Kitty Caity

This is my Caity, although i call her Kitty. She recently dyed her hair a very platinum blonde... just in time for me to have a wacko hair cut. People stare at us when we go places... it's nice to have someone you can be odd with :)

How many 'last straws' can there be?

As some know, i've been working on plans to leave this state behind. Far behind. And even though i've been ready to go for quite some time, i still try not to let things that happen (whether repeatedly or not) make me want to leave more. I already know i want to go, believe me, i don't need any other reasons. But if there were a list... this would be reason #105,630,023: My neighborhood/neighbors. And you can tell me 'just move somewhere else' and i'll tell you 'i plan to'. Today i left work early (i left working on Ferrari's early) to go get fitted for my $170 tux for my sisters' wedding next month. The cost was a surprise since i had been given no warning. So i was home 5/6 hours earilier then normal- a good opportunity to play drums when complaints will be directed on whether or not i suck at it as oppose to the time of day. Not 20 minutes after playing im ready to leave and go get my brother and head to my other brothers' house. When i sat in my car i noticed a peculiar sound... like fresh ice in hot water. My freaking rear window was completely shattered, intact (good ole saftey glass) and still crackling. I quickly found the broken out chunk on my dashboard. It was obvious that something had hit it from the outside and made the window go kablamo. When i had gotten home i had noticed the neighbor (who owns the trailer park at the end of our neighborhood) mowing the grass next to our house and driveway (since thats where our property ends. He also rides this lawn mower up and down the road which happens to be covered by lots and lots of rocks. My guess is that he ran one over and it hit may car (explains some other shit too, but whatever). Guess he didn't notice since there wasn't a note anywhere. So i said fuck it, im going to go over there like an adult and ask him about it. This did not play out like i thought it would. I told him i wsan't trying to be a prick or anything but my window is cracked, likely from a rock. To which he responded: " No, ya see; my (ride on) mower bags the stuff, and it has a filter and a metal mesh screen- ain't no rocks goin outta there. I don't know what to tell ya but i ain't takin responsibility for that. And if i'd actually done it i would'a stopped and fixed it." -Mother Fucker. I don't care if you told me everyone in the world has mentallity like this- i wouldn't fucking believe you. I've lived and seen more place in my short life then anyone i've ever known my age- there ain't no place like frederick. I calmly left and begun taping up my back window so i could get it out as easily as possible. New rear glass for these cars doesn't exist. Might be lucky and find a used one but i've got a cooler plan. What really gets me... is that inbetween my arrival home and getting back into my car, i cut my hair in about the wierdest fucking way i ever have. And with my new do i went over to this guys' house and talked to him like a gentleman- probably not what he was expecting. He must of thought something was wrong with me because of the way i looked... but on the contrary, i thought there was something wrong with him to look at me and lie straight to my face (weird fucking hair and all) about his mower w/ mesh screen theory and not have even be concerned about what happens when you fuck with crazy people >:)

I can tell im not welcome here... my fault really. My hobbies are loud and i was born 1/2 deaf so i don't know the difference.

Seriously tho, repercutions from a crazy person?? I'd rather give em' 50 bucks and say sorry then go- ' nope nope, ya see- rocks can't fly.'

Fuckin asshole. Well despite my language, i took the whole thing pretty well and worked on cleaning the glass up until dark. I get back into it in the morning. On the plus side, it should be neat driving the car with the windows down, sunroof off and back glass out :)

Like a convertible with extra panels lol

P.s. my haircut is all in fun. Like a unicorn. Or a triceratops spike. Crazy.

Good Ole' Old School Flames & Pinstripes

I have a customer named Phil who occasionally calls me to do a little pinstriping, lettering or airbrushing. This time it was a set of Harley parts painted bright blue with neon green flames. I generally like traditional flames, but not all examples are good ones. That said, Phil did a killer job on the color choices and layout of this particular paint scheme. His request was a bright yellow pinstripe to which i suggested the addition of a drop shadow. Everything came out beautifully. I always feel like the pinstripe is what completes these kind of ideas, and this is definitely a good example of that. And a little touch of airbrushing can go a long way too.

Fun Fun!

Sharpie Fiero @ Jimmy Cone

While i was at the Jimmy Cone car show in Mt. Airy a nice man was photographing me drawing on the car. He also mentioned that we would like to put up an article about the car on his blog. A few email exchanges later, Wa-La. Just as fast as i could type it, this guy was editing it and posting it. He took a couple really neat pictures of the car too. And should you find yourself on his website, check out his gallery and look at some of the things he's doing with his photography of cars and bikes- way freaking cool:

http://cruiseinpix.ning.com/profiles/blogs/living-room-or-garage?xg_source=activity

The Sharpie Mac-top

UPDATE(11/27/12): Custom Sharpie Mac & Laptop Decals NOW AVAILABLE  <--- br="br" click="click" get="get" how="how" see="see" to="to" yours="yours">

I call em Mac-tops because there a Mac, but they're a laptop. I had dinner with Caity and our friend Alix tonight at the Ihop in Rockville. I think Alix brought the mac-top on purpose so i sharpie it up while we ate dinner. We ate, i sharpied, it was cool. The mac-top certainly ressembles the Fiero. Fun fun!

If you like this one, please check out the other 3:

Sharpie Laptop #2, the sequel!

Sharpie Laptop #3, the trilogy!

Sharpie Laptop #4, the return!

Sharpie Fiero: rain, shine, night or day

We had dinner at TGIFridays tonight (me, caity and jake), and while we were waiting for jake to get off the phone, i broke out the sharpies and started back up. Didn't last real long, but by the time i got home it's all i wanted to do. So i broke out the new light that Robbie gave me and started drawing in the dark. I was also contending with the occassional drizzle but F it, im doin my thing.

Pinstripe Chris & the Sharpie Fiero

Today was the interview with the Frederick Newspaper people. It was really cool- the interviewer and the photographer were both really nice. A passer-byer came over and talked with me while we were doin photos and such. Fun fun. And then i realized... i dont really have any photos of the Fiero and I together... mainly because there's never anyone around to take the pics or i dont like the way they come out. So the solution was to take my own pics. Set the camera up, add 10 sec delay, pose, done. Not as cool as the pics the photagrapher took earlier, but still neat for me. I like takin pictures of stuff... not normally me, but i do like bein on camera :)

Too much fun. Please don't laugh at me... it is ok to laugh tho.

Sharpie Cadillac remembered...

I took a bunch of video clips and pictures of the Cadillac before i left Cali with the hopes of making a short video when i got back. I've been busy pushing sharpie art since then and never got the chance to finish it up. And since the Sharpie Fiero video came about, i thought it might be a good time to assemble the Cadillac video. A little bit of editing and a cool song later, the video's done. The Cadillac came out really cool... but it's not like the Fiero. The density, balance and style are quite different.

The Sharpie Fiero along side its' inspirations...

I Google searched 'Sharpie Fiero' and found several things... links to the video via a American Towns/Rockville website, a Fiero Forum, a Street Car Forum, a Bulgarian website, You Tube, and a nice little article written on an Examiner site. In this artilce, the Fiero is placed along side the Sharpie Lamborghini and the Sharpie BMW- the 2 biggest and most well know Sharpie cars to date as well as my inspirations for doing my own car. I wish i would have been contacted to give a little more info, but its all good. It's an honor to even be written about in the same article as the Lambo & Bmw. Here's the link to the short article:

http://www.examiner.com/x-4824-Tampa-Sports-Car-Examiner~y2010m8d12-Sharpie-art-custom-car-paint-jobs

New Kiks for the Sharpie Fiero

My buddy with the Vw dragster (Troy) sold me a set of wheels/tires last week off of his Vw Jetta. Fiero's and Vw's share the same 5x100 bolt pattern... makes things simple. Troy dropped off the wheels last night and my borther Jake came and picked them up in his van (because they're not fittin in my car) so we could bolt them up. Troy took excellent care of these wheels and the tires still have the nubbies on them. They look freaking killer. Now i just need to lower the car to make up for the tire size difference...

By the By... The Frederick News Post is doing a small article on me & the Sharpie Fiero in a couple of weeks :D very excite.

Sharpie Fiero Video

Someone on a Pennock's Fiero Forum found this video on You Tube and made a post about it... someone took the time :)

Sharpie Ferrari

I got my copies back and started drawing away with the smallest sharpies ever. Here are the 3 ideas i've got so far. The 1st has the side panel separated by sharpie art- kindof filling in the area and splitting up the car. The 2nd is more of a basic scallop look filled with designs. Obviously since the drawings are fairly small, it's difficult to do much else then basic designs. Neat touch tho without being over powering. The 3rd is pretty interesting... it's kind of like looking at the old Pipe Dream screen saver but they end in a group of arrows. I like this one the best. You can follow all the lines and they all go somewhere. I would do the back 1/3 of the car this way; bumper, sail panels and maybe into the roof. And the lines could be done on many different colors and even drop shadowed individually. Retro and modern at the same time. Neat o.

Sharpie Fiero: Both sides of the Coin

Im waiting for my Ferrari copies to be done so i went up to a local chruch and snapped some pics of my Sharpie Fiero. I've been getting lots of questions reguarding whether or not i'll be doing the whole car or 1/2 of it. My plan from the start has been to do the entire car...but latley... im really digging the 2 sided look of my car. A nice clean flat white on one side, and a crazed sharpie design on the other. If i were to do a 2 sided look i would still finish up the hood and trunk with the ideas i started and trickle them out into nothingness. I would also go into the roof just a little bit to complete the one side.

I dont kno man... i really dig it like this... any thoughts?

Sharpie Ferrari

My task this weekend was to do a few concept drawings of the kind of sharpie art work i would do to a Ferrari F430 Challenge, should the opportunity arise. But I wouldn't be doing this if i didn't think there was at least a possibility. The first task- draw out a side profile of an F430. A little airbrushing and marker here and there and were done. The reason i did it in black & white was so that once i was done with the drawing i could go to an office supply store and have them make me several copies without color. This way i can add my own colors and do as many variations on the sharpie artwork as i can think of without augmenting the original. The drawing came out cool... i'll be back later with some ideas!

Bubba-Licious

Oh common, you remember that bubble gum that you bought with your life savings when you were 8... come to find out that there are only 5 pieces of gum, and each piece is actually too big to chew but once you chew it for a while you could blow this enormous bubble...? Then later you decided it was a rip off... 99 cents for 5 pieces of over sized uncomfortable to chew gum... and that's how shoplifting began in your life. I'm kidding, i was a Mint-a-Burst thief. They don't make that stuff anymore. ANYWAYS... so i've been down to Bubbas East Coast Hot Rods a few times in the past couple weeks. Once to interview for an airbrush job, and 2 more times to pinstripe & letter things. Interesting interview... but i guess they liked me ok enough to invite me back a couple more times to see what else i could do. So this week i pinstripe a couple things in their shop and lettered the back of Bubbas boat. Neat jobs to do and they all came out really well. I think each was a test of what i could do... in terms of quality, colors, layout and basically the ability to do what it is i say i can do since there are plenty of people that can talk to talk... but nothing really beyond that. Perhaps they can pick up a brush and drag it sideways and up and down and go "what do you think of that?". It's 'all talk' artists like those that need only to be responded to there arrogance with vomit.... pure vomit. And if that doesn't get the point across, laughing also works. Anyways... i was demonstrating that my ability to stripe and letter isn't a lie and i can in fact do what i say i can.

This is what i do for a living... i may not have been doing it for very long, but a little perseverance goes a long way. I love what i do but im still learning and i hope to get better as time goes on. And this is how i learn- by doing.

Troys' Vw dragster

Earlier this summer, i did the artwork on Troy's 65 Notchback dragster. The sides were covered with blue fire and smoke and the nose had some of the fire/smoke along with a well placed skull that had a Vw emblem stamped into it. I also did the matching helmet and the rear lid containing the name of the car and all the people involved with it. Really cool project and an excellent customer. Recently, the car had a small scrape with a guard rail... the day before a magazine photo shoot for Hot Vw. Most of the scrapes cleaned off and im sure the photos were taken cleverly enough to not draw attention to those areas. There did end up being a few cracks in the fiberglass that needed repaired, primed, base coated and re-airbrushed. They were ready for me to come to the paint shop and re-do some of the artwork last week... but upon arrival, i saw that whoever was in charge of base coat blending had gotten rather carried away. They had done a good job blending, but not so good at keeping it small. Needless to say, the people involved in this ordeal were not happy. My task had gone from being fairly simple to something very challenging. I also discovered that i needed to have the rocker panel present so that everything lined up and colors were accurate. No worries tho, im not scared. So today i got in there and spent the day carefully re-layering fire from blank to blend. It came out really good. Challenging tho. One of the headlights was also base coated over (because there was damage there too) so it also needed to be completely redone to match the one on the other side. Whoever did the original lights on the car did an excellent job, so matching their technique was an interesting process. But it also came out really well. Long day, but i got it all done and everyone's happy. All that remains is clear and reassembly.

It's always good to have challenges, right?

This week in review...

This has seriously been the longest 5 or 7 days... however many it's been since last week. Busy Busy. We went to the Outlaw Jam on Sunday and saw tons of bikes and some old cars and some live music. French fries were expensive but still cheaper then a bottle of water. Monday was my birthday and i scheduled myself to be at Bubbas East Coast (in Fairfax) to do some pinstriping. Later was an excellent dinner at Outback Steak house followed by the gift of many steaks from my mom, a portable mp3 player, and a new cd stereo deal for my car (which had the orignal non-working tape deck still in it) from my brother Jake and his lady friend Jaimie. Tuesday was airbrushing and pinstriping a toolbox cabinet (as tall as me) with mountain-dew colored fire and bright blue pinstripes. And when i say mountain-dew, i mean bright ass green with yellowish/green highlights. Jake installed my car stereo that night while i touched up the front of his mustang. Wednesday i was back to Bubbas to letter his boat... outside. At least it wasn't hot. Came out really nice tho. That was followed by a trip to Rockville to pinstripe some wheels at Jeffs' shop, Hot Rod Refinishers. Knocked those out really quick and they came out great. Had enough time after that to visit Robert at It's About Time Automotive to catch up with him about some upcoming things. Then off to Race Car Robbies' to talk about Ferraris' and Sharpie art. That was a long conversation... dinner was at midnight. But i love visiting those kinds of guys; the ones that have the stories from back when. It's good times. Thursday i finally got back up to Buttreys' shop to get started doing the blue fire blend on Troys' Vw dragster. They got we got everything setup and my mini compressor went ka-put. That put a stop to things... for a day. Had TGIFridays for dinner and then fell asleep watching Alien. Kindof a funny thing to fall asleep to really. Today i got to Buttreys' shop early (with a different compressor) and worked away on that almost all day. I got the blue fire reblended (looks excellent) and had enough time to try my luck at redoing one of the headlights (that was airbrushed by someone else) that got base coated over due to the damage. The original artist did a killer job, so deciphering his technique/order of doing things was challenging, but fun. It also came out really well and the customer was happy. Yay! Tomorrow there are a couple of car/bike type shows goin on that i've been looking forward to for 2 weeks. Finally. And the weather looks to be good. Busy Busy. Why can't every week be like this?

Maybe 24 wont be so bad after all...