I had a customer bring me a page torn from a veteran’s magazine of an ad for a statue of an eagle. What really grabbed him was the imagery inside the eagle wings. He wanted to know if I could do something like that across the front fairing of his HD Electra Glide trike with no background behind it. Because the artwork was based on the well-known American Freedom Series of paintings by artist Rick Kel- ley (see the originals at www.kelleyfineart.com), I requested and received permission to use his imagery for this project. (Thanks, Rick!)


After obtaining the fairing, I washed it down good with soap and water, dried it, thoroughly degreased it with 3M Adhe- sive Cleaner -08984 to remove all the crusty bugs, wax, tar, etc. Using 2” masking tape I mask off the area I don’t want paint to get on. Wearing latex gloves, I scuffed the surface with an extra-fine gray flexible sanding pad, being careful not to burn through the existing clear on the high spots and edges. Finally I cleaned off the sanding residue with a damp lint-free cloth and did one last cleaning with degreaser. The original pose from the ad didn’t fit the shape of the fairing, so using Photoshop and LOTS of reference materials, I cut- n-pasted a mockup to size that would give me the maximum space for the images inside the wings. (I could also do this with a copier, scissors and tape.) Once I was happy with my rough mockup, I was ready to refine the pose and create my final drawing.


On a sheet of 18” x 24” tracing paper, I created my drawing with a mechanical pencil. I constantly referred to my big pile of eagle books and reference materials, making sure I had the correct number of tail feathers, physical body position- ing and such. Once my drawing was done, I sprayed it with a rattlecan of workable fixative to prevent smudging. I then taped it to my “poor man’s light table” to work on making a stencil. My poor man’s light table as you can see is a window in my studio.


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