It's the Little Things...

Towards the end of last year I was asked to do some kind of stripe that would split up a 2 tone paint job being done on a truck. The owner and painter of this truck is Casey of Classic Powder (classicpowder.com). He was totally open to any ideas I had... which was great. He had already painted the top of the truck black and the bottom a nice bright metallic green when I got there. The only specification given was that he wanted it to taper from the front to the back. So I masked off the area to be striped and thought about what would be cool to do in an area this small, but still have some impact. Traditionally when I'm asked to do stripes I'm thinking I'm going to be pulling lines with a paint brush. This job was a paint through a gun. Again, not my norm, but I figured I could put a cool twist on it. Since Casey was open to anything, I decided I would try an engine turned look on base coat. We agreed that bright silver would be the best starting point. After the silver was dry enough, I made a turning tool out of a dixie cup and a scotch brite. I took the scotch brite and cut it into a circle the size of the  bottom of the dixie cup, then glued the scotch brite to the bottom. I glued 2 layers of scotch brite (one on top of the other) so that the outside edges of the bottom of the cup wouldn't dig extra hard. Then, from front to back I pressed the 'tool' into the base coat and turned it by hand 180 degrees, overlapping each rotation by 50%. The look and the lines came out so clean that no additional colors or outlining was necessary. Casey cleared it all up and it came out great. It seems like a simple little touch, but it really adds something to this already cool paint job.

Another happy customer!

TRON style Motorcycle Helmet

Recently I was asked to do a Tron styled motorcycle helmet for a customer. The helmet started out covered end to end with stickers and needed to be sanded flat. Once it was sanded flat, I painted it with Chrysler PXR (metallic black) base coat and clear. Once that was dry I prepped the helmet again for more paint. I began by laying out the designs in 1 Shot Metallic Silver. I decided the way I was going to do this was by pulling all the lines free hand with a pinstripe brush (as I commonly do)... this would keep me from having to mask out all the lines and spray them. Also, it would keep the edges smoother instead of sharp. The widest stripe was masked out and sprayed so that it would look consistent. Once the 1 Shot was dry, I followed all the lines and circles lightly with an airbrush that had transparent white in it. This would allow for the halo effect to be really effective after the next step. The idea is to get the lines to glow like a neon sign. After that, I mixed up some Alsa Corp Blood Red Kandy and went over all the lines until I got the desired color. It took a good number of coats since I was going over whites and silvers with red kandy... this meant that the colors would start out  very pink until I had applied enough to make it red. The amount of kandy used also influenced the way the glow popped in the sunlight. Inside, the helmet has a deep red look- but outside, the sun light really makes this effect jump. The look of everything worked out great. 3 coats of clear and it was done! Doesn't seem like a whole lot of steps, but mixed in with some other work, it took some time. Thankfully, the customer was very patient and happy with the results.

Pinstripes on Jake's 66 Mustang

At this point in time, Jake's Mustang has under gone several changes both aesthetic and mechanical. Prior to the flat black with gloss red racing stripes paint job it has now, it had a wicked primer paint job over top it's previous red paint job. So in some places where it was sanded a little bit of the red came thru the primer which looked pretty cool on his 66 Mustang. A few months prior to knowing I was going to be blocking, sanding, body working, priming and painting the car, I decided it'd be fun to a pinstripe design on the deck lid for the time being. Jake was cool with it so I brought my box over and had some fun with it one afternoon. The result ended up being one of my all time personal favorites. The colors used were:  maroon, bright bred, vermilion, imitation gold, chrome yellow and white. Maroon was used in the inital design, and imitation gold was used to make the 2nd layer. All the other colors were used as highlight colors for the existing 2 layers. I remember thinking once I got the main designs done that I wanted to try and make it look more interesting without adding a 3rd layer. I had seen other artist do this technique before, and I had done it on flames... but not on a design yet. So this was my first go at it. And since then I've used this technique on many of my designs.

Sadly, I had to sand the pinstripes off when it was time to prep the car for paint. But the pictures will last forever!

Guess what... More Pinstripes!!

After yesturdays production work had winded down it was time to dive into another task. Earlier yesturday Mike of Iron Works brought me a set of tins to be pinstriped. Mike is the painter there and does an awesome job at it. The set he had painted required him to grind the all the parts to bare metal, then grind multiple layers and passes of flames into the metal. After that was done, he masked up the areas that would later be flames, sprayed everything else solid black, then went over it multiple times with flake. Once un-taped, you can see the over all effect. My job was to outline all the flames with Black. This (like so many others) was a lot of fun to do. Black is not the most forgiving color to run stripes with, but certainly adds to the bold contrast. All the stripes were pulled completly freehand and all came out very clean. The tricky part was getting a nice flow in those tight curves using the same brush. Next, Mike will take the parts and shoot Red Kandy over everything to deepen the entire set. Kandy over the black stripe will have no color shift effect, but the stripe will serve as a constant dark border as all the other colors change.

Since the Cadillac and other big jobs this year, jobs like this are becoming simpler and simpler with less mistakes requiring correction, more accuracy, and quicker finish times.

Im growing into my appointed name!

Pinstripes and even More Pinstripes!!!

In the past couple of weeks I've had a couple of neat pinstripe jobs come my way. 1st up is a saddle bag off a Harley Davidson painted satin black. The customer wanted me to duplicate a pinstripe design he has tattooed to his leg. He gave me a print out of the original design the tattoo was based off of and I used that as the guide for the design. I used Bright Red and Ivory to complete the design. The Ivory is definitly the way to go against any satin or flat black... it just has a better more classy look.

Next up was a set of West Coast Chopper parts- gas tank, front fender and rear fender. The parts needed to be re-painted flat black before I could start doing the pinstripe designs. So each part was sanded smooth, cleaned, and re-painted. The flat black came out super clean and smooth. After they dried a couple days I began the pinstripe process. The customer had asked me to try and duplicate a set of designs off a toy version of this particular bike. After a few attempts and transcriptions, I decided the toys' designs weren't very flattering and I would not like the result if I kept trying to duplicate this design. Instead, I made up my own design and used some cues from the toy- leaving out all the parts I thought just didn't look right. I drew a center line down all the parts and just went for it. Completely made up as I went along.... and the center line really eases the centering and balancing process. I pulled all the red lines on the 1st day, then all the ivory lines the 2nd day. After the designs were all done I lettered the West Coast Choppers logo, added some dots and signed my name. These parts were a blast to do and they came out great. Bright Red and Ivory make it work again. The design on all 3 parts starts off the same and changes after a certain point based on the shape of the part. The front fenders design goes from front to back.

Lots of fun was had here and I can't wait for the next ones!