Airbrushes used:Iwata: HP-BC, HP-BC+, HP-C+, HP-BH, HP-CH, HP-BCS, Eclipse G6, CM-B

A dear friend of mine from Ohio asked me to do some artwork on his Kicker5150 mini-chopper. Naturally with a name like Pissant the theme wasn't hard to come up with. He just wanted an ant on steroids on the tank and the rest I should come up with. So I decide to go with an ant's head coming out of the top of the tank with the paint tearing out around the head. This is the process and I hope ya dig it!

First I start buy cleaning the freshly based black surface with a water based wax/grease remover. Next I partially wrap transfer tape around the tank and cut in areas without making any contact with the surface to get it to lay flat. Then mask whatever parts at the bottom of the tank that the transfer tape did not cover.

Now I start to draw out the edge of the tears with a fine line sharpy and then start to cut it out very carefully with a xzacto blade. I always make sure that the blade is brand new and when it starts to get a little dull I change immediately. The pressure you put on the blade should only be enough to score the transfer tape and not the painted surface.

Next I start to spray the color of the tear graphic. I chose the color silver because the metallic look it gives off.

I then take a reduced transparent blue and spray over the silver to give it a slight hue of blue. Now I start to come in with black to give the tears their folds, creases and shadows. I also come in with white for highlights.

Next I take a 1/4 inch fine line tape and create the top and lower edge for the tears. Where ever the tape crosses each other at a point I cut the overlapping parts off to create a point where the tear starts and ends. After the fineline tape is completely laid out I mask it off with 3/4 inch masking tape. Now its ready for the ant artwork.

Now that the tear graphic masking is done I can now start the ant mural. First I black out the silver overspray from the tears and wipe down a with a tack cloth after it's completely dry to remove any excess overspray.

Now I start freehanding the ant with white and really dont stop until I get a semi detailed illustration of the ant. I tack rag it down again and then come in with a little black to remove any white overspray from doing the llustration.

Time for color!I start with a thinly reduced yellow and go over some of the high points of the ant and blend where needed. Next I come in with a over reduced transparent orange and come in around the yellow and blend. I also come in with a transparent copper that I added a couple drops of black to and several drops of purple to blend with the orange and also start to define some of the darker knooks and crannies, shadow shading and also to give it a bit of roundness.

Now I come in with hilites and I do this with white. I kind of just stipple in the hilites and hairs; hours and hours of dots and dagger practice are being put to use here.

After the hilites are done I dust a bit of tranparent yellow over top the hilites and come back in with even tighter hilites until I'm satisfied with appearance.

Now come my favorite part...the eyes! With this I'm going to be using some materials left over from a previous project green to gold pearl prism paint and some honeycomb cloth material I found at a fabric store.

I make sure the eyes are nice and black so the pearl shows up real well. I then position the cloth over the eye and spray from the middle out leaving the edge of the eye a little dark so it gives a roundness to the eye.

You dont need much of the pearl, very dramatic over black. I give a few white hilites on the eye to give it a glossy kind a look.I also fill in in and around the ants head with the same texture as the eyes. Very cool look and looks really cool under clear.

Now that the illustration is done now I can start to unmask the tears just the tears not the whole tank. Here I start to define the tears edges a bit more and redefine hilites and some of the darker tones.

Now I take the rest of the masking off to expose the rest or the outside edge of the tears. Here I'll add a few hilite glows the extend past the tear edges to give it a little depth.

Then I clean the whole thing with waterbased wax/grease remover to clean also any overspray that may be lingering on the surface of the tank.Thats pretty much it and also here is a the finished rear fender done in the same process minus the green to gold pearl.

Hope this was helpful to anybody and thanks for lettin' me share! DIAZ

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