A Look At The History Of Airbrush Art

The story of airbrush art is just as interesting as the creative designs that artisans are using airbrushing for. Experts believe that a primitive form of airbrush art was used by civilizations in times gone by. The method understood to be used in this older form of airbrush art was making use of a hollow bone to spray the paint out of by blowing through it. While this is a very primitive method in comparison to modern day forms of airbrush art, it does still work.

The world would eventually see a more modern adaptation of airbrushing when in 1893 Charles Burdick took out a patent for the first airbrush device. Burdick's airbrush would be used for the retouching photographs until the mid 20's. During the 30's airbrush usage increased when ad agencies made use of it to create advertisements for their new products. Soon airbrushing would be used to paint Pin-Up girls on American planes during world war II. As seen in the film 'Memphis Belle' This is when airbrushing began to show up more worldwide in the form of art.

In the 1940 Walt Disney showed the world a new use for  the airbrush. Walt Disney would take the art of the airbrush to the animated screen.

The backgrounds for many if not all of Walt Disney's animated movies were realized using airbrushing techniques. Airbrushing allowed them to make shadows and create almost 3D lighting tricks to achieve a more realistic looking background. This even seems archaic compared to what we can do with animated movie's nowadays with Adobe's Photoshop and Gimp as well as for airbrush art as many of it's contemporary exponents , this method did hail the way for both the improvement on animation and airbrush art. The 1960s brought us even closer to what we now know we can do with airbrushing. Airbrush art in the 1960s made its way into the music world. Album covers were done using airbrush art to create the whole hippy style images. The wild psychedelic artwork that was popular with that era were done thanks to the use of airbrushing.

Tie-dyed designs, hippy flowers and even peace signs were making their artistic on vehicles during this period. Airbrushing the artwork on took a lot of time out of painting the vehicles over doing the designs by hand. Thus airbrush art was being experimented with on vehicles at this point. The way we use airbrushing now to create art surly has come along way from the primitive methods used by our ancestors and even our parents. Now a days we can see airbrush art almost everywhere on almost every type of surface. The only limits now a days with airbrush art rests in the limits of the individual artist.

A more modern take on this style of art is within the world of PC Modding.