Custom Vw Beetle Rendering

Last night while we were watching a movie I decided to break out the new pencils and get something down on paper. Since I now own an old Vw Bug, I thought what better place to start. There are a good number of Bugs running around here each with their own little twist... but I've got a couple new ideas I wanted to demonstrate. Starting with cutting the roof down significantly while retaining that nice sloping shape that the Bugs have. After having driven around in one of these tiny things, I can safely imagine that if you cut the roof down enough on one of these Bugs, you'd need to move the front seats back a little bit- so the front doors need to be a little bit longer. I also removed the frame around the door and and side windows making it into a 'hard top' style. The fenders are modified to allow for over sized wheels and tires to fit once the car is lowered as well as having exaggerated body shape to them. The hood is cut down so that it sits back off the front of the car allowing the fenders and lights to appear to stick out a little past the hood. The hood is also at a more gradual slope to unify the low cut shape of the entire car. This car would take a million hours to make- however it only took the length of the movie to draw. And as unrealistic as it seems, who cares- That's what putting concepts down is all about!

Sharpie Mural

Today I started yet another Sharpie job- but unlike most of the others I've done in the past, this one is on a wall in a house. The house happens to be owned by my brother Jake. Many months ago we agreed that it was a pretty cool idea to do given the large blank area in the kitchen at the end of the table. We also agreed that a new color should be put down in the area to be Sharpied... something different. So orange it was! We also agreed that it should be framed like a picture in a contrasting color when done. We masked out the area to be painted first, then rolled on a few coats over the course of a couple days to get the orange to cover evenly. I painted it when I was on 'vacation' last year, so I had some free time. That quickly changed and I was unable to manage enough time to move forward with it. With our 'deadline' nearing, I decided it must be done! And I'm sure Jake will appreciate not having a huge orange rectangle in his kitchen. So here I am laying out the rails of the design around the cross sectioned V-8 I drew initially. The V-8 was sketched out in pencil first using a small picture for reference. I did it in pencil initially because I wanted it to be as proportionally accurate as possible and as centered as possible. I went over all the lines with marker and Wa La! The beginnings of a very cool thing.

The Sharpie Laptop 2- The Sequel!!!

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">

Yesterday I picked up a laptop from one of my favorite customers to be Sharpied. My goal was to get it done in the evening hours and bring it back to him the next morning. And so it was! I spent some time on it last night trying a different approach- use a fresh marker with a clean point to make a finer more condensed piece using some of the ideas that are more recent to me. I had to be a lot more careful with this one putting exact width lines down on the first try, but it all worked out. I do normally try to scale what I'm doing to be relative to the amount of surface I'm working on, but since some of my ideas and methods have changed, I wanted to try and scale them down as well. This particular laptop has a thick clear plastic cover that snaps over the top and will serve as an excellent protective barrier.

Another happy customer!

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

The Sharpie Laptop- the original!

The Sharpie Laptop- the trilogy!

The Sharpie Laptop- the return!

The Sharpie Pro Street Camaro Part 13 & 14

At this point, all the panels that I cleared last week were wetsanded/prepped by Miguel so that the entire car could be uniformly cleared- but first the pinstripes have to be done. The owner and I had talked a lot about the color choices to outline everything on his car and eventually arrived at Green. I was certain from the beginning that I'd be pinstriping by hand with a brush (because I'm pinstripe chris)... but it seemed this car had other plans for me. After a lot of last minute running around to try and find the colors to make the shade of green we imagined- on a holiday weekend looking for a paint that no one sells- eventually we found enough to make something out of. I made a few variations of clean bright greens and ran a few test stripes on the hood scoop for comparison. After Steve picked one, we went into the booth to lay it down. I spent a good amount of time trying to get nice lines down the edges of the panels, but ran into several problems. Rather then make excuses I will just flat out say that I wasn't able to make the lines as nice as the lines I managed to make with Sharpies on the rest of the car. I could do Ok, but not enough to do the rest of the job and car justice. So a new idea was born- Pinstripe it with Sharpies. The next morning we set out to different locations to find Sharpie Paint Pens in a usable shade of green. We found a green that worked and Steve bought as many as they had (just in case). The application was done by using fine line on just 1 side of where the stripe would be (the sharpie panel side) and very carefully running the marker like a brush against the edge. The result is a prefectly located stripe that still has some of the hand done qualities to it, as well as a very nice opaque color that dries very fast. Best of all worlds I'd say. Since I could only run the tape for the straight lines, I did all the corners free hand with a slightly smaller marker using the same green. The color really does look awesome against everything else that's on the car, and no job is really complete without pinstripes. So this car was really Sharpied  through and through. I was finishing up the 'pinstripes' while Miguel was masking up the car for final clear. Miguel is the painter/bodyman at Steve's shop, Auto Italia in Rockville, Maryland. He really knows his stuff and is an excellent painter. He did the main bodywork and initial paint job on this Camaro- so the car was really nice long before I got to it. He'll be taking the car from the point where I finished up the pinstripes all the way to finish. It's really nice to share a big job like this with someone where we could each work in phases rather then 1 person doing everything. Next up will be cleared pics!