Absolute Air Custom Airbrush

 

Don’t be fooled.

 

The speed of his work, contrasted by his easy-going manner and Arkansas accent, sets a trap for deception. He seems to execute his airbrushing artistry with all of the effort required to breathe. But don’t believe it.

Of course, Brockton resident Alan Miller will forgive you if you do. He fell for the same trap 16 years ago.

His passion for art, however, began long before he knew anything about airbrushing.

It started around age 3, with paper and pencil, he said. “For a good eight or nine years, that was all I had,” Alan said.

For subject matter, Alan drew lots of inspiration from his dad’s work: racing cars. Alan could draw detailed, scale images of racing cars before he could write his own name, he said.

And his parents knew just how to encourage him. Alan’s reward for good behavior was being allowed to stay up later so he could draw.

That’s not to say he didn’t have some slip-ups along the way.

One incident in particular involved Alan, a blue marker, a Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia, and a desire to illustrate every page. His parents were far from pleased, and punished him accordingly.

The aftermath did bring one positive, Alan noted: “Mom brought home reams and reams of paper,” he said.

From paper and pencil, Alan moved into working with charcoal, acrylics, oils and pastels. “I was trying to find my voice,” he said.

Then, one day the summer of 1992, he made the seemingly uneventful decision to go to a theme park with his girlfriend. But that trip to Six Flags Over Texas near Fort Worth led to profound change for Alan.

The two stopped at an airbrush booth to have a T-shirt made featuring their names. Alan remembers watching the worker complete the task in less than five minutes. And he remembers getting charged $35.

Suddenly, that elusive formula for channeling creativity into profitability flashed in front of Alan’s eyes.

Getting the hang of his new medium, however, took longer than he expected. As an artist who was used to putting pencil on paper, or brushes on canvas, the idea of working in a medium that does not involve direct pressure like that forced him to learn a whole new sense of touch. At the same time, he was trying to grasp how to manage the flow of the paint. The process took many months of working at it daily, he said.

“It’s like eating cereal now,” Alan said. “But back then, it was like learning two languages at once.”

Now Alan is getting hired several times a week to work his airbrush at various events. But whether he’s doing a T-shirt or a temporary tattoo, the work seen by customers is just part of the process.

For his tattoos, for example, Alan likes to create some of his own stencils. This means sketching the idea, then scanning it into the computer where he can further edit his image with either Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. The final image is printed out and cut from transparent film.

And he’s thinking bigger for his next step. He wants to start exploring body painting projects.

“I feel like I’ve found my medium,” Alan said. “And I want to do everything I can with that.”

 

FIRST TIME

Yep. It did, in fact, involve a ’57 Chevy. But it wasn’t like the Bob Seger song. Instead, Alan remembers drawing his dad’s racing cars — one of which was a ’57 Chevy — from the time he was 3.

WORST TIME

It happened at the very first festival he worked as an airbrush artist. “I was as green as they come,” Alan said. One woman requested a T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it, and Alan admits the results were less than great. About an hour later, the woman’s boyfriend came back to request that Alan give them their money back. Worse still, the request was made in front of a line of 20 people, Alan said. So after he returned their money, he saw that his line of clients had disappeared. The blow was softened, he added, by the fact that he still made several hundred dollars over the weekend.

 

Thank You To Jeff Haynes For The Pic & Story! 

Check Out His Website @ http://web.mac.com/jeffhaynes

Email Jeff @ jeffhaynes@mac.com