You will notice the edges of the skulls are fuzzy and also very dark. The reason
for this is that the background colour will be black. By doing this I will get a nice
transition from the skulls to the background and lose the stencil look.
Here I have added colour to the eyes of the skulls using Candy Apple Red and
Oriental Blue Kandy concentrates. These were mixed 8 parts inter coat clear
to 1 part kandy concentrate and reduced 1 to 1 with slow reducer. I use Kandy
as it is transparent and will not affect the black/brown colour in the eyes. This
allows you to tie the pupils to the eye sockets and avoids over spray from base
coat affecting the surrounding areas. The skulls are pretty much done for now.
Lastly I go in with white to add highlights to the skulls. I keep it very tight and
don’t go overboard as too many highlights can kill a design.
After masking off the skulls with the stencils first cut out, I mask off the flame
design with 1/16th crepe tape. This tape is excellent for doing flames as it
bends easily through the tight teardrops of the flame. Once the outline is done
I use 3M 2 inch masking tape to fill in the flames. I now lay down a deep gray
base. This is the colour for the flames. Here I have masked off the flame design
ready to lay the jet black which is the background colour of the bike. The flames
were pin taped and filled in with masking tape to prevent over spray. When
masking off the flames make sure that all the areas are covered so you can
avoid disasters from painting getting where you don’t want it. For this project it
wouldn’t matter much though as the flame colour is a straight colour (meaning
it has no metallic in it) and can be touched up without too much effort, but it’s
always best to avoid potential problems when possible.
Here I have de-masked the guard so you can see the design so far.
At this stage I airbrushed jet black, with 3-4 drops of brown, under the skulls to
cast a shadow. Using straight black is not a good idea as it is lifeless and by add-
ing the brown it still looks black but has more life to it. I let the black drift onto
the skulls very slightly to tie them into the background. You need to be careful
with this though as too much over spray on the skulls will kill the project. The
shadows will only appear on the flames as the background colour is black, but it
still helps to give the appearance that the skulls are standing off the tin wear.
issue26.indd 8 11/4/2009 9:19:04 AM
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