Smarkhams paint
 

Well here are my first 2 shells. I painted about 5 shells over 10 years ago before I gave up racing. Now im back racing thought I better have another go at painting. First one is a bit shabby but the second is getting there. Bought a gravity fed brush and a shed load of paints yesterday from rcs Jonmiller so there will be pleanty more to come :thumbsup:

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Good shape to your flames ! Nice job !

Cheers I did cheat with them I had some old xxx main masks that had been sat in my loft so used those.

Looking good :thumbsup:

lookin good buddy

glad to be of service


:)

Pitboard painted with just a stencil and transparent createx paints :thumbsup:

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sweet, liking it bud

:thumbsup:

Very nice, looking good.

Thanks for the comments :) Heres my first go on lexan with the createx


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Painted this one today for the same guy as the last one
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I prefer the design on the newer one with the symmetry ! Looks better.

Good colours too. You should get some of the Faskolor glitter stuff, you can get Faswhite glitter I think, would look ace with the other colours against it !

Cheers I did think about doing it with pearl white. Looks better in the flesh though cant capture all you colours that well using my phone.

Photography is the painters enemy ! :thumbdown:

If I ever find a camera that can capture the deepness of candies, the brightness of neon's and the detail when you have bright contrasting colours together I'll be sure to let you all know :lol:

Cameras can capture it in natural sunlight or you need multiple flashes around the subject to lift the image's. Give the depths and colours. The problem with capturing it is the kit is very expensive.:thumbdown:

+1 This one looks much nicer, I don't think you did a bad job on the other but the symetrical design just seems to work better. Looks really nice and bright.

Good Job:thumbsup:

Cheers for the comments guys heres another one for you. :thumbsup: Same paint but with the purple ond orange reversed.
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hey buddy, how you getting on since we spoke mate?

Hi Jon sealing it works fine mate stops it scratching off thanks for your help :thumbsup:

The shadow on the orange looks too dark :( Or maybe you've done over the back of it with the purple ?

To get more subtle shadows try using a red to shade it or if you mix it and don't think it's dark enough try just putting a spot of brown or black in it and I mean a tiny spot, you can always add more but too much and you'll kill the original colour. That would shade better I think, that's just my opinion though.

If it is the purple bleeding through, next time back the orange with white before you do the purple, it should keep it's vibrancy then.

Anyway... I don't know how you intended the design to look so I'll get me coat now.

Hi eyeayen its black shading he just saked me to copy the last one but reversing the purple and orange. I agree though something a tad lighter than black would have looked better. Still a massive learing curve for me a the mo. :)

Yea its a touch dark on the shadow a mixture of deep red and orange might of worked well but I still think it looks pretty good, tho I do prefer the original colour design you did but you seem to be get good at this design :D

Keep the work coming.

I think you need to talk the customer around as you're the one wielding the airbrush and they're the one asking for your expertise ! Also you need to ask them do they want it black and orange fade or do you want it to look like a shadow, if it's a shadow try and use a darker colour in the same spectrum, so orange would need a red / brown over it to darken it, yellow would need a yellow/orange mix or a yellow brown mix etc etc.

The designs you are doing are cool, I just think if you made it look more like a shadow than a painted colour it would give it that extra depth and bring it onto the next level.

A lot about all this is explaining to the customer that something else might look better on their design than the colours they've chosen. I don't mean completely change it, just to give it that little extra, and once it's done and they've seen it they'll understand.

Painted this one for myself today. Its actually purple not blue but my phone gets confused with the pearl effect i think lol. :)


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looks really good buddy.

if you had a more realistic drop shadow on the flames i think it would have looked even better. or a pinstripe maybe.

Cheers Jon. I wanted a pinstripe and shadow drops but its still a bit beyond me at the moment. Im not using liquid mask yet so it can only get better.

That is looking really good mate, looking forward to seeing it for real if I ever make it back to the TC club.

Seems to me your improving hugely with each one (and you weren't to shabby to start with!)

Get some Liquid Mask, it will turn things around for you !

White or Red pin lines would look ace with that !

Nice job !

*waves*

That's not exactly the way it's going down. I'm running smarkhams paint because Stu is happy to do it and I'm happy to help get his name out there...

I can paint too, sort of...

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5110/...3ec7e680_b.jpg
(My) Hot BodiesTCX by cyclone5, on Flickr

...but if Stu wants to practice on my shells that's fine by me, saves me a job :thumbsup:

Also I don't have any purple paint lol.

I'm not knocking Stu's paint by any means, I just think if he had some liquid mask it would take it to the next level, he's clearly got talent.

Likewise I've liked the way he's painting the shells he's posted I just didn't think the black and orange went as well as his previous attempts so thought I'd offer some friendly advice...

Cheers all im new to all this so im very open to suggestions and pointers to help me along the way. I enjoy painting and thats why i do it if it turns into a chore I will probably stop and just paint shells for myself and close friends. Merv you have helped me no end with the setup of my car since I got back into racing painting your shells is the least I can do :thumbsup:

@eyeayen From the half hour phone call at the weekend I can assure you you're right, the last job didn't go as well as the previous job!

The way I've been driving the last few weeks the shell won't last long anyway :D

:D:D:D Yeah had a bit of a mare with the black overspray to start with and ended up stripping the shell and starting again after pooing my pants thinking I had trashed the shell. Didnt do too bad a job at recovering what looked like a total loss.

Some better pics of my latest for you all now its mounted and with a proper camera so it doesnt look blue.


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Those photo's have come out well, show it all off nicely !

First go at pinstripe was all done with masking tape and spray cans pretty happy with the result. :thumbsup:
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I love limited colour palettes, that looks ace ! Good job with rattle cans too !

Nice neat masking, you've done well :thumbsup:

Thanks Im starting to learn simple is better sometimes :thumbsup:

Tried some transparent red on this but the floro orange blocked it out any tips ?
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Transparent colours are tricky to judge. Essentially what should have happened is you got a very unique bright red. I can't really tell from the photo's though. When backing transparents sparkly colours work best, silvers or golds give that 'American Hot Rod / Candy' look, a dark pink or red will give a colour depth that you can fall into because of the transparent.

I've had success using Pearl White, it needs to be quite a sparkly one though and on the brighter side not the yellowy ones, it also gives the best colour as obviously it's white. Sometimes using a straight white is good too as it gives a real intense colour that you wouldn't get using a straight colour the same.

Fluorescent colours are a bit tricky to work with for special effects. You said the fluro blocked it out, there are a few things it could be. The colours are 2 similar, or maybe it wasn't quite dense enough and has just got lost with the amount of Fluro you've had to build up. Sorry I'm actually not understanding if you've covered the entire orange / red area with the transparent colour or you've just tried a fade on the edge ? It's just a practice thing really.

What you're trying to do is cool, practice on off cuts of lexan though rather than doing it live on the actual body as if it doesn't work on an off cut it's no bother and you can spend time in perfecting it, just work on a small piece each time, this way you have perfect colour samples to show customers and if it comes out hideously you can just bin it, then customers don't ever need to know, unfortunately doing it live on a shell doesn't have the advantage of being able to hide anything that goes the shape of the pear.

The shell looks fine to me, a pinline between the colours would have been nice to see, black is obvious but would have picked it out, or you could have gone for maybe a metallic blue or a gold ?

Cheers for the info. I was trying a drop shadow on the orange with a pretty dark red It looked really good to start with but the more orang I built up the less define it became.