Bishop and the airbrush

01-31-2015
I have said it, and I will say it again: to me, Robert Bishop is the greatest bondage artist of all time! Although he wasn't my first source of inspiration ( I was already acquainted with artists like Willie, Stanton and Eneg), when I discovered his work, he instantly became the biggest. I was still in high school at the time, and, using a projector, I beamed a number of my favorite pieces on very large slates of paper, and traced them. And I mean LARGE, bigger than the A 1 format. So now I had these huge Bishop 'posters' which I used to adorn my attic room walls with. He really became a constant influence that way, and if you go to my very early work, in Nostalgia, you can perhaps detect at which point that influence became apparent in my work.

The second big effect he had on me (I was in college, by then) was when I read the large interview with him in Bondage Life (I think it was by the writer Geoffrey Merrick). There in he told about his discovery of the airbrush. The nice thing is that we can see exactly when that was, because of the style change in Fanny Hall number one. In there, he goes from a rather crude pen and ink style, to a more refined one, first. But then, somewhere down the road, a more significant change takes place: from pen and ink to airbrush. Now, I already knew that style. I had his second album; I just had no idea how he achieved these spectacular effects. And now there was the answer: the airbrush! I rushed out to buy me one! Back at home, with the brush and a can with compressed air, I started my first effort...
Boy, was that a disappointment. Not having a clue how to work with the thing, I only succeeded in producing some vague clouds of gray all over my design. Disgusted, I threw the thing in a closet, and it was only years later that I learned how to work with masking films, and cutting them. I slowly mastered the technique, and worked with the thing for decades. All my first three albums were made with the brush, and I'll tell you honestly: I liked the results most of the time, I didn't like the work. Sitting in clouds of sprayed ink, with, wearing a cap over my nose and mouth to almost no effect... and tons of things could go wrong! Especially in the early years, before I owned a compressor, working with these canisters, the brush sometimes lived a life of its own, suddenly blurting out large spots that totally ruined the work.
No, I was very glad that some ten years ago, I started to work with photo shop. Sitting in a clean (well: cleaner) room, using back ups: it's all so much more relaxed. And it gives me the opportunity to try things out along the way.

CBAP