Hi, i'm a student working on a paper about he commerical and artistic uses of the airbrush.  I saw your beautiful works on coastairbrush.com and was wondering if your could enlighten this student with your expertise.

 

Why did you chose the airbrush over the paintbrush?
This has a huge story behind the reason and you can find alot more details for reference here in each article
(except the bass magazine which is a story of why I became a musician)
http://www.mbrindley.com/2brin/about/articles/aboutarticles.html

I picked up the airbrush back in 1980 because back then you didn't have the advances in photoshop or computers at all period until 1984 or so and those machines were so primitive it tooks hours to do things on them
The only way you could achieve an absolutely smooth graduated color that evenly and smoothly blended together could only be achieved
by only several different artistic techinques that I could afford 1) airbrush 2) silkscreen or 3) painstakingly tedious brushstroking.
I absolutely loved the beauty of the airbrushed album covers of the day and was a huge source or inspiration and having friends with loads of albums covers served also as a retrieveable catalog of art since there was no internet.  Here are some examples of early airbrush album work
Airbrushes were expensive, rare and it was like a mystery how they worked.  Almost like a modern day Merlin of Camelot these pioneering airbrushers of the era were.  Luckily a friend had an old piece of crap airbrush he lent to me to airbrush a surfboard I was working on at the time to see if I could make it do anything more than he could.  I limped through this first airbrush experienced as it spattered and spewed and made wierd noises and the compressor was hissing from bad connections and making tons of noises that threw off your concentration and focus.  Cleaned and Re-cleaned the damn thing not knowing what to expect and Then it happened!.......I finally got a smooth stream of perfectly flowing airbrush paint at full throttle that went through the little jar in about 5 seconds.  It was in that moment I saw the potential for this contraption called an airbrush and I knew I would dedicate myself to it for the rest of my life.

yes	rod stewart	journey	kansas
boston	journey-evolution	journey-captured	greatful dead

Do you believe airbrushing is on the rise in popularity?
The airbrush itself in the late 80's & 90's went through signifcant technological break throughs making them affordable, reliable and much more controllable. A whole new wave of young airbrush artists were there when it happend and dedicated themselves to the airbrush and took it progessively to the next level.  Airbrush artwork in the 70's and 80's were primarily seen as carnival art because most people saw there first airbrush and the artist at work at Carnivals.  The art was performed unbelievably fast and inexpensive but because of this people were conditioned to airbrush art either on canvas or a t-shirt would be much less expensive than an original oil or watercolor painting.  With the popularity of shows like West Coast Chopper and Paint my Truck, etc... a growing population of baby boomers that grew up with the special effects only the airbrush could offer will continue to keep it in popular culture and only rise its popularity more!

How popular do you believe airbrush was 20 years ago, what about 10 years ago?
oops....I already kind of covered that above......let me know if you want me to elaborate on this question

1) 20 years ago the airbrush was brand new and not popular because it was a pain in the ass to use and no one knew really how to use it correctly but you could see its secret mysteries on album cover art and at carnivals
2) 10 years ago the airbrush was wildly popular and specialty stores, videos and lessons began to take place everywhere

What inspired you to pursue a carreer as an airbrush artist?
my particular story and my career as an artist can be read much more clearly and it much more detail than I can write in an e-mail on my articles page on my website (hunt around in here and you can find some really good stuff on me to write about

What is in store for the airbrush's future?
I project from an airbrush experience that spans 25 years that the airbrush will continue to grow and strengthen as an artisan tool because it offers techniques and effects that you can not achieve with any other art tool and allows the accomplished artist to lay down a uniform smooth paint on non level or any surface surfaces (like a helmet , vehicle, brick walls, etc.....).
In looking 50-100 years in the future I believe the majority of most painters tools will be entirely replaced with the ability to do the same things on the personal computer..........As the current monster advancements of computers speed ahead and memory and technolgies are doubling every 18 months that growing up in a generation without a personal computer and then fast foward to todays computing power, I speculate that a computer will be able to let an artist virtually paint into the computer with lifelike sensitivity and release all artists from the harmful chemicals that we are all exposed too.............
The ability to do is here now in its infancy through pressure sensitive wacom tablets and inside current photoshop software programs you can actually choose the symbol of an airbrush to paint with..........so in essence the airbrush will remain even in cyberspace as it is eventually replaced and rendered archaic.  100 years in the future who knows what will be available that we can;t even dream about but I can easily imagine an artist can jump into a virtual hollodeck that allows the artist to paint in without a single drop of paint that would spill and limitless redo's to get it just right and allow the artist to not only paint but create a 3 dimensional world of paint, music and video simultaneously combining to journey a viewer into an artistic virtual world that is unimaginably beautiful and an experience that will envelope the human soul deeper than mankind has ever experienced!!!!

Feel free to edit this anyway you wish...hope this helps?

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