I work mainly in airbrushed acrylics. As a product illustrator for 15 years I had to develop skills with this tool in order to render photo-realistic effects...a product had to look as though it were photographed in order to be ready for catalog publication. I was using a type of pre-press material that required me to paint the product in four seperate levels, one for each color of the printing process. When photographed and layed on top of each other, a full color product illustration was the result.

I have continued to work this way on most of my original paintings. I will first paint the yellows of the work in the proper saturations, next I will lay the magenta level over the yellow level...at this point it is starting to look like a painting...when satisfied with the magenta level, I lay on the cyan/blue level...final small touch-ups with the black finishes off the painting. This technique could only really work using an airbrush and it takes a bit of forethought but the vibrancy of the paintings color makes it well worth it. I also work quite a bit in Black and White as well.

Having spent so much time painting photorealist illustrations of real world items (and rather mundane items at that) I try to stray as far away from reality that I can in my work.