53 Belair Flames part 5 FINISHED!!!

Once the car was outside I called Mike (the owner) over to come take a look and pick a pinstripe color. We both agreed that Orange would go really nicely with the Green. And so it did. Before I left last night I got from the middle of the hood down the passenger side done. That meant that I only had to do the remaining half of the car today. And so it is done and outside in the sunlight for all to take pics. The color I used is 1 Shot Vermilion, and I used a new Mack 10 series #00. The car looks toooooooooooootally awesome!!!

53 Belair Flames part 4

Once the paint was dry it was time to start the careful process of un taping everything. All the tape came off very clean with no over or under spray issues at all. I rolled the car outside for a couple pics... it's an overcast day so the green is at its least crazy. So now the flames are complete... but they need the right pinstripe!

53 Belair Flames part 3

Today I got the flames painted! Yay! The base color is a cool lime green I made using a greenish yellow and a royal blue. After enough was put on to cover the black (3 coats) and it was dry, I came back in with the green/gold pearl mix to go over everything 2 more times. The pearl reaaaaaaaaally made this color. It instantly had more personality. Once all the base coats were dry, I put 2 coats of clear on. I want to make it shiny and pop, but I don't want to create a massive edge to try and stripe over. Tomorrow I'll nib a couple of small pieces of dirt, and un tape the whole dealy. I might even start pinstriping tomorrow. Oh that will be fun! Of course, this means I need to get a gallon of ivory pinstripe paint first...

53 BelAir Flames part 2

Today I got the masking done on the flames as well as the sanding. About 3 rolls of masking tape went in to masking the surrounding areas before I pulled the plastic out to cover the rest. Tomorrow I can basically walk in, mix some colors and apply paint. The color going in the flames is a 3 stage color with a bright green base, a gold pearl over top, and then clear. Right now tho, it's very late, and I'm very tired. I got in late so I stayed late to get the car to this point... thus making tomorrow easier  :)

The 53 BelAir is back for FLAMES!!!

I picked up Mikes 53 today to start laying out the flames. I think I got a little carried away, but I had fun doin it. Flames everywhere!!! I got everything outlined tonight, and I'll come back tomorrow and tape up the car and shoot some color on it. I was going for a different style then I normally put down... longer flowing flames. Then again, I don't do a lot of traditional flames. Actually, this is the biggest flame job I've done to date. Looks like it'll need a gazillion miles of pinstripe  :)

Busy Busy... Flame On!!

Another day at the banana factory! O glorious bananas. Anyways... todays major task was to layout the flame pattern on the hood of a new Jeep and hopefully get it thru the first stage of paint. The layout went well... it didn't take as long as i thought it'd take to get the fine-line tape where i wanted, but masking was lengthy as usual. I don't like to bother with perfectly mirroring flame patterns because i think it looks less interesting that way. I can appreciate someones work who has done this, but if it's left up to me, i just try to keep it balanced. Once everything was masked off, i based the flames in black (per customer request). Once dry enough, i peeled off all the tape and cleaned up a few edges that bled thru. It's hilarious how long it takes to layout and mask flames in contrast to how long you actually spend painting. Once clean and ready to go, a couple coats of clear are put on. Tomorrow i'll sand out as much of the edge of the flames as i can before they're pinstriped. Breaking up the clear into a couple phases helps sink the flame edge in between pinstriping so that on your final clear you're pretty much left with the pinstripe edge to cut (which is minimal compared to the paint edge since it's done free hand w/ a brush and enamel after the first edge is cut). Also on this job, the pinstripes will be cleared over, so another phase of clear (2 total) is a good way to separate the process. I would rather not try and use enamel over base coat anyway. Once all that was done, i moved back to the remaining Ferrari parts and got them ready for paint... paint them tomorrow to try and wrap everything up with that car. Lots of stuff to keep busy with right now which is great because im usually trying to find new things to learn at this point in the year since not much else is going on... but not this year!!

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.