The Nicest People

[XQB]

Our story so far....
Our intrepid adventurer (that'd be me) made the trip last Sunday to Mid Ohio Race Car Course in Lexington, OH for the AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days to take reference photos and maybe, if I was lucky, meet some motorcycle magazine folks. so I prepped a few packages (small promo prints, a bio, and a copy of my magazine article and cover) just in case. Well, I did meet one editor, and after a bit of back-and-forth, he's looking to use one of my older pieces for an upcoming article. As it's rather a niche-market publication, I don't have a bunch of work that fits their market, he didn't see much else that would fit their needs. Hence this newest piece: it's a 13X18" based upon a series of pics I took that same day. I'm titling it "The Nicest People" after Honda's "You meet the nicest people" ad campaign of the early 1960s (the period of these 3 bikes). JUST started on this this morning (transfer, adding linework, and finally scratching just a bit), so be gentle....I'm gonna dig this one though.

[Harry Seymour]

Mathew, This is going to be a great one and I really like the title and symbolism behind it Get scratching.

[ggart4u]

You are sure going to be busy... great start!

[snoball]

You sure like to work out the details on these guys Matthew! A glutton for punishment! I painted one once and I know they can be buggers!

[XQB]

Oh, Margaret, I LOVE the old BMWs! It looks terrific. I shot several of them at Mid Ohio, including a mid-30s R-27 I can't wait to tackle!
I figure if it isn't challenging me and teaching me something new, why bother? I do think this one may be my widest-appeal piece yet, since I started focusing on these things.
Thanks everyone for the encouragement! Back to work on it at 4am all week!

[PaintDog]

We're gonna dig this one too, Matthew!

Cool painting, Margaret!

[FoggyMountain]

Loving this one already! Can't wait to see you do your magic.

[RSchafe]

A good way to expand your portfolio and your market! Looking forward to seeing updates.

Rich

[XQB]

It's WAY too big for the scanner, but that works well enough as I'm basically working the board in thirds anyway...

Not as far along as I'd hoped to this point, but real life rudely intervened last week, and threatens to do so again this week. Not if I can help it!
Figure I'm going to do each bike before I move on to the next, left-to-right as I'm a southpaw. It's always difficult for me to do this, though; I get distracted to another spot on the ref and before I even realize it I've spent 2 hours on the opposite side of the board from where I planned.
Back to it 'till I have to get ready for "work".

[snoball]

Such a good start Matthew. You were meant to do machinery, you're really good at it.

[XQB]

Wow Margaret, you're QUICK! I turned away to post it on FB and there you were!
When I worked (on the periphery of) comic books, NOBODY wanted to do cars/bikes/settings: everyone just enjoyed doing the big muscular guys and buxom women and to heck with everything else. I even showed a portfolio piece in Chicago to an editor once and he commented that the Harley the characted was riding was too detailed; it distracted from the focus on the bad guy. Guess that should've been a clue, eh?

[snoball]

Most folks don't want to work on bikes because they don't know a lot about them, afraid of getting something wrong. When I painted the Beemer, I just tried to paint what I saw because I knew nothing about them either and was afraid someone who did would shoot it down. I don't know if you are getting it all right or not but what you are doing looks great.

[PatrickHedges]

I like the composition. This will be good I know!

[XQB]

Not much of an update...I got stuck at work for an extra 4 hours last night. Still, some progress made, and more coming for sure.

Most of the progress was made on the fuel tank and headlight, and I've just started picking out highlights on the engine and frame.

[Harry Seymour]

Sparkles indeed.