KICKASSKUSTOMS
This article was written by airbrush artist and kustom The next step in getting the job underway was getting
painter Todd Malcolmson who is based in Australia. Todd the bike parts sandblasted. Once we had the parts back
owns and operates his business Kick Ass Kustom Paint we sanded them with 80 grit dry sandpaper. As there
and Airbrush in Canberra, which is the capital city of Aus- were no dents in the tin wear we wash primed them first.
tralia. Whilst Todd began airbrushing as a teenager in Wash primer is a primer that etches into the metal to
New Zealand, he started airbrushing and kustom paint- give a surface for the primer to bond to. Next we applied
ing professionally six years ago. three coats of high solid primer and baked it at 60 de-
The brief from the client for this job was “something dif- grees Celsius for 45 minutes. We then sanded the bike
ferent but with meaning”. The client said that he was into parts with 800 grit wet/dry sandpaper and we were
skulls and Ned Kelly. Ned Kelly is a well known Austra- then ready to start on the fun part. As we were starting
lian Bushranger who died in 1880 in a famous shootout from scratch I decided to do the kustom painting in re-
with the law. Ned is considered by Australians as either verse, meaning we did the murals first and then painted
an outlaw hero or a merciless killer. With this informa- the base colour.
tion in mind I set out designing the artwork for this bike.
For the first step I laid down a light cream colour made from Standox
high opacity white, yellow, bright red tinter from our mixing machine
and a little brown base coat. This colour is the base for the skulls.
You can see here I have mapped out the design using stencils I cut
out on a plotter using Avery mask. The white on the guard you see
here is a mask to protect the area from over spray as there is a mu-
ral going in here. By doing this it serves two purposes. One is that it
allows me to see where the oval is and secondly because the skulls
go over the insert, when I remove the mask there won’t be a ridge
that may be noticeable when the mural is done.
I have now mapped out my reference points (mouth, eyes and
nose) for the skull. I then come in with high opacity white, which
I have thinned 1 to 1 with Standox slow reducer, and yellow and
start to add some colour, at this stage it’s all pretty loose. I am
also not worried about the over spray passing the skulls as the
background colour is dark and will cover it.
issue26.indd 6 11/4/2009 9:17:39 AM
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