# Improved! Painting 3D Haunt Panels: Tutorial



## Terra

Note: This is a repost of an old tutorial whose links to pictures were broken with the software update at HF.

A new and improved tutorial on how to paint 3D haunt panels. This shows a faster and easier way to get the job done. Here's one of the sets all completed - the HellGrowth Room:











Please watch the video tutorial for a thorough visual of the work you'll be doing:
















Design .jpgs: The panels shown above are a new graveyard scene, the Skull Room and HellGrowth room. These were designed in Photoshop and here is a tutorial showing how you can design your own artwork. The tutorial also explains how the ChromaDepth illusion works. Don't skip this:















Convert to Black & White: Take those .jpgs and convert the images to black & white. In PhotoShop go to Enhance > Convert to Black and White. Under 'Style' select 'Portraits'. Then, mess around with the Intensities (red, green, blue, contrast) until you get obvious black outlining. You can also check out other 'Styles' to see if you get better lines with your drawing.










Project Image onto Panel: Set up a makeshift 'easel' so your haunt panels are upright and very steady. Do that by hanging a 4' x 8' plywood sheet from the ceiling. Place a couple of cement blocks on the floor at the back of the plywood so it doesn't move. Screw in two eye hooks at the top back of the plywood on each side. This is where you will use twine to rope the haunt panel to the plywood to keep it from toppling over.

Project the image onto your wall panel. This will help you transfer the design easily. Be sure to note where you've placed your projector so you can replicate it later. Don't change any settings on the projector either once you've started gessoing.

The gesso used here is called Utrecht's Professional Acrylic Gesso. It's thinned with water with the ratio of 6 cups gesso to 3 cups water. This allows the normally thick gesso to be easily brushed onto the fabric.

Decide how much of the area you will completely cover with gesso. If there are black lines inside images - just go ahead and gesso it. Later, you will be projecting the image again and airbrushing with black paint to put those lines back in.










Second and Third Coats: You don't have to do the second and third coats of gesso in front of the projector (Yay!).

This is a rough guesstimate but figure you will use about 4 cups (1 quart) of your thinned gesso for each panel. I painted 9 panels which means that was about 2 gallons used. That equated to 1 1/2 gallons of the straight gesso. So, buy accordingly.










Brush Strokes (picture 1): If you stop at two coats of gesso you will see some obvious brush strokes left behind. You need to continue to do three coats of gesso. Most fluorescent paints have some translucency. Because they are shown under blacklight - the lighter colors such as yellow, orange and reds show those 2-coat brush strokes and may not look good for your particular design.

Type of Material (picture 2): Thought this is a helpful shot to see what type of landscape fabric is being used. It's called DeWitt Weed Barrier Pro. I got mine from a huge local nursery here that sells what the pro's use. Don't get that Home Depot stuff - it's too thin. The material used is called polypropylene. It's pretty neat stuff. Light as paper and takes paint like canvas. Cheap too! I think you can still buy this but here’s an equivalent that Grainger now carries to replace what I had bought:









Weed Barrier, Black Polypropylene, 6 x 300 ft


Weed Barrier, Polypropylene, Black




www.grainger.com














Airbrush Black Outlines: This is easy. Line up the panel back in front of the projector. Use your airbrush to trace over the black lines that are projected. Used the Iwata HP-CS for this work. It's a gravity-fed airbrush that has a large well for paint. You get great lines and don't have to refill very often. It also has a cap to keep you from spilling some of the paint if you tilt your brush too much. That happens sometimes when you are painting such large canvases. Used about 25 psi for the airbrush work here.










Color-Blocking (picture 1): This step is called 'color-blocking'. Just like coloring books, you are simply painting in the colors from the drawing you made. It will take several coats depending on the fluorescent paint you use and the ratio of thinning for your airbrush. You will generally do 3 to 4 coats. Used the Iwata HP-BCS for this work. It allows you to pre-load paint colors in up to 4 oz. bottles allowing you quick color changes and a large supply of paint.

The paint used here is WildFire fluorescent paint thinned down with a ratio of 55% paint/45% water. Here's some translated ratios:

16 oz. paint to 13 oz. water
8 oz. paint to 6.5 oz. water
4 oz. paint to 3.5 oz. water

Air pressure at the airbrush was 50 psi for heavy and fast paint application. It was turned down to 30 psi for more detail work.

Following are special colors that you can't buy. The ratios given are using already thinned paint:

Red Clay: 1/2 cup orange, 1/2 cup deep yellow, 1/2 oz. deep violet
Lime Green: 4 oz. deep yellow, 1 oz. green
Grass Green: 3 oz. deep yellow, 1 oz. green
Blue/Green: 3 oz. blue, 2 oz. green

Others I haven't tried yet:

Forest Green: 2 1/4 parts green, 1/4 part acrylic (non-fluorescent) Hooker's green
Earth Tone: 1 1 /2 parts green, 1 part red, 1 part acrylic (non-fluorescent) Titanium white
Sand Tone: 2 1/2 parts Optical white, 1/4 part deep yellow, 1/4 part bright orange, 1 1/4 part acrylic (non-fluorescent) Titanium white
Amber Wood: 1 part red, 3/4 part green, 1/4 part acrylic (non-fluorescent) Burnt Sienna, 1/4 part acrylic (non-fluorescent) Cadmium red
Blond Wood: 1/2 part red, 1/2 part green, 3/4 part deep yellow, 1 part Optical white, 1/4 part acrylic (non-fluorescent) Titanium white, 1/4 part acrylic (non-fluorescent) Unbleached white
Warm Brown: 1 part bright yellow, 1 part deep violet
Burnt Amber: 3 parts deep violet, 1 part bright yellow
Dark Flesh Tone: 3 parts bright yellow, 1 part deep violet
Beige: 1 part Burnt Amber, 1 part optical white
Olive: 2 parts green, 2 part bright yellow, 1 part deep violet, 1/2 part red
Reddish Brown: 1 part red, 2 parts green

Several Coats (picture 2): Your panels will need several coats of paint to get the nice coverage you'll be looking for as pictured above.










Black Outlining (picture 1): You will be airbrushing black lines and shading. Look for the hints of lines left behind from when you previously outlined and airbrush in again with black. Sometimes it will be hard to see the hints and so you will be referring to your jpg image.

Shading (picture 2): Most important thing is to decide what direction your pretend light is coming from. Here it's coming from the upper right. That means that there will be shading under and to the left of the object. Also shade in thinner where the object is rounded (has depth) all the way around it. The red membrane pictured above is a netting that surrounds the green slime. It has depth so give it some.

Final Step: Have all of your colors ready and the black. Begin to blend and add other colors that you haven't been able to do thus far. You will be referring heavily to your .jpg image for this. Under black light and wearing the 3D glasses keep adding colors and shadings until it starts to match your design. Though a challenging step, it's also very fun to see the dramatic changes you will be doing here.











Realistic Flames (picture 1): To achieve realistic flames you first have to re-establish a white background, or the flames won't pop enough. Load your airbrush with non-fluorescent white paint and paint small squiggly flame-like lines.

Yellow Flames (picture 2): Use deep yellow paint to paint in more sets of squiggly lines. Turn on your blacklight and use the flame stencil to add in more a smoky effect. See the video following for a demonstration on how to do that.

Clay and White Accent (picture 3): Pick some spots and use clay paint to add a smokier look to it. That will also help add dimension and a fiery look to the flames. Finally, spray a few hits of Optical white to add some 'spark' to those flames.

Ed Hubbs is the creator of this style of flames (Live Fire) and here's a video showing how it's done. He's changed his technique a bit since I learned but you'll get the idea:















Correct any Overspray: Airbrushing blows paint everywhere and because you are using fluorescent paint - it shows. Through all the years of airbrushing in the Lair literally everything glows now, heh. Use black paint and go over your panels and paint any glowing areas you don't want back down. This will clean up your artwork and help the fluorescent paint pop even more.

And you are done! Can't wait for the kiddies to get messed up when they are in the Skull Room.

Thanks for reading this new tutorial!


----------



## VirusHaunt

I am interested in using this for a hallway with drop panels. My main question is does this work on hard surfaces like plywood? I know you use the fabric and I recently was at a blacklight mini golf with also seemed to be painted on fabric/actually it was really impressive I was getting the 3D affect even without the glasses on\ my concern is durability on the drop panels themselves...? Thanks


----------

