Rewards for Harley Painting

So, I finally finished. My brother came back from Afghanistan and came down to pick up the last piece for his bike, the rear fender. I simplified the metal part because I did more detail on the larger skull on the back. It's a pretty wide surface, so I decided to do one, large skull instead of 4 smaller ones like I had planned before. 

I changed the way I painted this piece also. Instead of doing a lot of masks, I mostly freehanded this piece.  The other two pieces showed a little bit of cutting, where I had used the xacto knife to cut the masks. It also gave the pieces a really hard edged look. Freehanding the whole thing gave the edges a little softer feel, and it wasn't so stressful. I wasn't worried about the masks and it sped the whole process up. 

I had crossed my fingers that the seat wasn't going to cover any of the skull. I searched the internet for pics of a V-Rod Muscle. NONE of them had a friggin luggage rack on the back. BUT, my brother's does. See that fourth while in the center, right above the skull's forehead? Yeah, a little metal rack attached right there. Good thing is, it's raised and you can see through the rack, so it worked pretty well. You can still see the entire skull. 

I saw the finished pieces, on the bike. My brother, impatient as he is, brought the whole bike down in the back of his truck. They look GOOD with a final clear coat on them. Makes it look professional, doesn't even look like my work anymore. He's a little anxious to get this piece coated and put together. When he does, I'm using it as an excuse to go to Vegas to take pics of the real thing. 

As payment, I made a deal. 100$ for the supplies, which didn't really cover everything, and two guns that little bro has vultured from my dad. The .357 Magnum was technically already mine. It was a birthday present a long time ago, but dad figured since I wasn't using it he would give it to my brother. It's a hog. As soon as I get a cleaning kit, I'm gonna take it out and shoot it. The other gun is a High Standard Supermatic Trophy. These things are golden. Super accurate, made for competition target shooting, older ones like this are hard to find and expensive to buy. This is one of a pair. My hope is that somewhere down the line, I'll pick up the other one to make the set. 

So, a pretty good deal all around. My brother got a kick ass custom paint job, and basically paid 100$ for it, since the guns were given to him. I got two sweet guns out of the deal and a little walking around money. Plus I can walk into any biker bar now and feel like I'm one of the guys.