On Saturday March 29, The Sedona Club played host to a very special event. Contestants from the Miss U.S.A. Pageant congregated for fun, fabulous food and some mingling with local A-Listers. Sponsors for the event included Syrup Swimwear, official swim wear of Miss USA 2008.
I just returned from my 10th trip to Japan and teaching my 6th Seminar at the Iwata factory in Yokohama, Japan. I’ve made many friends there and Japan is very similar to Hawaii with the cultures of food, art and price. This trip I took my wife, Susan and my daughter, Indigo for their second trip there and spent a week in Kyoto first before my seminar at Iwata. It was the week before Sakura (the blossoming of the Cherry trees), but it was starting to happen a little anyway. Just not as crowded, yet. WOW! Was that cool. My good friend Satoru Iwata joined us for some fun and we even went to the Ramen Museum for lunch in Yokohama. That place was amazing as well, seems like all we do is eat in Japan.
Here you see Susan and Indigo checking out the streets of Kyoto. Indigo just loves to hang out with her mom & dad - hehehe.
The art and culture amazes me. I must take 1,000 photos each trip I go and even now I still find old, old art like this breathtaking dragon at one of the many temples we visited some dated back to 300 A.D.
Japan is not weak at use of color (much like Hawaii) even in store display you will see bright colors almost seems eatable at times.
Here is the Golden temple in Kyoto its all hand gold-leafed, imagine that! Page after page (I looked close to check it to be true). Man! that must have taken some time.
This building is NOT hand Gold-leafed or airbrushed, but worth its weight in gold to me. It’s at the top of a hill of watercress fields and gardens in Yokohama and its where I call home while in Japan.
Satoru Iwata is a celebrity to all airbrushers everywhere. Friendly as always, he gave me a tour of the new factory showroom and new training (secret) facility - mostly robotics and spray tech you don’t need to know about as an airbrusher anyway. Iwata’s main biz is pumps, compressors, powder-coating gear, spray guns and yes, airbrushes too, WOW! Still, to me I love to see it and even see my own work hanging in the showroom with greats like Shin, and Chuta, Japan’s finest custom painters as well.
Here’s some of the star line up in the new showroom - the TH, HP and the T series some of my personal favorites.
Iwata has lots of conversion air caps many U.S. folks don’t even need to know about yet. My job is to tell you when I teach and travel in water borne areas. They are always thinking ahead. That’s Iwata.
Familiar guns like LPH 50 even have new air-caps to show off.
Iwata goes back 100 years when two brothers opened the company. Here is just one of the spray-guns from the early days, a 1955 spray gun.
Compressors are big, or I mean small and powerful. I have one of these myself in my home studio with scroll technology and a 5 horse silent air source, my neighbors can’t even see or hear it. It makes a small amount of noise like a refrigerator and about the size of one. I have the second one, also - the one on the left - and I can run everything up to even buffers off it (quiet as hell too). Iwata Medea can get these for you in U.S if you’re interested.
Here is more old stuff (love the color).
Even older.
Close up antique compressors the Iwata brothers themselves made.
Here’s my favorite part. I get to try the new mini spray gun, the HP-G3 and the HP-G5. Both work like an airbrush and a small compressor is sufficient to power them. AWESOME! These will be GREAT for home users as well as make up artists, even tanning folks. They spray as smooth as butter and at low pressure. The HP-G3 has a 0.35 nozzle and the HP-G5 a 0.5. They are intense atomization the air-caps and heads are so advanced I can’t even talk about it. But get one - they ROCK! Just ask the folks at Iwata Medea about them - they should be arriving in the U.S. soon.
They even have a new two-headed air compressor to pump it up a bit for home or portable users. In the U.S. we can only make two-headed calves and frogs hehehe.
The air chamber is in the handle - how cool is that? Thanks again Iwata.
This week’s Pic of the Week was shot last year at the Laughlin River Run where artists will paint and pinstripe most anything. The 2008 Laughlin River Run is just around the corner.
Our friend Daniel Power from Power Airbrush Studios in Australia shares this airbrushing for corporate demonstration video at the 2008 Tokyo Auto Salon in Japan. Also shown are custom airbrushed panels and airbrush body painting by world class airbrush artist Daniel Power. We’re told that 250,000 people came through this show in just 3 days.
We got a chance to see this bike before it was completed at Sturgis, 2007. Here’s a blurb about it from their website. Enjoy!
“The gas tank was hand crafted from .125″ thick copper sheet and the oil tank and fender fitting with copper cladding. The attention to detail flows through the entire bike from the oldschool wiring to copper oil lines. They are comprised from a perimeter brake in the front and a rear disk brake hidden inside a 1934 Buick drum brake.”
The engraving and leatherwork is impressive. Check out that beautiful belt guard.
The seat is work of art unto itself. This bike is all about the details.
We’re thinking this bike would look great pretty much anywhere; garage, game room or the curvy back-road to a picnic nowhere in particular.
Our current MySpace Featured Artist is Fred Sicol of Killer Kreations. Fred does his magic in Philadelphia, PA. He started out as a T-shirt artist twelve years ago and now has matured into a very accomplished painter of rides. Check it out…
Masterpiece Arts just contacted us to announce that The 2008 Elite Salon Art Contest deadline has been extended to May 1, 2008, so now is your chance to enter your masterpiece.
Awards and recognition in each category:
• Abstracts
• Land and Seascapes
• People and everyday life
• Future Visions
Many AirbrushTour readers are artists themselves. And we field a lot of questions from those of you who are trying to make a business from your art. After all, artist have got to eat too, right?
Since there is so much interest in this topic, we thought you might like to be made aware a new course that teaches you everything you need to know about making your art into a business. And now there’s a downloadable course that reveals exactly how to do just that. It was prepared by a well-known glass artist by the name of Steve Popkin. And for a limited time you can get his entire course for a deep discount.
Here are some of the things you’ll learn with Steve’s course:
* How to price your art
* How to sell wholesale
* Dealing properly with galleries
* Weekend art shows
* Selling art to Uncle Sam - that’s right your rich uncle buys art too!
* Commission work
* Creating and selling art for special events
* Public works of art
* Online sales
… and every other trick of the trade you need to get your art business moving into the black. If you are a serious artist and want to take your business to the next level, do yourself a favor and invest in this course.
AirbrushTour showcases all types of airbrush talent, along with other creative and artistic disciplines. We also share fun events and the latest happenings in the airbrush community and paint industries. As we travel, we bring talented artists' work and the events of Las Vegas-based artist and photographer A.D. Cook to you.
AirbrushTour also features posts about motorcycles and hot rods, and the events that surround them, and some great travel pics of exciting places from all over the USA, so come along and share with us in America's passion for airbrush art.
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