This customer requested a pirate theme for his paint work and really left the details of the job up to me. I really like to work with core shadow as a basis for building a composition and as a basis for exemplifying how light sources affect an image. The basic idea for the image came […]Read More
Album Cover Art This project was for a band out of California. As I do with all Album Cover assignments, I started by listening to the music. They play a really hard core thrash metal and were looking for an image that reflected their style. They also wanted to make some sort of political statement, though exactly what, […]Read More
If you haven’t seen the movie 300 – WOW! All I can say is, you HAVE to take the time! As with any graphically intense, popular movie, not long after its release, people started requesting this type of theme on bikes, cars, skateboards, whatever you can paint. We thought it would be timely and well […]Read More
A Lesson In Simple Pinstriping This project is for one of our neighbors who is finishing up a ….. project that he has been working on for quite awhile. The Hot Rod flames on this air scoop is the finishing touch to a gloss black beauty. I have chosen to use a One Shot Process […]Read More
German – American Flag Helmet with Rips, Tears, Brains and Bones Well, we thought we would do something a little different with this How To. This is a helmet that I did for one of my repeat customers. He is German and wanted a racing helmet that depicted both the German and American flag, split […]Read More
We have had a lot of requests for a How To on beveled tribal graphics. The following technique is a really simple way to go about it. The tribal graphics were created in CorelDRAW. Once the shape was finessed, an 1/8″ contour was added and the file printed. For this project, we first painted the […]Read More
Those of you who work with vinyl mask know how frustrating it can be at times when you cannot really see the cuts on your mask. This can make it very difficult to properly weed out and can cause you to end up with missing pieces of a design. Force your cut lines to stand […]Read More
The Tattoo You Stencil from Mike Learn’s Air Essentials is crammed full of tattoo style artwork that can be used in dozens of layouts. Take a close look at all the different templates that are wrapped up into this one handheld stencil. We will most likely do multiple tutorials on this particular stencil. For the […]Read More
For those of you who do not know it, in Mike’s “spare” time, he builds custom guitars and currently has a patent pending on a new guitar style. While we are waiting for patent protection before we begin production on that particular model, Mike has decided to start a new series of custom one-off electric […]Read More
For the Better Life Foundation’s Katrina Relief Concert The piece that you will see here is a Genz Benz amp cover. It was recently donated to a concert benefitting Katrina victims. The Band 3 Doors Down is from the stricken area and they organized and headlined this event. Lightening is one of the easiest effects […]Read More
This is a question we see time and time again not only on this site, but on others as well. “How do I remove tape residue without compromising the artwork?” There is no ONE right way to do it, but over the years we have learned a couple different methods that will do to the […]Read More
I have been working with the Jackson Custom shop since 2003. The projects they send me are generally a lot of fun because the Jackson guys really allow me full creative control. As a life long guitar player and enthusiast myself, I am very familiar with Jackson’s branding and I am able to work within […]Read More