new at pinstriping. yay or nay?

so i get bored in school. and after a few days my monthy issue of delux car kulture gets a little old. so i doodle.

what do you think. i have an antique little roll top desk im going to strip up.

 

Nay.


Try longer, smoother strokes.

You might be overcaffeinated.

 

Practice Practice Practice,,, looks good though,,, I've Doodled quite a bit myself, but never consistently enough to make any real progress.. There are TONS of awesome stripers on here,, any questions and I'm any one of them would be willing to give you advice.

 

YEAH!


I dont paint anything.. EVER.. so your already better than me

 

longer strokes, make everything a little more fluid

 

some people think that this could be easy. but it really isnt. iv been messing around with it for about a year. but not not every day. all the time. but this takes alot of skill, and i admire anyone that is good at it.

 

Been at it for about two months now. Made some practice panels out of 12x18 aluminum and practice about an hour every night.

 

I say nay...looks like it was done on a Spirograph.

Bryan

 

Nay. Practice. Study other stripers work, especially the old guys who made this artwork popular. I have a buddy who stripes and he could do anything you ask for. From say 50's-60's style pinsrtipes, 70's lowrider style up to more modern pinstripes and still manages to make it stand out as his own. I figure if you could do that you'll have it made. Larger customer base, ya know.

 

Some will say nay, cause of your style... that's your signature though. It will look even cooler when you actually start layin the paint, and when you have multiple colors. I like your style, it's not the way I've been doing but I think it has it's place. I'm new at it also, but I studied a lot of pinstriped images to see the flow and what to do with the line when and where it was at. I usually pull all the pinstripe images off the Friday art show just to look at to help me with the lines. do like I did and start striping some glass easy to clean off and start over!!

 

yeah thats what sawzall told me. to get a mirror, so i can scrap it off and do it again.

thanks for all your thoughts, and i do welcome the negative ones. lets me know what im doing wrong.

 

If you use glass, you can put some of your already done work underneath and stripe over it. Plus you don't have to see your own mug with the booger hangin the whole time!! haha

Razor blade it off....

 

I'd say nay, but then after reading chad I'd agree
you've got tribal pinstripes goin' on!
It's gotta look good to you. Keep your day job. and don't worry about MARKETING what makes you different from the world.

 

I'd practice a hell of a lot more before I put brush to an antique roll-top desk! "striping" with a pen/marker is no even close to striping with an actual Mack. That shit is HARD. Ask me how I know!

 

Id let you stripe my truck....... I say yay, go ahead and be different

 

i say yay, i like the one on the right myself

 

It dosen't have the "traditional" pin-stripe look to but I like what you got going. Neat looking style.

 

the first one got kind of cluttered in the middle, its good that you are practicing on regular notebook paper though. Maybe you will come up with some cool pieces of drawings that you will use again in the future so save those drawings. I also agree with the longer fluid strokes comments, give it a try. You will eventually get to the point where it looks simple and balanced and shows restraint. Kind of looks like you are making them a little busy right now but you will get there.

 

I'd second that opinion.
Save the roll top desk for later.

What you've shown is better than many people have ever done,
but using a brush properly is a big jump from there.

Practice on glass,mirrors are too distracting.
Get a Mack Series 10,and see what happens.

 

the people who say my first works told me to stop!But I didnt! I'm still not good enough to do someone elses car,YET! You definetley have the creativity,but Sambones right. pens and markers are not the same as one shot and a brush.paper aint the same as a car. just go to a "brush-bash" at one of the shows and watch and learn.Stripe anything that doesnt move.Stripe some stuff that does.When the other half falls asleep,stripe her too! old phone books make a great pallet for loading your brush. keep striping on everything and all your pinhead friends will stripe your coffin like they did ED "big Daddy"Roth's
R.R.

 

I can't pinstripe for shit first off. I think you got the idea but it resembles tribal alot which is no good to me. Like all others say, spread it out and you may have something. I wouldn't put that on the floorpan under the carpet but you have got the symmetry down, just not the lay out. Good luck man and keep it up!

 

Just about everyone has quit using phone books as pallets.
The paper is too pourous,and sucks the solvent out of the paint.
Plus they are too heavy and bulky.The only thing going for them is the price.

Most people are using glossy magazine,or catalog,pages.
There is a guy in Indiana that uses Victoria's Secret catalogs exclusively.A few use much heavier paper,cardboard,plastic,etc.

I've even tried using an old Photoshop CD as a pallet.

 

A little yay and a little nay.......I think they are a little too busy....especially with the tribal-ish design..makes my eyes hurt...simplify them a little....otherwise youre off to a good start...good luck....

 

Don't give up, it just takes time. Try buying some graph paper, makes it easier to match one side to the other. Another paper layout trick is to fold the paper in half, use the fold mark as a centerline, then you can draw one side, then fold it over an trace the other side. When I started, I would draw designs, studying pics I took at shows for some reference. Sometimes I would even draw the design in my ref pic outright, line for line, just to teach myself how they should flow. Then I would draw the entire design on my practice panel with a Stabillo and then lay my lines over that. After a while, I woulld then try drawing just a center line on my panel, then, with my drawing right there, copy the design freehand. By this time, I had a decent grasp on how to use the brush, but now I was working on my ability to keep things symetircal. One day, I found my self having a new idea in the middle of my work and wanting to ab lib, not just follow what I had on the paper. Thats when I knew I was ready to try striping without a pattern to follow. Plenty of failures followed that revelation, but there was also success.

As far as design goes, take a look at the pics I'm attaching. I'm by no means an authority on striping, nor is my way the only way, I'm just using this as an example. Try the teardrop as a starting point. You'll notice in the pics, that the center is a long teardrop. This is probably one of the all time best starting points for striping. Also notice that most of my lines are more vertical. On the yellow headlight pic, the lines don't start going horizontal until I begin to make the transition to the lines that follow the headlight ring. If I weren't building the design to flatten out on the bottom, as in the other pic, then there would be very few horizontal lines. This is part of the flow of the design. If the design is taller than it is wide, as my designs are here, then you want the majority of your lines to flow up and down, not out to the sides. Not that a few lines can't swing wide, just remember your flow. Also, you have to decide when to go in a new direction with your line and when to let it run parralel or nearly parrallel to other lines. Sure you don't want all your lines to run the same direction, otherwise you'd end up with a bunch of straight lines, but you don't want every line going in an entirely new direction either. Again on the headlight, notice how my blue lines near the middle come down, back up, down,then back up, creating a kinda fang look? Simple, yet space filling and creates flow. Now notice how these vertical archs match the shape of the green lines near the center, nearly parallel. More flow. But now the blue line swings into the middle in a 180 degree horizontal arch contecting to the identical point on the other side. Meanwhile, the green line reverses direction, swinging in slightly in then back to the outside, sliding down and turning into the line that follows the headlight ring. These changes in direction are essential to create visual interest. But even though they change direction, they're archs are very much in keeping with the archs of other lines in the piece, so they still feel like they belong and maintain that flow mojo. I hope some of this makes sense. I know it's confusing, and i'm not sure I've helped, but study as many designs as you can, then study your own. Ask yourself what works and what doesn't and why. There's structure in the chaos, you just have to pay attention to find it. Hang in there and keep it wet

 

I won't say yay or nay, it depends on what look your going after. I have a good book at home that goes step by step through the simple stuff through very complex, but the whole time it going through each step. Heck you could just lay a piece of glass over the page and trace it a few times till you memorize the strokes. PM me if you want the name of the book

 

Your a good artist, don't let the negativity sink in, keep practicing. You'll get it.

 

I think it's good in the sense that it's different, also. Fo sho practice, practice. I've tried a few times w/ a 00 MACK, no prior paper/pen. Just an old tailgate, hood & fender from the back of the shop. I was just telling the guys, today at the shop, that I'd like to set aside more time to practice, for myself. Looks good. Keep it up.

 

The tribal thing you got going looks good BUT, you won’t feed a family of ants for a day doing that, especially in this crowd. If you want to pinstripe and be good and successful, you HAVE to be versatile, meaning you have to be able to do a LOT of everything and do that pretty well; and being able to do it on the fly helps out a lot too.

Like some of the above posters said, study other stripers. Yeah you’ll need to develop your own style, but you’ll need to be able to replicate the styles from other eras when asked to. If you only learn to do this kool tribal thing you have and someone comes up and wants their ’40 Ford striped like it would have been when they had it back in ’62, you just lost out on a chance to stripe on a car that would look SOOOOO nice in YOUR photo album and would be SOOOOO fun to stripe. (Trust me; I had that happen to me. A guy had a ’40 Ford restored to the way it was back when he graduated high school in ’62 and want that era lines on it. Talk about fun. Incidentally, he was the shipping/receiving guy for Brookville at the time!).

As for pallets, I used to use JC Penney catalogs but they got to be too heavy. So then I switched off to old Street Rodder mags from the ‘80’s, you know the ones; the Easter Egg Monthly issues… Those work great and they’re REALLY lightweight because they’re so DAMN thin!

Oh and one more thing listen to Unkl Ian; he might be a bit on the odd side but he really knows his shit.

Vance

 

I used to doodle stripes on post-it notes all the time and thought I would never come up with a cool design but once I got a brush in my hand that all changed. I found that everything became a lot more smooth and the designs a lot cleaner to look at. Your symmetry is pretty good (It's a hard one to master). Buy yourself a brush and some paints and practice on glass. Take pictures of the designs you like then wipe it off and practice some more.

Good luck,


Chris

 

Try it with paint 1 shot works best start simple