Danger's Art Pad

Danger's Art Pad

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

70's Honda Sickle Tank Project




The custom paint job for the tank of my 1978 Honda cb125 is nearly complete, and let me tell you, it has been a chore. The bottom photo shows the tank as it was the night I purchased the bike: severely dented from the forks, missing some paint, faded and peeling topcoat. The middle photo is the tank after I hastily removed the stock (and terribly late 70's looking) decal from the tank and even more hastily slapped some sticky lines and lettering on as a temporary cosmetic solution. After discovering that the tank's liner was coming apart during deep cleaning of it's interior, I took it to my new friend Dan Burlick, a restorer of vintage bikes (usually much cooler ones than mine) and generally nice guy, who relined the tank and pulled the dents out of it for me.  (if anyone is looking for motorcycle work like this, I highly recommend him. Get in touch with me and I'll give you his number.) After much sanding, priming, wetsanding, basecoating, and waiting, I've got the tank to this point, short just clear coat and new, more carefully painted "honda" lettering. I'll post the final when it's done.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Ramblin Rex Project Finished (Finally)




Just finished the Ramblin Rex and the Traumatones t-shirt design. That's one major check on my to-do list. Hopefully there'll be shirts of this soon.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Monster Shirt Revival






         
  So as some of you may know, modern graphics-based t-shirts were heavily influenced by the old 50's hot rodding tradition of airbrushed "monster shirts", pioneered and established famously by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth and Stanley Mouse at car shows on the west and east coasts, respectively. Well, being something of a purist in my enthusiasm and pursuit of ginchy old art forms and culture, I got an airbrush (it's even a Paasche, just like Big Daddy used to use!) and a compressor some time around my freshman year in college, and tried my hand at it. Similarly to my earliest attempts at brush-and-1shot pinstriping and brush-and-india ink comics, I wasn't very good, and became very frustrated. Shortly before leaving for Germany in 2007, I had only really airbrushed a small handful of times, and was very self-conscious of my as-yet unblossomed prowess with this unfamiliar medium. Starting work at Junkyard Jeans upon getting back from the Fatherland threw me right into the deep end, as I was asked to airbrush more monster shirts in the first weeks of my employ there than I had ever attempted before. This forced me to become better acquainted with the airbrush, but I still became discouraged when looking at the monster shirt work of Johnny Ace, Kali Vera, VonFranco, Ed Newton, etc.  (anybody would). I did maybe one or two non-work shirts last summer, and then took a major leave of absence from my lonely Paasche while at school in Provo. After the return of my good friend and fellow lowbrow artist Shaky Sullivan (with whom I am in constant but very friendly competition) from his mission this spring, and his return to monster shirt painting (a craft which he had much better learned than I while I was away), my friendly jealousy at all the cool shirts he was making came to a head, and I decided I needed to give monster shirts another shot. The photos above are from the four shirts and one apron that I painted tonight in my renewed airbrush effort. I'm pretty stoked with how they turned out. I painted all of these shirts from freehand pencil layouts I drew directly onto the shirts themselves, but must credit Ed Newton, Robert Williams, and Roth Studios with the basic design of all but "Surfite Sufari". ("Surfite" I drew originally in a letter to Shaky while in Germany. The others were drawn by me from observations of old Ed Roth waterslide decals or, in the case of the Coochy Cooty shirt, ZAP Comix.)

Punk Jackets for Work







           My favorite thing to do at J Y J is paint leather jackets. I was given three to do over the weekend, and here's how they turned out. (all three started out plain, without any paint on them). They will now be fitted with some ungodly amount of pyramid studs put up for sale. Most of the jackets I've done in the past have been more in the vintage motorcycle/hotrod vein than in the punk vein. Below are a few of them. (Note: if you have a jacket you want custom painted, call me!) 





Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Ramblin Rex Project Started (Finally)

             So I've been owing my buddy Rex Morris a shirt design for his group "Ramblin Rex and the Traumatones" for about a year in exchange for a camera and lenses he gave me last summer. It's taken me FOREVER to get to it, but I started for real today (I've done several thumbnails over the last 9 months, but none of them ever went anywhere). The final will feature a Roth-style character riding a Schwinn Stingray, accompanied by the text of the group's name. So far, I've just completed a sketch of the Stingray. I'll keep posting progress on this as is comes (hopefully it will be complete within 24 hrs.)