What's NEO?

The NEO for Iwata is our newest entry into the Iwata airbrush line. We've designed the NEO specifically for the new airbrush user and feature both gravity-feed and siphon-feed models.

The gravity-feed NEO CN comes with 2 removable gravity feed cups (B and C sizes) for more versatility. The siphon-feed NEO BCN includes an Iwata Big Mouth bottle to ensure the user experience is fast and easy. Both are easy to use and maintain, and are a terrific value for the price! Even though NEO is made in Taiwan and assembled in China, they are still backed with our Iwata 5- Year Warranty.

For years Iwata has frequently been an airbrush user's second purchase. Today with NEO, we hope that new artists will be able to start their airbrush experience with an Iwata!

For more information on Iwata-Medea products please visit, www.iwata-medea.com.

Iwata Medea Social Media Sites

Here's a list of our social media sites, cruise through some of these and check out what's going on.

www.iwata-medea.com

www.facebook.com/iwatamedea

www.twitter.com/iwata_airbrush

www.myspace.com/iwatamedea

There's lots to see from other artists and feel free to post your own artwork as well.

For a list of our Gold Crown dealers check out,

http://www.iwata-medea.com/index.php/buy_now/gold_crown_dealers/

Coast Airbrush Party - the Airbrush Show of the Year!

Congratulations to David Monnig and the Coast Airbrush crew for putting on the year's best airbrush event in 2009! In spite of the chillier-than-SOCAL-is-used-to weather, attendance was huge and the Coast Airbrush Party was off-the-hook!

For the second straight year the party has moved from the lot around Coast's store to the lot across the street at the Ember's nightclub. With substantially more space, Coast was able to fill it with all sorts of eye candy! Booths and tables were manned by all the major airbrush industry companies and players and also by many famous talented artists as well. Also, there were tons of custom painted cars, bikes and other objects d' art for the perusal and purchase of guests. Certainly, one of the highlights was the live music all day. Local bands, including renown artist Steve Vandemon's band, paraded across the stage jammin' out their rockin' licks.

Afterwards, many guests were invited to the Coast After-Party at Club Embers. Funky music filled the air and the ambiance was incredible. Coast sprung for some foodies and fave' beverages. Later the after-after party moved to Ryan "Ryno" Templeton's house where more debauchery certainly took place.

Coast touts it as a Kustom Kulture bash but the pics speak for themselves, this is truly the ultimate everything-airbrush event! For the pics, check out, www.facebook.com/iwatamedea

Air Affair in SLC 2009

Check out www.facebook.com/iwatamedea for updates!

2008 SEMA Recap - A pleasant surprise!

They said attendance was going to be down this year at SEMA. I was told on the first day of the show that they only had about 80,000 pre-registered, compared to 130,000 last year. We took a larger space than in the past and moved back into the central hall. Also, we were going to be doing things in the booth differently and a new presentation for this market. I was concerned as the first day of the show opened at 9:00am, wondering if anyone would come by to visit us.



Our objective at this years SEMA was to inspire visitors to think about creating. We know the market for "mural" custom paint and other typical airbrush related custom paint is soft this year. We tried to send the message that you can do so much more with airbrush other than custom painting bikes and cars. Coincidental, House of Kolor echoed this theme also as their booth featured all sorts of painted objects other than cars including; a Guitar Hero guitar, a mix-master blender, skateboards and a margarita machine!



For our display this year we had a stage fabricated and created a blank wall made of Clayboard as the backdrop. We masked the word CREATE on the wall with Ultramask. Famous Artists including Mark Remmling, Steve Driscoll, Craig Fraser, Pamela Shanteau, Mike Lavallee, Fonzy, Ron Gibbs, Brian Poppa, Yvonne Machelis, Franco, Gerald Mendez, Deb Mahan, Daniel Power, and Lynette Orzlowski all volunteered their time to contribute art to the wall. By the end of the show, SEMA had turned out to be a huge success! We were really busy for almost the entire show. We had crowds in our booth almost all day and people returned again and again throughout the show to see the progress on our CREATE wall!



A special thank you goes out to everyone who helped; the Artists who contributed their time and talent, Anest Iwata USA (our sister company in Cincinnati), Artool Products, ASET (our automotive distributor), Kevin Overturf (provided the Piracy Bike), Cliff from Karajen and of course Coast Airbrush.



What would SEMA be without the Airbrush Confidential IV (renamed to Kustom Confidential) party? This year's party was once again a huge success and a good time was had by all!. Look for pics in my next post!

Mid American Truck Show

Mark Hebbeler from Anest-Iwata USA was kind enough to do some RECON at the Mid American Truck Show. The stars from Trick My Truck were there including airbrush star, Ryan "RYNO" Templeton. Here is Mark's report.

For the second year, the crew from Outcast Kustoms on CMT’s hit show “Trick My Truck” were on hand to sign autographs and pose for pictures with their fans. Ryan "Ryno" Templeton, Rob Richardson, Kelvin Locklear, Matt Moore, Steve Harrah and Allen Harrah are rock stars in the truck enthusiast world.

A twist at this years show was the crew built a custom rollback on site. With the show being just three days, they somehow pulled it off!

Ryno and the crew put all the manufactures present to work on this one. Col-Met provided a fantastic booth that doubled as a work environment to keep the attendees safe and allow them to watch the build. Brian Lynch from House of Kolor was there with Mitz Shiraiwa and Mark Hebbeler from ANEST IWATA USA, Inc.

K & L Chrome Shop provided a perfect set-up to sell Outcast Kustom, Anest Iwata and Iwata Medea souvenirs’.

Check out the schedule for the upcoming season with all new episodes of “Trick My Truck” on CMT’s website.

http://www.cmt.com

Here you can find MORE pics from the event AND the finished images of the truck!

http://www.kandlchromeshop.net/

http://www.outcastkustoms.com/site_folder/index.html

"THANKS MARK FOR THIS POST!" - Gary

Air Affair 2007 - Salt Lake City

Airbrush fever in Utah!

The Ultimate Air Affair is a fantasy land for anyone interested in airbrush technique. Held yearly at our distributor's headquarters (ASET in Salt Lake City, Utah), is a 3-day running workshop program featuring instruction by some of the worlds top airbrush artists. Not only do attendees get the opportunity to learn from a great team of artists, (and get a first hand test-drive of Iwata Airbrushes and Artool Templates) they can also gawk and ogle at all the eye candy of work featured in the art gallery. This years artist roster at the Air Affair included:

• Craig Fraser
• Deborah Mahan
• Fonzy
• Abel
• Dean Loucks
• Bob Soroka
• Gerald Mendez
• Bones
• Steve Vandemon
• Jason Doll
• Ron Gibbs
• Ryno Templeton
• Mike Lavallee
• Dennis Mathewson
• Steve Driscoll
• Paul Quinn
• Pamela Shanteau
• 

Sherri Candland of ASET does a fantastic job of organizing the event. Even though the focal point of Air Affair is the learning and interaction with the artists themselves, Sherri also puts out quite the food and beverages spread coupled with her own special blend of down-home hospitality. There are also various vendor booths and freebies available to attendees! But the grand finale at at the end of the Air Affair ,is the raffle featuring some killer donations by both vendors and artist instructors. In my opinion, one of the best raffle prizes is a custom painted and signed panel by all of the artist instructors! Definitely a one of a kind collectible.

I highly recommend anyone interested in learning more valuable airbrush techniques, no matter what the discipline, to attend Air Affair East or Air Affair Salt Lake in 2008. If you want to plan on attending at one of next years events, call Sherri direct at ASET 800-628-5449. You will not be disappointed.

Here's some pics to wet your appetite for next year! Some of these pics are courtesy of Donn and Pamela Shanteau.


Check out this killer Monkey's guitar by Ron Gibbs!

Myself with Ryno of Trick My Truck and Mark Hebbeler from Anest Iwata USA.

A ultra-kewl hand-carved tiki by Dennis Mathewson

Craig Fraser, and his new short hair, gives the new Triple Action Handle a test spin!

Sneak Peak: A new book by Pamela Shanteau

I can honestly say that we are really excited about the publishing of our first very first book, Custom Automotive & Motorcycle Airbrushing 101 written by Pamela Shanteau. This new hard-cover book is 160 color pages and is sure to grace the library of artists all over the world. The foreword is by none-other than the guru of Kustom himself, Craig Fraser.

While this is our first publishing attempt, it is Pamela's second published book. Her first book the Ultimate Airbrush Handbook continues to be a huge success and inspire new airbrushers around the world. I've decided to dedicate this post to a bit of the dialogs I've had with Pam and her husband Donn in regards to this new book. Enjoy!

Pamela Shanteau Reflections

The upcoming release of my second book gives me occasion to pause and reflect on my profession and how I arrived at this point in my career. After twenty five years of airbrushing professionally, I was asked to write my first book “The Ultimate Airbrush Handbook”. It gave me the opportunity to share the “in person” Pamela Shanteau class experience with readers worldwide. I was aided in this Endeavour by a cadre of great airbrush artists that specialized in some of the airbrush disciplines that I do not practice. Their intimate knowledge of their areas of expertise greatly enhanced the content of the book.

"The Ultimate Airbrush Handbook" also afforded me the chance to demonstrate why I chose the tools and materials that I use. An artist is only as good as his or her tools. I prefer to paint with the finest materials available because they enhance my art and help make it the best that it can be. Iwata airbrushes and spray-guns play a big part in my successes. They perform at the highest level and they offer an air-gun or airbrush to match all my painting needs. I know that I can count on their quality and their long lasting performance because they are built with the finest materials and manufactured to the tightest tolerances.

Airbrushing in the automotive arena requires more than just a dependable airbrush. The paints that I use are some of the finest available in the world. RM brands (BASF) such as Carizzma, Diamont and Extreme give me the flexibility to get the effects that I am seeking. Their formulations enable me to paint efficiently and cost effectively.

When I am called upon to produce art in the fine art or commercial illustration venues, I use many pigment choices depending on what I am painting. Again, I use the finest pigments that I can find. Com-Art paints, Claybord Inks and Holbein Aeroflash colors have always seen me through the toughest assignments and performed perfectly. When metal is not the substrate to be airbrushed, I paint on Claybord. Claybord is a hard board similar to a Masonite panel and is covered with a smooth coating of clay. It was created and intended to be used by fine artists. I have found it to be the best airbrushing surface available in the world. Painting on Claybord has enabled me to push my airbrushing skills and art techniques to the limit. In addition to its superb construction, it has the highest archival rating of any painting substrate available anywhere.

The occasion of writing a second book about automotive airbrushing (which is my favorite airbrush discipline), afforded me the chance to introduce the world to the unique techniques I use to create my airbrushed artwork on vehicles. These are not recycled tricks that have been seen over and over. To my knowledge, they have never been used by any automotive painter before and have never been demonstrated or explained in any automotive painting book or video production. Iwata gave me the chance to finally share these previously secret techniques with airbrush painters across the globe in the new book “Custom Automotive and Motorcycle Airbrushing 101”. As always, Iwata is on the cutting edge of airbrush painting which is where we all want to be, that is why they decided to publish this book.

In addition to exposing my airbrushing secrets where I combine fine art technique with more normal airbrushing methods, I instruct and inform the reader on my methods of rendering art and lettering on metal along with the tools and materials that every airbrush painter needs in their arsenal. As always, Iwata went first class with this book, it features a hardback cover and wonderful color photos. The editing and layout by A.D. Cook and Zookeeper is first rate and the photos by my husband Donn “Too Tall” Shanteau are clean and crisp. Everyone involved with this book should be proud.

I truly have been blessed to have progressive companies like Iwata, Ampersand (Claybord) and BASF (RM paints) in my corner. Their first class products and people inspire me to continually strive to be the best I can be. I am sure that “Custom Automotive and Motorcycle Airbrushing 101" will be well received by the airbrushing and auto painting community and personally I look forward to my future automotive and motorcycle painting exploits while partnering with the greatest companies in the world.

Paint Long and Prosper

Pamela Shanteau

Available NOW! Look for Custom Automotive & Motorcycle Airbrushing 101 at your favorite Iwata & Artool retailers and bookstores!

SEMA Recap Pt. 2

Happy Holidays! After a nice break during the holidays I'm ready to post to this blog again. As promised here is part 2 of the SEMA post.

I'm so behind.

Already so much has (and is) happening since the SEMA show ended. Therefore, instead of a long drawn out, descriptive and poorly written post, I'm going to keep this one short and just recap our SEMA party, Airbrush Confidential II.

If you are in the airbrush industry, you may have already heard about Airbrush Confidential I during last year's SEMA. We promised that Airbrush Confidential II would be bigger and better than 2005, and we delivered.

In 2006, Airbrush Confidential II was held at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino at the Grotto, pool side. It was a special party. The guest list was limited to professional Artists in the Kustom automotive industry and of course key industry professionals. With that said, we had over 200 people attend! A veritable who's who in Kustom Kulture were in attendance, even AJ from Overhaulin stopped by! ACII was a great forum for friends past and present to get together, share the past year war-stories and socialize with people whom they may only see during events like this. It is just one way of saying thanks to the Artists for all they do for us and the industry; both directly and indirectly.

The inaugural party last year featured 4 founding sponsors. This year we increased our sponsorship to 7 companies which allowed us to increase the guest list and move into a larger, more desirable venue. This years sponsors were, Artool Products, Airbrush Action Magazine, Coast Airbrush, ASET, Iwata Medea, House of Kolor and 3M. Many thanks need to go to the sponsors for all their support, without them all we could not have had such a tremendous event. Thanks again, and stay tuned for details on ACIII!