About Michael Batzel
First place winner of Hobby/ Model category
My name is Michael Batzel. I'm from the USA and live just outside the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I've been drawing since I could hold a pencil - I'm left handed. After High School, I attended university and studied Graphic Design and Illustration. This was a lot of life drawing classes, commercial advertising and layout. I did take the one airbrush course the school offered and just fell in love with the tool.
After graduation I worked for a couple years doing print media layouts and design. This I discovered was very unfulfilling, so the day I saw a help wanted ad for an airbrush artist at a local store I quickly submitted a resume. At this point I had virtually zero experience with the airbrush but I was hired on the strength of my drawing skills. This was 20 years ago and I still work at that store today. Everything I learned about airbrushing developed through this job, watching and learning from the experienced coworkers there. It wasn't at all easy and there was a huge learning curve.
I've painted just about everything under the sun at this store from shirts, car tags, animals, portraits, In Loving Memory designs, cars, motorcycles and on and on. The one thing I really had no experience painting was model kits so in the last few years, when I'm not painting for customers at work, you can find me working on a model kit or reading comics.
Winner’s Interview
1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, what is your background? When did you start airbrushing and what was the learning process like for you?
​I have always been artistic- love to draw with pencils. Out of college, I stumbled into a job at an airbrush shop with no actual experience airbrushing (besides a few faded sky backgrounds that I'd include in my colored pencil art). It was basically trial by fire and I learned fast by watching my much more experienced coworkers. This was a typical T-Shirt and automotive shop and we'd do everything from name designs to pet portraits to motorcycles and car hoods. I had such a difficult time painting a simple script name on a shirt or car tag for at least a year until one day it just clicked! I stopped seeing it as a "name" and more as a series of curving lines, if that makes sense. I never looked back after that. This was 20 years ago and I still work there periodically today. I've also worked at many "turn and burn" high speed type painting environments including fairs, the beach boardwalks in the summer, farmers markets and even Halloween haunted attractions where I airbrush the workers and turn them into spooky haunters all through October. ​
2. Can you tell us a bit more about your winning entry piece? How / why did you choose it? How long did it take, and what inspired you?
My winning entry is a plastic model kit I purchased at a convention a few years ago. It sat in the box forever until I decided one day to start building and painting figure models in my spare time - mostly as a way to relax and relieve stress. I've always loved Universal Monsters and the horror genre but I haven't done a model kit since I was a kid and I figured I'd try to incorporate this skill of airbrushing into something different.
3. What challenges did you encounter during the creation of this piece? What is your favorite part of the work, and why? What airbrush techniques did you use in this creation?
The challenges of doing a model like The Invisible Man, for me, was thinking in 3 dimensions, keeping everything very clean and "tight" and using different techniques to simulate different textures. Also everything about these model kits is VERY small and requires a lot of patience lol. I used various techniques including stippling the coat, spraying "wet" and then smearing with my finger to simulate wood grain, lots of scraping back the paint to get a type of aging effect on the bandages and wood surfaces. My favorite parts of this model are the parts I added that weren't included in the kit - the lighting I rigged myself, the liquid spills that I added by airbrushing dried hot glue. These tiny details make the kit my own and more authentic.
"Art is everything to me. It is why I get up in the morning."
4. What does airbrushing mean to you and what drives your passion for airbrushing and creating art? Also, how do you find the ideas for your other works?
Art is everything to me. It is why I get up in the morning. And airbrushing, I don't know how to explain it, it's just when I push down on the trigger and hear that air start 'pussshhhhhing', then pull back and the paint just starts smoothly flowing, well it's like a zen meditative experience for me and I get in that "zone" or "flow state" head space and time just flies by.
5. What are your goals / targets for airbrushing? What do you want to achieve?
My goal with airbrushing is to always push myself to get better and always get inspired by the AMAZING art I see other airbrushers creating and use that as a benchmark for my own progress. Never stop learning.
6. Do you specialize or prefer to work on a specific surface?
I guess I'd say I will never lose my first love of airbrushing on clothing (my whole closet is full of airbrushed shirts I wear all the time) but I'm pretty much, like a lot of us painters, a jack of all trades when it comes to surfaces to paint.
7. How would you describe your style(s) in airbrushing?
My style is probably more illustrative than, say, fine art. I lean towards realism and keeping things clean and tight.
8. Any advice to beginners looking to start airbrushing? What would you tell your young self?
My advice to beginners is to not treat the airbrush as some delicate fine instrument that you have to treat with Kid Gloves. I mean, it certainly is, but just dive in. Don't be afraid of it. Take it apart and reassemble. Learn how it works and if it's not working properly, why? I pride myself on being able to get basically any airbrush, no matter how beat up it appears, in just a few minutes time, working again. This saved me many many times in many situations. I guess I'm saying, know your tool FIRST before you worry about painting techniques. Technique will come but in my experience 80% of frustration with airbrushing comes from mechanical things that are fixable with knowledge of the tools.
"know your tool FIRST before you worry about painting techniques."
9. Do you have a website or blog? How can people reach you on social media?
Well, I guess that's it. Thanks again so much and I am overwhelmed by the amount of creativity I've seen from all the other artists that have submitted entries. All fantastic! I don't have a website or much social media presence. I am however on instagram. My handle is mmmmmb0p (that's a zero, not an O) lol. Or you can probably just search my name.
