Here I show you the tools I use to create realistic portraits. The primary tool I employ is the airbrush. I currently use three airbrushes. The Iwata HP-SB airbrush (shown below) is my general purpose tool. It handles most of the work. It is a high precision instrument and I rely heavily upon it. For detail work, I rely on the Iwata Custom Micron SB shown below. It has a smaller nozzle and provides finer control at the detail level than the HP-SB. For larger areas such as backgrounds, I use an Olympos 102C (not shown). Although the airbrush has been around for over a hundred years, it is still a relatively unused tool among artists and I think that is a shame. It has also aquired a certain stigma among fine artists and critics due to the flood of unprofessional and low quality works created in the past. It does not have to be this way, however. A tool is neither good or bad but useful in the right hands. For me, it is a means to an end that would otherwise be almost impossible to achieve in the same timeframe and with the same results. Probably the most important technique I use other than putting paint onto the illustration board is taking it off! The paint I use allows me to erase it with regular erasers and I use that to great advantage when I need to add some highlights or when (God forbid) I make a mistake. I also use them to sharpen edges between values that have been dulled due to overspray from the airbrush. Here are some of the erasers I use. For extremely detailed areas such as eyelashes or other sharp areas that must remain sharp and clear, I use a regular #2 pencil or if it must be extremely dark, I use a liner brush and the same paint I use when I airbrush. Sometimes it is necessary to have very thin lines of pure white and this can be accomplished using an exacto knife and scraping the paint from the illustration board. Another tool which I rely upon as much as the airbrush itself is the paint I use. I use ComArt paint by Medea. It has a unique property among acrylic paint that allows me to erase it - even after it has dried! This is crucial to getting fine details into the portrait and for correcting small mistakes. For the B&W portraits I currently use the ComArt photo gray paint which gives me better results than mixing black with white. Here is a pic of the paint area in my studio. You'll notice some bottles of Golden paint as well. Now you know the tools of the trade!