Svee Wheeler A Virtuous Painter by Brian McCaffery
Normally when you see the word Virtuous you would automatically think on someone playing an instrument, well Svee Wheeler has defi- nitely got something to do with instruments in fact it is guitars but in this case not playing them he is a virtuous in painting them, and is hit- ting the right cord when it comes to personalizing one. I found Svee working away on Jessica Rabbit at the KKBO show, now I had already contacted him to ask if he would be willing to be inter- viewed to which he agreed but I could see the apprehension in his face
when I introduced myself and asked him if he was ready to start. Luckily for me we soon reached a harmonious rapport. Ok Svee firstly let me thank you for agreeing to this interview now I know I refer to my interviewees as victims but believe me I will make this as painless as possible.
Q - Right Svee in my research for this interview I read that you started drawing comic like characters when you were younger, can you remember your first draw- ing and what was it? A - Yes I can remember it was a computer game cover I cant quite remember what it was called but it was of a girl in gold armor with a beast looking over her shoul- der I traced the outline and colored it in with coloring pencils actually my parents still have it as a keepsake.
Q - What was the first thing you airbrushed? A - That was a leather jacket I did for my wife. There was a company called Piranhas and they made Bad Taste Bears. Which were tiny little figurines doing vari- ous rude things, they had one of these bears that was a clown with an axe and I painted that on the back of the jacket and I used an old airbrush for the shading. I didn’t have an airbrush back then but my farther had an old one knocking around in the cupboard a Paasche single action you know the type with the glass bottle on the bottom and I fell in love with the airbrush there and then. Soon after purchased my first double action airbrush and the rest is history as they say. That jacket has stood the test of time and we still have it at home.
Q - You took courses with Beej Curtis at his Organic Studio how did you find them ? A - Yeah that was great, back then he was doing a four day intensive course. Auto Air was fairly new back then and I was the only student that wanted to use water base paint as I knew I would be painting at home with the kids around. We had quite a few laughs trying to work out the reduction ratios and trying to get it to ad- here to the surface. I painted a panel with a Mike Learn skull stencil I’d seen on his DVD Work Smart And Not Harder so I painted the panel all in Auto Air. I’d got to the stage where I had to cover it in application tape and cut a bit out and Beej had popped off somewhere so I thought well I’ll just carry on so I taped it up and cut out the bit I wanted to remove, went to peel it off and pulled a lot of the paint with it. I still have the panel and you can see where all the little bits of paint had come off. We had great fun trying to work out how to get the tape off; we even heated it up to the point where you could not even touch it.
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