Airbrush Technique Issue 22

minute when something started to fall around on the ground and onto our 20’ x 20’ top. We looked out to find the ground covered with broken beer bottles. Stepping out and looking around further, much to our surprise, we realized we were in the middle of a beer bottle fight. The whistling came from the bottles whirling over our trailer! Fortunately, it was short lasting when the speedway police and track police arrived.” John and his crew aren’t without their charitable side either. They’ve been know to donate their time for special events. John describes the following. “On the last Thursday night of the annual fair in South Bend, Indiana, the fair president would ask the show to close to the public at 6:00 PM for a special community event. They invited the special education children from the local homes to come to the fair to ride for free, play the games, and eat the food offered at the concessions. Thinking quickly, we came up with the idea of painting 14” x 14” felt pylons with bright colors. We would airbrush their names in large letters and add stars and other decorative shapes. At one point we had fifty to sixty kids in our lines and had a picture in the local paper. We had as much fun, if not more than, the kids! You can ask for anything to be painted on your shirt or hat in John’s store as long as it’s not copyright protected or “adult” in content. John’s place is a family place. “There is a 75-80 year old bath tub containing shirts with mistakes or spots. The shirts sell for $2.00, and the sign above it reads, ‘Bat tub’. When the customers are reading the sign, I often release the fishing line in my booth that has a little rubber bat suspended from it over near the tub. When it drops low in front of the customer, it gets a good laugh and several great screams. I also have a spider that drops on the sales counter when I release its fishing line to lower it into the customer’s view. There is a rubber arm mounted in a sleeve of a sweatshirt up near the ceiling at my booth. When a customer is watching the other painter, I release its string and the arm drops down and waves near the customer’s face. The Shirt Shack is really full of fun and laughter.” For John’s 65’s birthday he decided to retire the “Road Crew” John felt he had no business hauling those big trailers around anymore, they sold the other two stores in Daytona and now fill their days at the original Shirt Shack. John still tells stories of the road though, of sometimes starting as early as three in the morning to cater to a crowd 3000 strong during race qualifying on opening days. John tells us what happened once at Indianapolis Motor Speedway druing the Indy 500, “We opened for business at 3:00 AM. Now, that’s an early start! Working with such a monster-sized crowd was an adventure in itself. I loved it!” says the artist. “One year in Indianapolis we acquired two spaces, one about a hundred feet between the ends of two grandstands. At that spot we set up our equipment in the center, started to paint, and were doing well for a few hours when we heard a whistling noise. The whistling went on for about a While John’s children attended school, each year from 1966 to 1977 they would airbrush at the annual school fair. “The students would bring a tee shirt from home, and we would paint their name on it for one dollar. All the proceeds would go to the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA). Sometimes we set up in the school gym for smaller functions to do the same thing, and the PTA loved it!” A family friend asked John to teach his wife to use the airbrush while they were on vacation in Daytona, time was limited and John was only able to spend a few days with her. Never to be one give up, he finished giving her lessons over the telephone “running up a sizeable phone bill for 1972. It’s a good thing we did it,” says John, “now she and her husband (Jannie and Hill Snyder) own an airbrush and paint their own rides on the fair circuit.” Because John has spent his lifetime making a living airbrushing tee shirts he’s the first one to encourage the artist with the

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Airbrush Technique Issue 22

Airbrush Technique Issue 22 Danyell Butler Lee Diaz C.S. Bailey Big Daddy John Roseboom - An Icon in Airbrush History Patrick Charuel Helmet Trim Natalie Lapelosa - How to Airbrush Hellboy on a T Shirt by Xzotic Ink Ashley Brayson

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.