Airborne Tribute Harley

 

The shop is finally ready and my first project is on the go. For now I am only working on the Harley Davidson Street Glide saddle bags but in the Spring I will lay down some pinstriping on the rest of the bike and will paint the fairing next winter.

 

The tribute is to the US and Canadian Airborne effort in the war. As you can see by these two pics that were rendered in Photoshop, the final will look great.

I start off by taking the bags apart and cleaning them off. I wipe them down with wax degreaser and then scuff the pieces with a red scotch rite bad.

I clean off the parts with House of Kolor post cleaner and I am ready to go. I decided to use House of Kolor paint. Following my sketches I mask with sign masking and then cut out the flag area.

I first unmasked the blue area and sprayed HOK blue. I covered the area up and masked the white areas. I then followed by painting the red.

Once I let the pint dry I mixed kandy blue with a little black to create my shadows. Using this color I started creating the flag flow. Using white I put in highlights.

 

 

Here you can see the shadow effect and the flag starts to look real. I pulled away the masking and using a paper stencil that I cut out I sprayed the soldiers.

The next step was similar to the one we just completed. I painted the Airborne parachutes Nd the plane. Using white I started painting the clouds and by going back between the white and black I create the sky effect.

This where I am at. I will post the next steps when I get them done.

 

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Nightmare Before Christmas cup

I decided to paint a cup for a Christmas present for my daughter. She is a big nightmare fan so I had a theme. Using One Shot paint I painted the design on the mug. For those that are new to One Shot paint, when you paint on ceramic you must keep the cup away from soaking in hot water. This will take all the paint away. I learned the hard way.

 

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Wet on Wet Pinstriping

I thought I would try a little wet on wet Pinstriping. I found a few good YouTube videos describing the process and wanted to pull out the airbrush and the oneshot paint together.

I dusted off my old paashe VLs for this project. I had not touched these airbrushes since my painting TShirt days at Exhibitions more than 22 years ago.

I wiped them off and the Paashes worked like a charm.

I started by painting orange flames with a brush. When complete I then mixed hardener, oneshot paint and reducer so that it flowed through the airbrush.

I airbrushed the red to create the fades and walked away. Do not worry about overspray. When the work is dry this will easily wipe off.

When completely dry I took a soft rag, wet it with windex and whipped away the overspray. The wet on wet holds the paint and give a great old school effect and the limitations are with your imagination.

Final step was to stripe using Kafka #3 short brush to outline the flames. This is a quick and easy way to create cool effects with Oneshot paint.

 

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Pinstriping on Skate Deck

Spent the morning adding more pinstripes on my longboard. I put red stripes on yesterday and followed up with white. Working on this surface is really easy compared to helmets and rounded surfaces.

I stripped the board down, cleaned off the surface with cleaner and stripped away. The grey and the logo was stock paint on the Landyaughtz longboard. The Pinstriping added a lot of old school character.

Contact me if you are looking to get your ride stripped.

 

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Pinstriping Projects

It's been a while since I picked up my striping brushes in my quest to try and master the art, or at least feel confident in striping. I have been practicing on pretty much anything that moves. I spent a lot of time practicing on panels but found that striping on objects like helmets, tanks and round objects was a whole other animal.

Not only did you have to worry about consistency of your line but you have to deal with having your brush follow the curve without skipping. Not as easy as it sounds.

I stripped an old laptop which was actually one of my first attempts at true fire. Using white I stripped basic lines to create this design. This was very similar to striping on panels.

 

 

I wanted to try painting images with One Shot paint. I normally airbrush all my work but was interested in seeing If I could create custom work using this technique. Using white one shot I painted the skull and then outlined with black. Then I added some stripes.

I am normally used to airbrush work with clearcoat to protect but this takes time. I can see me using this technique for quick projects but at the same time give the customer a custom look without the heavy expense associated with full airbrush work.

 

 

 

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Custom House of Kolor Geiger Bike

This custom paint project is all done and gathers a crowd wherever I go. It came out great and as with every artist I know I could have put more hours tweaking the work. Eventually you have to put the airbrush down and say enough is enough. Here are a few more pictures in random stages of the project.

 

 

 

 

 

All image copyright Digital Air Studios 2012

 

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Custom Geiger Stratoliner Bike Tank

This was a great project and the more I painted the easier the various textures got. When I started this custom paint I was not sure how I was going to tackle some of the features but as I moved forward many of the complex effects were quite simple to create.

As always this bike had to start from scratch. I had to sand out the factory Pinstriping on the Stratoliner. Sprayed high build primer/Surfacer and after sanding it smooth with 600 grit it was ready for basecoat and then clear to protect the surface and lock in the color. I wetsand the clear with 800 grit wet and I was ready for my real passion, airbrushing.

Step one was to mask off the areas I did not want to paint on. Here you can see where I masked the areas that were going to be pipes and the stressed metal effect.

Using House of Kolor white I create the layout of my design and work on building the shadow areas.

 

This picture show the final work before clear. I used House of Kolor black to render the details and all the shadowing. I went over the black with white to enhance the highlights and then with the black to darken any area that required it. By layering the white I was able to created different tones making it look like I used more colors.

The stressed metal and rivets were the final step. I sprayed diluted white over the grey basecoat using Airsick Stencils to create the texture and then came in with black to define the lines and create a aged look.

 

It was off for 4 coats of clear, wetsand with 800 grit and then 3 more coats of clear. Starting with 1000 wet and moving to 1500, 2000 and finally 3000 I was ready for buff an polish.

 

Here is a final shot I took of the tank. I was on a late fall ride and passed a cemetery with a dirt road access. I turned around and came back for a few shots. It was too hard to resist.

 

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