed by Liberty Walkup is not based on the atmospheric effect, called a “Venturi”.  It is closer to being an ink jet printer than a modern day airbrush.  The airbrush that we know today was developed by Charles Burdick and this is “another story”.  What is amazing is that todays airbrushes are almost identical to the earliest 1890′s models.