How to Have Fun

There is an event taking place next Saturday that i volunteered to be a part of involving lots of tattooed people. My part in this is pinstriping. Im going to set up a little table, as a vendor, and have a few pieces to show and 1 or 2 that i'll be working on. With me, the most challenging part of pinstriping is finding something cool to stripe on rather then just stripe some random thing. That sometimes works out, but usually some one's saying 'why does that have pinstripes on it?' Usually i say 'why doesn't that have pinstripes on it?' but whatever. So for this event i needed some new blanks and i needed to make them interesting before it even has stripes on it. The idea is to catch the eye to draw them in. If you can get their interest, the art work sells the rest. I also try to do things i haven't done before as a way of practicing new techniques while incorporating them into my work. For this, Racecar Robbie gave me new floor sections to his Model A. I guess he didn't like them. We took the sections and cut them into usable pieces- some have beads rolled into them with strange shapes, but the odder the better. After the pieces were cut i decided to try my hand at doing grinder effects into the metal. It went really well- i used the angle grinder to do engine turns, wiggly lines, curves, circles and waves. It was pretty fun to do an pieces this small... might not be so much fun on a whole car tho. The next step was to take them all home and set them up in the paint room. I bought a quart can of lacquer clear from Advance Auto Parts, and i have a ton of Alsa Corp Kandie Concentrates that needed an excuse to be used. The kandie in the lacquer made the process go fairly quick. I also had a blow drier in one hand and a fan going... that probably helped too. In light of trying new stuff, i also did a fish scale pattern in one of the pieces and i picked up some lace for the other piece. I used kandie red, brown, orange, yellow, fuchsia and green to make these few panels. Next, i brought them to the shop with me for a little rubbin. Hand rubbin that is. I lightly went over all the panels with 600 dry, then rubbed out each panel by hand. The goal here was basically to knock out some dirt nibs and make the surface even and smooth enough for stripes to glide on. I have a few left to do, but i saved the most intricate for last. But as far as these, they're ready for the Pinstripes.

With the exception of using an air compressor and paint gun, everything is being done by hand.

Truly old school.

P.s.- Despite our position in the global chronograph, Fred is sill gay.