Back to the basics...

It's funny... how we start out doing something one way and then our abilities evolve with time to the point where the things we were best at when we first started become obsolete and the ideas unused. In this case, im talking about flames. I think alot of people think of Flames when they think custom paint on old cars and motorcycles, i know i did when i started out. Every practice panel i did involved flames somehow. These days, that is far from the case. While i do still enjoy flmaes- im more of a fire person. And that was the progression- flames to fire. As i started doing more intricate airbrushing, i found that doing taped out traditional style flames was both time consuming and unrewarding. Still neat tho. But to my point- i recently got hooked up with another painter locally who was doing a full paint job on a Ford Stepside Truck (like the Lightning but not the Lightning). The customer wanted flames on the front... and for the first time in a long time- he wanted traditional flames. And Ghosted. To me, thats a whole lot of work for not alot of anything. I decided the best way to do this was to make it atleast interesting for me to do. The dude was originally thinking of using a pearl in the flame design... i explained a different idea to him that just involved the use of transparent black & white to make the edges stick out a little while using the existing color to make the flames. Still ghosty, but a cooler idea i think. He told me to do whatever i thought would look best. Good answer. A roll of tape later i was done doing all the mask out and a short bit later i was done with the airbrushing part. Everything came out great for how simple it is. It's still ghosty in the way that it doesn't directly stick out at you- but more intersting i think. After Cooper cleared it, it looked like if you ran your hand over the flames that you would catch the edges of a flames sticking up thruy the metal- it's neato.