Piers Dowell – Airbrush Master

Enth Degree

Call: 01568 750477

PFA Ball

PFA Ball

Commissioned for the PFA annual dinner this is a fine example of how technically accomplished Piers is on all levels. A composite triumph before it ever saw an airbrush Piers demonstrates his ability in pattern making and tooling. By taking a silicone mould of a water inflated football (to make it solid) Piers has then cast a resin replica of the ball in the mould. This meant he’d have something that looked like a football with all the detail, stitching & all, but with a substrate that his paint system could adhere to. You wouldn’t want to kick it though at its rock hard and weighs about 8 kilos!The ball was then rendered with perfectly photo realistic portraits of Alan Shearer, Thierry Henri, Kenny Dalglish and Mark Hughes who are some of the most prolific winners of the PFA award in years past. The high compound curvature of the ball together with its pentagonal and hexagonal facets made it a real challenge to paint. However Piers was at this point thankful of all the crash helmets he’d airbrushed over the years as their compound curvature made for good practice on this job! Piers had to attain a perfect likeness on all 3 images with the faces being only around 20mm high and 2 of them in colour which is all the more difficult at that scale. To put this into perspective, that’s around passport photo sized! The piece rotates at 2.5 rpm on a triangular pyramid base which has the names of all previous winners written on in gold leaf. This is set on a beautifully airbrushed background of flaming leaves with the flames licking up onto the ball and around the edges of the images.Simply put this piece is truly one of a kind and emphasizes Piers ability to invent a totally new way of presenting a theme utilizing his airbrush skills.