Some rare never before seen Sharpie Car Photos

 The Sharpie Camaro-  This was taken the night the car was finished, but the night before the photographer came out and took the awesome photos.

 The Sharpie Fiero- Not many know that there's a Giger style skull piece on the trunk of the Sharpie Fiero. This photo was taken very early on before the area was finished.

 The Sharpie Harley Davidson-  Cleaning up the original photos I took of this one is long overdue, but I'm finally makin' some progress!

 The Sharpie Mustang- This was one of many many shots I took of the roof during Phase 1 of this job.

 The Pro Street Camaro-  I have very very few completed pictures of this car since it was assembled after I moved, but I took this one while I was traveling to the area to do Phase 2 of the Sharpie Mustang.

As it turns out I have a whooooole archive of never before seen pictures of some of the Sharpie Cars- some in process, and some finished. Typically I like to hire a professional to do the final pics and they always come out fantastic- but throughout the process I take a bazillion pictures. Now that Im keeping the site in order regularly, updating the Facebook page constantly, and adding pics to Pinterest, I've been getting my practice in with photo editing. And what better to practice with then some old photos- So here's a peak at what's to come!

The Bagger with LOTS of Pinstripes

A couple weeks back I was asked to pinstripe a full set of bagger parts off a Harley Davidson along with the matching helmets. The customer brought me all the parts fresh out of paint- the tank, front fender, 2 side covers, front faring, both saddle bags with lids, rear bag lid and 2 helmets. I decided the best way to execute the designs without introducing too many new colors was to start with blue designs on the yellow parts, and yellow designs on the blue parts. After the initial designs were layed out, I went back with white to add a little more to the designs. 1 Shot Reflex Blue, Lemon Yellow, and Lettering White were used. On the gas tank where the blue/yellow paint job was split, I did the designs 1/2 and 1/2- Where the tank is blue it has yellow pins, and where it turns yellow I switched to blue pins. Made a subtle, but neat effect. None of these designs were pre-planned, not even the matching ones.... just one line at a time fun. 14 designs in total.

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!

Sharpie Harley Davidson

Where to start, where to start. So...... very very late last Monday night (roundabouts midnight) I was woken up by a phone call from Jason of Infidel Customs. The reason for the late night call was not actually to wake me up, but rather to commission me for a Sharpie paint job on his Harley Davidson. The catch (since there always is one) was that it had to be done in time for a Thursday photo shoot. That's 2 days to start and complete the job. And in reality, it was even less since my day job consumes all waking hours. The other catch was that it had to be done at the location of the new shop, and also done on the bike (instead of disassembling it first). So this was one hell of a task with a number of obstacles. Getting up to Hagerstown from Gaithersburg with enough coffee to keep me going was difficult enough... but I love a good challenge. The first night I arrived around 11 pm. I got 1 side of the gas tank done and 1 side of the rear fender... so 1/2 was a good stopping point for day one. I got home about 3:30 am. Day 2 I arrived a little earlier, closer to 9:30 pm and got around the other side of the rear fender and gas tank. Day 2 definitely went alot smoother and faster. And around 2 am I was done. Sleep deprived with a drive ahead. The bike was completed and it turned out freaking cool. Jobs like this are hard to tell how it's going to turn out exactly. You don't really know anything until you're done. Airbrushing and pinstriping are about the same way- You can envision everything, but until it's done you really have no idea. Free handed artwork tends to be like that. Risky. But that's the excitement in it. Not to mention the rather individualistic look when it's done.

This job was done using Silver Sharpie Markers over the existing gloss black. All the artwork was done freehand with no pre-planning what so ever. The materials I brought with me to do the job was a pack of markers and an Ipod to keep me moving though the late hours. These particular markers can be tricky to use for many reasons. Doing parts on the bike means you have to try and keep the marker always feeding downwards... which means you have to contort your body a bit to position yourself properly to get the markers to operate properly while maintaining nice lines. Also... after a little bit of use, the felt tips begin to 'break'... this leads to a change in line thickness and what's called 'pushing'. The trick is to pre-break the tips a little bit to try and keep things consistent from marker to marker.

These jobs are a blast to do. I hope to be doing more in the future!