Harley Custom Paint job work in progress

hi all, just thought id show you some pics from a project ive just started.
2006 harley davidson ultraglide. customer wanted skulls, flames and a grim reaper.
Lots of surface to work on and some slight repairs to the plastics but all in all quite excited to be workin on it.
sorry about the pic quality but heres a taster of what i got done today, did some laying out and started the base layer of the fire and skulls on the saddlebags. tomorrow ill be applying the first layer of candy, and then onto the detail.

 

i found a horned ram's skull once in wales and it looked well cool - i was goner mount it on my bike then it was only when i had it sat on my fireplace at home i realised it was riddled with tiny maggots and it filled my house with death flies from hell. :s

 

It was Dave

Sent from my HTC using the force ! h34r:

 

started on the other side today, base layer done, onto the batwing fairing tomorrow then the candy paint process starts

 

quick update finished one side today with more candy layers and highlights etc.

 

That looks the dogs that mate.

 

thanks mate, got some done on the other side aswell now

 

Nice work fella....

I've had a fair few bikes painted down the years and it still amazes me how good some painters are - it also amazes me how bad some painters are, ie I've seen expensive restorations ruined by the paintjob which was either poorly finished or poorly researched meaning wrong colours or wrong badges/graphics/stickers used in the wrong positions.

Out of interest whats with the 'Skull' thing and Harleys?, it seems that every time I see a Hardly Dangerous these days it has all manor of Skulls nailed to it for some reason... aperbag:

 

I'm not sure really about the skulls or the eagles or reapers or flames. I just think there's a lot to be explored n still a lot more ways U can represent each of the subjects mentioned above. Customising is all about changing something to suit yourself so I guess if it comes down to someone's personal preference and that's what the customer likes then I'm happy to do it. I'll always explore the customers basic idea though and suggest some different or alternative way of doing something, they may nt know what they really want yet or just may not be able to put it into words.

Thanks for the compliment though, the support means a lot

Tom

 

both sides ready for clear now, will geta better pic in the daylight tomorrow

 

started the batwing fairing today









tomorrow i start the piles of skulls on the sides of the batwing fairing, theyll stretch from the light surround right up to the handlebar guards and ive left them until last because theyre gonna take me ages to do.

after that the whole piece gets a coat of candy red and then i go back in with the white picking out the next layer of detail.
then another whole layer of candy orange, then more detail with white and some shadowing with a brown red mixture, then a layer of candy yellow, then even more detail and final highlights with white.

im really enjoying seeing this project come together, thanks for looking.

tom

 

Some good skills you got there!

 

Tom loving the skills there, is it just airbrush work you do mate?

 

they dont look errrrrrr shiney?

 

hi mate, ye i do a lot of airbrushing but do paintwork aswell, ill be clearcoating these, and the only reason i didnt do basecoat is because the customer wanted to keep some stickers he already has on the rear end of the hard bags.

 

haha not clearcoating until weekend. if the fairing is done by saturday the whole clearcoat process should be done by sunday and then ill buff them on tuesday ready to give back

 

Aye mozz you leave Tom alone he's doing my race paint ;-)

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so heres the photo sequence of the candy work with the fairing. same process as the skulls only the skulls were originaaa wwlow mix so theyd be warmer under the red candy, but the reaper i painted out in white as i wanted his to be a darker silhouette type figure with the warm fire glow coming from behind him.

i still wanna soften the edges of the figure as the light would glow around the figure in real life making a sort of light halo not just a solid silhouette line.
but ill do this tomorrow. was planning to clearcoat everything this weekend but i dont think ill be able to do all the skulls ive got planned for the sides before sunday, theres just not enough time for the amount of detail i want to put in.

hope you like.