On Track Off Road No.183

Feature
hand from start to finish then
that’s my preferred course. My
painting and personal work
tend not to have much in the
way of deadlines, so that’s
all by-hand and I’ll sketch an
idea, apply it to a canvas and
then paint it. Timescales and
tools for the jobs determine
how you’ll do a job.
What’s the best canvas…?
Bikes themselves? Helmets?
With bikes there are obviously
more shades and contours
to think about and I have
two-three bikes to paint this
year so we’ll see how it goes.
They are flat trackers so it
essentially means the tank
and a section of the seat unit
whereas a road bike or something
with a fairing is a much
bigger canvas to work with.
Each job has it’s own bonuses
and sticking points. I’d love to
paint a road bike actually because
a flat track bike means
you have to think carefully
about what will be displayed
and how people and cameras
will see it when its going into
a corner. Riders will cover a
lot of the tank anyway. The
process of painting them is
not radically different for me.
I’ve done helmets in the past
and there’s quite a lot of surface
area. If you took a shell
and spread it on the table
then it would be pretty big.
Again, only so much of it gets
seen from different angles.
Another thing I’ve started to
do is buy big oil cans, squash
them flat and then paint
them. Again it’s still the same
process as painting a bike
and I’d use the same enamel
and spray paint.
How is life as an artist and
one predominantly based in
the motorcycle industry in
2019?
You cannot be just an artist:
unless you have a really good
agent that takes care of the
whole commercial side. You
need to be a businessman
and also be business-minded
as well as be creative, and
normally I don’t think those
two necessarily go hand-inhand.
You have to try and
market yourself, handle sales,
email requests and clients.
And also find time to have
new ideas that keep you
moving forward. There is
always someone else biting
at your heels. I’m sure that is
the same for many different
career paths. I’m really lucky
that I have an agent in London
– for just over a year now
- that brings commercial illustration
jobs. They help pull in
work that is not just motorcycle
related and it is nice to
have it as a top-up.
It’s nice to know someone is
out there finding commissions
and believing in you.
It is also very satisfying to
put your work out there and
have people contacting you
directly to buy it: you’ve created
it, produced it, marketed
it, packed it and sold it. That
hands-on process from start
to finish is really rewarding.