VanDomain.com

DocCyber · Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 316 Location: Washington State

Here is one corner of time and space in a paint shop mid 1970. Vans where all the rage and the paint shop was doing three custom paint jobs a day..I know i cant go back there and i know i cant produce pictures from there...but i can paint a picture thru technology..heres a small glimpse into how I did it and what other painters was doing at the time....These are computer generated but there all representations of jobs that did at one time exist...most of them......ill use the computer to rebuild those old images lost..and they can be repeated, im showing nothing but renderings..enjoy

here is a quickie.....I did this paint theme a lot when a yellow van came thru the line....i could do this in 3 hours which left 6 for a more complicated tape job.......so i loved when these came along.

it took 2 stencils and some cobb webb trick paint....lots of variations in this one...welcome to the Paint Factory.

DocCyber · Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 316 Location: Washington State

I wanted to post this here........i painted this at least once a week..and again another easy one.this was a 6 hour day.............the mural was all freehand except for the structures and they where pre cut in stencil board.....i had dozens of pre-cut shapes..........about 3 hours a side...you spent about 30 min making whatever you did look finished..on averga.

DocCyber · Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 316 Location: Washington State

here is another typical day at the paint shop...........because we where under a tight schedule all the time we had to do quick but effective paint.....our paint had to be one of the stronger selling points because it was paint that drew the buyer in off the streets.......back then seeing a crazy painted van on a car lot was major news in a lot of small towns back then......we relied on the ..wow ive never seen a painted van before comment.........so back at the factory we where always looking for quick eye popping ideas.

DocCyber · Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 316 Location: Washington State

here is a real easy day..........we did 3 of these at a time.......it was just tape and paper work most the day...but this was a good day for the painters....3 of these ment a 600 dollar day for me

DocCyber · Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 316 Location: Washington State

ok.......it wasnt always a great idea that made it to the canvas...but public demand...i did this design a lot..taking the graphic off the belly band and dropping it down to the lower panel....i wanted to show this style paint because at first the wild and loud stuff was flying off the car lots......as out of step as that paint theme is with todays standards and demands......in the beginning as a first generation van graphic using wild colors......this paint was........IN.......funny how times have changed..........these re-creations are bringing back some cool memories......I remember our factory was in an ol lace mill that had hot water boilers and a steam heating system..ancient equipment but built to last.all day long those cast iron pipes would be singing to ya...sometimes scaryin ya half ta death with some of the loud cracks those pipes made.........every now and again id be walking a single 2 inch gun fan fade down the side of the van making sure i walked the gun in a controled angle thaqt gave me a nice straight smooth fade edge when ...CRACK......whoa.......a little wobble in the nice panel length edge fade.....

DocCyber · Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 316 Location: Washington State

this design has dozens of variations

Ram4ever · Joined: 03 Oct 2007 Posts: 103 Location: Dundee, Michigan

Hi Cyber,

Is your van rockin' yet?

I'd like to point out that all the links to the sweet pictures you posted in this thread are broken! It's just not the same without them.

In one of this thread's posts you mentioned doing fades...

I wonder if you'd be willing to describe how you'd go about accomplishing a linear fade over a large area which would require multiple parallel passes of an airbrush or gun? For example, like the fade from green to black on the Yes "Close to the Edge" album. Is there a particular set of tricks of the trade to get the fade to be uniform and straight over it's entire width?

I just realized that the curved fades from light and dark blue, orange, and white all the way to black which I'm going to do on planet atmospheres are going to be a bit more entertaining than I first thought. I'm thinking if could get the process down to a science by practicing wide, straight fades on test panels I'd stand a better chance of success on the curved fades.

DocCyber · Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 316 Location: Washington State

ooooopps.........sorry ..had a server go down....... im fixing file names and broken links........plus ive been out of town for awhile, so i didnt expect this when i got back...............i just picked up another server and should be back up tomorrow.

Im getting better at Painter 11 so im re visiting a lot of the old commercial conversion van paint schemes................im just pulling as much out of the memory as i can and i gotta say these digital images are spot on except for the metalic pearls and candy effects...looks like i might be able to digitize the old shop and realy bring a sense of what it was like back in a 1st generation van custom paint shop...........

DocCyber · Joined: 14 Nov 2008 Posts: 316 Location: Washington State

Ram.. there is a lot of techniques and material knowledge you will need to pull off good fades.......it takes perfect gun tip control......the right atomization and paint to thinner and you need to build your fade thru layers....so color layering is what gives the smooth transition........walking a body line is another chapter.......you had to learned the surfers walk

Ram4ever · Joined: 03 Oct 2007 Posts: 103 Location: Dundee, Michigan

Hi Cyber,

So it sounds like semi-transparent colors built up in layers, rather than faded solids, are a healthy part of the equation for successful large scale linear fades? Do you think modulating the air pressure would help? I'm thinking that increasing the atomization might allow me a bit more leeway...

I'm not sure how to mix automotive paint pigments to make a semi-transparent... I'd probably end up with something which wouldn't cure.

I do have a whole bunch of semi-transparent air brush paint though, both Createx (ya, I know... but it was *really* cheap!) and HOK. I haven't tried spraying airbrush paint out of my 0.4 detail gun... maybe that would work if I set it to spray a fan.

Doggone cold weather has me pretty hemmed in for painting experiments, especially where volatile solvents are concerned. I'm about as close as I ever get to cabin fever. At least there's lots of thought experiments and mechanical bits to keep me busy!