Sunburst!!!!! Who is doing it right. I need some advice

[chriscraft]

I’m pretty sure I’m using the wrong colors as I’m not getting the results I’m after.  I need to find a yellow dye to experiment with. 
 

  I’m airbrushing in my base color, Angelus Honey as my center. Then using a diluted Fiebings Dark Brown that I fade in from the outer edge in towards center but not quite all the way in. Then using Fiebings Black lightly feathered around the outer edges. I am  liking the way  my brown and black turn out but just not liking that my “Honey” color isn’t looking so honey colored.  I am airbrushing the honey color in heavy so that could be my issue. 
 

 If this wasn’t on leather..  I’d start with a yellow center then fading in the honey color in followed by brown and black outer edges. 

[sbrownn]

Take a look at some pictures of brown sunburst guitar tops to get an idea of the colors used.  I do a more traditional sunburst and usually use at least four colors:  purple/red/orange and yellow.

[DustinSmith]

Try Buckskin dye as your center color, its actually yellow with about a drop of brown dye, I've used it before and airbrushed medium brown around the edges and it turned out great

[YinTx]

I have cut the honey 10:1 and everything in between getting interesting hues.  You might give it a try on a scrap piece and see if it comes up the color you are looking for.  But I don't recall seeing a yellow hue come out like you are hoping for.

YinTx

[Handstitched]

This is my very first attempt at air brushing,  this bag was just a test. Nowhere near as nice as the card case you've made, that looks really nice.  . All I used was ' whisky antique ' as the base colour, and black air brushing around the edge. I sprayed the sealer on using a ' touch up gun'.  Looks more black/ brown than 'sunburst. '

I have used  a few coats of yellow as my base colour, as well as thinned out saddle tan,  and black air brushing before. 

I'm still learning  

HS

 

 

[chriscraft]

On 4/13/2021 at 11:54 PM, YinTx said:

I have cut the honey 10:1 and everything in between getting interesting hues.  You might give it a try on a scrap piece and see if it comes up the color you are looking for.  But I don't recall seeing a yellow hue come out like you are hoping for.

YinTx

I know exactly what you mean by a yellow color not showing up when diluting honey or even saddle tan. One would think yellow was used to create these colors but it doesn’t separate back to a solid when diluted. 
  I began airbrushing t-shirts in 1989. There just wasn’t much information on how to do it back then and most of the printed info would explain in what order to apply colors or even how much.  I used transparent paints on a white background and I would always start with my warm colors first primarily due to only having one airbrush and cleaning it in between spaying colors was a pain.. so I would start with yellow, then swap to orange, red and so on all the way to black as my last color. 

  it was very easy to overshoot (go overboard) when using the cool colors in this order because you just couldn’t see just how much color you were applying till it was a tad bit too late. the transparent colors were actually blending on the surface, my earlier work tended to be a little bit on the darker side of the color spectrum. Too much use of cool colors and too much black blending would be called “muddy”. 
  Once I acquired a few more airbrushes and no longer had to clean between color changes,  I began experimenting with how I laid down my colors. What I found was by applying my colors backwards... from darkest to lightest I could now see just how much pigment I was spraying on the surface and could stop before going overboard. It was weird at first looking at my work without the warm colors added but it would come together nicely once I was finished adding the warm colors and it stopped looking muddy from this point on. 
 

I just picked up some yellow and purple dye to practice laying down a traditional sunburst.   A long winded explanation but I’ll experiment by following my old process of T-shirt painting and spray the yellow dye as my last color. 

 

[YinTx]

This is awesome.  Can you post up some images of the process and results?  I think the purple in the mix would add an impressive hue.

YinTx

[RoycesLeather]

I used Feiblings yellow pro dye as my base on this guitar strap. I feathered it in much more than most on this strap so it doesn't have as hard of a line as I'd like and kind of muddy like you talked about but each comes out slightly different. This one is really basic burst. I don't know if there is a right or wrong way it's just a matter of having it look the way you want but I am always open to tips if ya'll got em.  I have never used the honey dye your talking about but I think this yellow pro dye got me as close as I've found to the yellow in guitar bursts and might be worth a shot for you. 

Thanks for sharing your work looks great!

Royce 

[sbrownn]

When I do my "traditional" sunburst I use English Tan bridle leather as my strap material and it's natural color forms the base layer color.  They have a Yellow Thistle color that is brighter so I may try it next.

I like that pebbled finish on your strap.

[chuck123wapati]

My first try didn't go so well either, seemed to me that the overspray of the dark was getting onto the middle portion and darkening that also. I haven't had time to do much more experimentation so am gonna follow this closely. Thanks to all for their two cents.