|
|
Making Marvelous Moving Murals on the Minivan |
The Time Has Come
Another vehicle falls to the paintbrush.
It starts out with a few photos, then a nice trick in Photoshop that turns them into black & white outline drawings. Now we have pictures like a coloring book ... print a few off and come up with some ideas.
 
Once the ideas have solidified its time to get down to business. The neighbors laugh & offer their cars as the next in line - as it looks like we're just scrubbing and cleaning, right? But it turns out that, no, they don't want theirs done with 400 grit sandpaper .. so we just stick to this one.
All nicely prepped & the odd bits of rust or over-zealous sanding get hit with some spot-priming. Add a beautiful skirt of rosin paper, some high density plastic, and a few hours of rather tedious taping, and we're ready to do the fun stuff.
Looks like a hovercraft, eh?
Geek Moment:
The paint is Autoair, by Createx. They're the people who make the regular airbrush paints ... but this stuff is special. It's waterbased, but with only that slight scuffing of the 400 grit paper its willing to adhere like you wouldn't believe. We know this to be true as that first night the moisture in the air was enough to keep the paint from drying properly. The early morning dew collected, ran, and when we wiped it off the paint came with it. Not just the Autoair, but everything. All the way down to bare metal. Like a paint stripper! And this is through the factory-applied urethane and original paint. Wow! (We weren't very happy at the time - but it was impressive).
So the adhesion is so good that it bonded with absolutely everything on top of the metal & took it all with it when it wiped off. Serious stuff.
Back To The Story:
So here's the first coat, sprayed night sky to day sky.
 
Most of the stars came later, with the airbrush.
Then the tree - and climb up onto the roof ... because Nancy says that the people in condos need to be able to look out their windows and see pretty rooftops, which is good advertising.
Next came the waterfall and background trees, and the animals by the driver's door. Lions & Tigers & Bears oh my. Only one of each - but hopefully some people get a giggle. I tried out writing "oh my" coming from the bear, but it looked kind of stupid so nixed that one.
 
Then the dragon, then give the dragon a nice comfy pot of gold to sit on. Everyone needs a pot of gold, right? So if you need one give us a call & we'll come create a shiny luscious pile to whatever dimensions you'd like. Not legal tender, but a happy thought nonetheless.
Back to the nightsky side.
We thought we needed a big beautiful bunch of hibiscus here. In an online image-hunt I tangented off to a blog: http://seventhchords.blogspot.com/ and found a nice pic Gowri Mohanakrishnan had posted of a bowl of flowers (inc hibiscus). I thought what the heck - emailed her to ask if OK to use the pic. OK! Great - and though we've ended up with a pastiche of different hibiscus, there's hint-of-Ruby Tuesday in there. I liked the small leaves & flowers mixed in. Makes for a frothy spill of flowers.
 
There's still more to be done.
Wwwweeee-hooo!
We clear-coated the minivan already - but all we need to do is scuff the panels we want to work on more, paint & clear coat again. At least everything is safely sealed in now, edges cleaned up, looks happily impressive & driveable.
The yet-to-do is: add a night scene, probably suburban houses with windows lit, and some fairies. I'd like to add some moon flowers behind the dragon's tale. They've always seemed magical to me. Maybe some bubbles. Bubbles are great in a bathroom, by the way. If we can go straight on top of your existing paint it will only take a day, which costs around $400.
Back To The Story:
Sheesh. Tangents 'R' Us.
So a bit more painting on the minivan, yet. Clearcoat those panels. Then order some vinyl lettering (our favorite people for this: Signs Now on Dempster: www.signsnow.com, 3741 W. Dempster Street, Skokie, IL 60076, (847) 673-5151). Talk to Lise) and voila - all shall be good!
|
|
