Click on the thumbnails to enlarge

Owner Christine contacted me to see if I could airbrush a likeness of Kurt Cobain onto the back of her leather jacket. I looked at the source image - a well known photo of Kurt that's been used on a top-selling poster - and thought immediately that it would work really well on the back of a jacket.

After the jacket was cleaned down and scuffed to give the surface a good key for the paint, the first job was to trace the basic elements of the face such as eyes, nostrils, mouth, hairline and the outline of the face. These drawings were then turned into masks made from adhesive backed film which were then laid onto the jacket. It's important to get the positioning of the nostrils, eyes and mouth absolutely spot on when creating a likeness otherwise however good you paint the features, it won't quite look like that person. Tracing is the best way of getting that right.

I airbrushed a thin wash of white onto the masks, then pulled them off to leave the basic shapes of the face. This could then be used as a base for me to work the fine textures onto the top of.

Now that the basic face was on, I built up the textures of the skin carefully with the airbrush. This was the time consuming bit and I worked very close to a print of the original image to get it as close as I could. Once I had got as far as I could with the airbrush, I used a fine paintbrush to render the bristles of Kurt's beard and a larger brush to paint the highlighted sections of the hair. The contrast of these sharp handpainted features with the finely blended airbrushing underneath help to give this painting a more photographic feel.

I heat set the artwork with a hot air gun and coated the leather in a waterproofing resin to give it that extra bit of protection. Owner Christine was really pleased with the results and sent me some photos of her with the jacket on for me to post up here.

Back to Leather