I finally had an opportunity to put the final touches on the Jason Kidd painting that I worked on while on location at the Parade of Homes in McKinney, Texas.
The final product is pretty nice. I'm very happy with the diverse palette and implied features in the face. Having the image set against a dark background is going to result in some sharp edges, but overall I think the painting works. I didn't want anything too complicated for my first on-site demonstration. Plus, the dark background is excellent for having a painting signed by the athlete with a paint pen.
I spoke to the folks at the State Fair of Texas and they're saying that all the booths have been leased for this year's fair. However, if I send in my application and application fee (just $25) I will be added to the waiting list for consideration upon any cancellations. They told me that it varies from year to year. Sometimes everyone is able to get their act together and other years they have as many as 10% back out. We're praying that God's will prevails.
After some contemplation, I think my next painting is going to be a 1936 Harley Davidson Model E. The bike was affectionately referred to as the "knucklehead". The plan is to complete a six piece series of 30"x40" canvases and then flesh out some smaller 12"x12" paintings of parts, trim and logos before contacting Harley dealers about possible art nights. I would anticipate it taking me another month to accomplish that. There appears to be twelve certified Harley-Davidson dealerships in a 3-hour radius of Dallas. I think I can make a pretty compelling case to throw an art party. We'll see. The folks at Harley headquarters e-mailed me the paperwork necessary to become fully licensed. Again, I'd rather the company be on my side.
The latest painting in my series of Harley-Davidson motorcycles has been completed. The subject is a 1940 WLA. The motorcycle was the first generation of what is now considered Harley's recognizable style.
The WLA became the workhorse of World War II. Thousands were dispatched to the European theater where they saw service in the trenches. The bikes were reliable and easy to repair. There were a few modifications for wartime use, which included blacking out the tail lights, minimizing the fender size so mud wouldn't get stuck, swapping the positioning of the headlight and horn, adding a rifle holster and of course the paint of choice was flat army green.
Just like the last Harley I completed, I really love this painting. There are some things going on in the painting that are really captivating, like the headlight. The headlight is full of these reflected colors of the terrain and sky, as well as highlights and refractions. The headlight has all of these bevels that are intended to disperse the light over a wider field of vision. It reminds me of the headlights on my dad's old '67 Volkswagen Beetle. The refraction the bevels cause makes for an interesting image. I also love the front wheel, the suspension springs, the seat and the gas tank. The lighting on the tank is so interesting. There is reflected sky, reflected sunlight, shadows from the handle bars, reflected ground and a reflection of the sun reflecting off the bike's chrome. The result is an image that is anything but flat.
I am starting the process of having the images officially licensed. I think these paintings are going to be extremely popular and I'd rather stay on Harley's good side. We'll see how laborious that process will be.
I spent last weekend out at the Parade of Homes in McKinney. It was a good time. A little too much sun and definitely too much wind. It's been windy in our area lately and this development is on a hill which resulted in serious gusts the whole weekend. Luckily I brought a roll of duct tape to secure everything. My set up included a portable easel, two portfolios and a stack of business cards. I set up with my back facing traffic so folks could watch me paint over my shoulder. I decided to paint a 16"x20" of Jason Kidd. I started with a blank canvas on Saturday morning and by the time I left Sunday afternoon I was 95% complete. I'll post that painting to the site when I'm finished in the next day or two. Folks seemed genuinely interested in my work and were amused that I was painting Kidd as a Maverick even though the source photo had him in a Nets jersey. I'm still trying to figure out a way to get the contact information for folks that have interest without seeming too pushy or threatening. I'm not sure if someone who takes a card is going to follow up with me without a little provocation.
I'm starting to think about the State Fair of Texas coming up in October. I'm thinking about getting a 10'x10' booth to display and sale my wares. I spent some time with a local artist that worked the fair for twenty years and she provided some good insight on the value of the investment of time and money. It sounds like you need to sell items priced for impulse purchase (under $20), which in my case may be matted 8"x10"s and note cards. You can display originals and giclees and talk to people about them, but folks are likely not to buy that big ticket item on a whim at the fair. I figure I would need to sell $200 worth of items per day to break even, that's 10 - 8"x10"s over a twelve hour period at a venue that draws on average 150,000 visitors each day. I'm sure I would sell far more than ten items a day. The biggest drawback about working the fair is that you have to be in your booth twelve hours a day for 24 consecutive days. The nice thing is that you'll be able to afford a vacation once the fair is over. Applications are due soon, so wish me luck.
I've got to run, but I'll post again when the Jason Kidd is completed.
Over the weekend I completed the second painting in my series of Harley-Davidson images. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, this painting is of the Captain America custom Harley chopper that became an American icon in the 1969 film "Easy Rider".
Again, I love this painting. I'm having a blast painting chrome these days. The colors can be a bit random and the lines rather abstract because it's just one warped reflection after another. Look closely and you can make out what's being reflected. A blue sky. A desert highway. Other parts of the bike. Look closely at the air filter cover and you can see reflections of the bike's "ape hanger" handle bars, the massive exhaust and the extra large sissy bar - all things that made this bike the icon it is. Below is a close up of a painting I did over a decade ago of a Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl victory including an image of Emmitt Smith holding the highly reflective trophy. Same scenario. The object has no color of its own, just reflections.
When you start doing research on this bike and the film, some interesting stories come up. Peter Fonda produced the film himself and actually customized the bikes with some help from some friends. They trolled the police auctions and came across the bikes they would use as the basis for customizing. The Captain America bike was a '52 Harley-Davidson Hydra-Glide. The engines on these old Harleys were called panheads because the cylinder head covers were shaped like pie pans. The only modifications Fonda made were extending the front forks, adding the ape hangers, customizing the exhaust, adding the sissy bar and replacing the gas tank with the now famous stars and stripes peanut tank. Everything else was supposedly stock. As the story goes, they build four bikes - two Captain America bikes and two Billy bikes. One of the Captain America bikes was wrecked in the final scene of the movie and the other was going to be a memento for Fonda. Two months before the film was released, someone broke into the storage facility where the bikes were being kept and stole the three bikes that hadn't been wrecked. The movie hadn't even come out yet, so the thieves didn't know what they were stealing. It's safe to assume that the bikes were parted out and scattered to the wind. Fonda gave the last bike (the mangled wreckage) to Dan Haggerty (you may remember him as Grizzly Adams) as a gift for helping with the production and the customizing of the bikes in the first place. That bike has since been restored and was sold at auction in 1996. You can safely assume that any Captain America bike you see on the road (or even in the Motorcycle Hall of Fame) is just a faithful reproduction of the original, not unlike the many Shelby Cobras you see darting around on weekends.
I did try something new this time around. I've started experimenting with time lapse to show the progression of the piece. It's a little rough, but I think it's intriguing to watch. The music is courtesy of East of Western. I knew these guys when I lived in California and I feel the particular song is a nod to Dick Dale and the classic surfer rock. It seemed to fit.
I'll be starting on the next Harley this afternoon. I'm still thinking about what would be best to work on while on location at the Parade of Homes this Saturday in McKinney. These 30"x40" canvases are a little hard to set up and paint on out in the field, so I'll probably just pick something fun in a smaller format.
