This particular customer asked for a Godzilla themed guitar that would be in an old 70-80’s Movie Poster style. Fun!! I started by creating a photo composite from a variety of images and vector drawings. When the customer approved my idea, I went on to create a vector mask for the composition. You can see how the layout […]
How To: Tales of Terror
This piece is the first in a series of Horror Classics that I had wanted to do for awhile. I have always loved the old movie posters for the Vincent Price horrors. I created the mock up for this piece based upon 2 different movie ads for “Tales of Terror” I really liked the contrast in the […]
How To: Pirate On Kandy Blue: A Study in Core Shadow
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 […]
How To: HELKEN Corporal Punishment
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, […]
How To: 300 Brass Helmet/Shield Effect
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 […]
Hot Rod Flames for A Hot Rod Air Scoop
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 […]
How To: Flag Helmet
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 […]
HOW TO: Bevel Tribal Graphics
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 […]
HOW TO: Tattoo You, Maltese Cross and Fire
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 […]
How To: The Original Field of Screams
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 […]
How To: Lightening Storm
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 […]
Creating Your Own Text Mask
With the nearly unlimited font resources that we have today, very often you can find a type style that is almost exactly what you are looking for. Want to know how to make that font editable so you can get that extra tweak, add a bevel, etc? It’s easy! Using a vector program like Adobe […]