Good day for Airbrushing.

After a few wonderful days of sunshine, the Carolinas is back to its regular schedule of rain and cloudy days. I'm sitting here, laptop perched on my lap, sipping a cup of tea on this damp cold day.
Last night was the last night of Sons of Anarchy until next season. We went all out, ordering pizza and wings. Yes that is all out around here. Its been turkey city for the past week. I can't believe the way they ended. Brutal cool and totally unexpected. Jax freaking on the dock as the boat pulls away and Gema on the lamb with Unser. Oh and it was brutal cool how that box truck pulled up to block the Mayans and it said, "Unser Moving and Storage."
The FXRG gear article and photos are safely in the capable hands of Chris Callen and on the way to the colorful pages of Cycle Source. We just got the new issue of Cycle Source and as usual, it kicks ass with wicked bikes features but the issue is an end of the year wrap up with their Top 10 of 2009, as in Top Builder, Top Bike, along that line. My vote for Woman of Year helped the lady I picked, win! Chris has built up an amazing magazine.

In fact there are only 2 magazines that come to the Chopper Farm and get read cover to cover. Garage magazine is one and that brutal cool mag deserves its one blog entry. But Cycle Source is the other. Chris has such a passion for what he does and it truly shows in the end result. Check out Chris and the gang at http://www.cyclesource.com

Late last night, I watched the season finale of Sons of Anarchy. It was an hour and half long and FX fit in 45 minutes of commercials. So I played on the computer during them and made banners. One for my photography work.

One for my buddy Kris.

One for my awesome friend Athena.

And one for me.

So today its back to painting fire. Lots of work in the shop and come very cool projects coming up. New stencils and shields from Artool arrived this week. And Mike Lavallee's Tru Fire 2 Shields will be getting a workout today. I can't wait to try them. Very soon there will be a new section of the Crazy Horse website that will be showing how tos as we go through projects. I'll also be doing a series of How tos for publication. More on that later.

Monday

It wasn't a bad Monday. It was gray and cloudy. rain clouds threatened but I took the chopper out for a ride. I ride the sporty most of time as it has saddlebags and I can carry groceries or whatever I need to. I'll ride the sporty in the rain. But I fuss over the chopper and try not ride it in bad weather. Besides, cleaning spokes is not my idea of fun.

So with the chopper not getting ridden much, I tend to forget just how fun that bike is. I only spend the morning riding, and then came back to the studio to work. And just as I stepped on the porch, the first rain drops fell.

It was an interesting afternoon. Talked to Chris Callen of Cycle Source and bike builder Kris Krome. Chris C has some pretty neat stuff coming up in Cycle Source. His Indian Larry issue should be incredible. I can't wait to see it. They've been working pretty hard on it. I finished up my first round testing of HD's FXRG gear. I'll be writing up my thoughts on it and sending it into the magazine. Round two starts the next time I get on a bike. Which lately has been everyday.

Kris Krome is hard at work on the Tony Schumacher bike. I did a wicked photo shoot of him and his AMD bike while I was in Vegas. Kris is updating his website and using some of my pictures. Kris is a funny guy and I love talking to him. He always make me smile.
The great thing about the past week, is I have been riding so much. My friend Genevieve Schmitt of WomenRidersNow.com wrote a post on her website about how we should always find time or a way to work riding into our days, as it is the best stress reliever there is. I agree. We tend to get so busy in our lives, and have to rush here and there. But lately I have been using the sporty for most of that "here and there" stuff. Yesterday we did a short ride just over the South Carolina line, not even an hour of riding, just as the sun was setting. But it was a great way to end the weekend.

Scenes from Friday

It did not get above 50 degrees yesterday. But we went riding. I'm getting ready to leave to ride to town. I need to get some holiday lights, cat food and cookies. I'll be riding the sportster. Its 30 degrees outside.

And in the shop today

I like painting real fire. I don't to get to paint nearly enough of it. The job I am working on now is all real fire with wicked tomented faces in the flames. What is even cooler, is that I got to improve my flame style over the last few months. So it will be very interesting to see just how this looks after I am done.

And seeing all that custom paint in Vegas was very inspiring. I think this HD softail will be the best real fire I have ever done on a bike.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day yesterday. Lots of great food and we ate alot but did not overeat. Hopefully my friend Lindsey and her boyfriend Zack will be coming over for lunch or dinner today. There's lots of food here and we need help eating it.

Its a cold morning here in Waxhaw. It went down to 30 last night. This is significant as I will be testing out my new Harley Davidson FXRG riding gear today. Ihave to go into town to the Post Office and maybe take a ride to a friend's house. I'm testing the gear for Cycle Source Magazine. We're going to see just how good HD's line of heavy duty riding gear is. Is it all its cracked up to be? I get cold very easy on the bike. I'm always freezing. So I'm a great person to test out this gear that is designed for all kinds of weather, hot and cold. This will be a series of articles in Cycle Source over the winter, seeing how the gear works for me. I'll be riding all winter long, in all kinds of weather. Whereever I go, whatever I do, if I can do whatever chore I need to do and fit whatever on my sportster, I'll be riding and my truck will be parked. Rain, cold, sun. I've got about 150 miles on the gear so far, so I'm looking forward to putting on some more miles today.

I'll be turning in my first article next week.

From Zero to Drizzle

What's happening here at Crazy Horse this week?

First question - how the hell did it get to be "The Holiday Season" again so frickin soon? I mean, I love this time of year. I love the lights, the shopping, the food. I do not love how big my ass get sfrom the food. But whole holiday thing just comes faster and faster each year. Kind of makes it harder to enjoy. Maybe we should just do this whole thing every two years. But then the retailers would have fits.

The holiday thing comes up as this is a short work week for most everyone. But for the selfemployed? Here at the Compound will we be taking Thursday off and that's it. We'll be working this weekend. Our project this week is a real fire HD softail. This thing is going to be pretty evil. Check back next week for some pictures.

Its a drizzlely gray day here in the Carolinas. Which means its a great day for airbrushing. I'll be tucked away in our warm shop happily airbrushing away.

The teaser photo today is a from a photo shoot I did of a Zero Engineering bike out in Las Vegas. More news on that next month.

Ok, back to work.

SEMA Swag

On Monday our boxes from Vegas arrived. One of the great things about going to trade shows is seeing just how much swag (freebees) you can pick up there. Now you don't want to get all piggy about it. How many keychains do you really need anyway? But usually at each show there is the choice swag such as seen in this picture. It would be hard to pick which piece of swag was the optimum at SEMA this year.

One of the coolest things was the chrome skull keychain that Scooo products was giving out. What does Scoo make? I have no idea, I just knew I wanted one of those killer skulls to hang in the shop.

Another choice swag was the chrome SATA Spraygun keychain. It looks so real. Very detailed. The choice thing to have if you re a custom painter or play one on tv. SATA also gave out very useful ice scrapers.

The hardest to get swag was actually the invite to the Coast Airbrush party. It was a super wicked Iwata airbrush keychain. It looked just like an actual Iwata airbrush. There were only 100 of those.

Then there's useful swag like the Grip Twists that the Grip Twist company contributed to the SBN Speed Networking Breakfast goodie bags. They are like these super heavy duty flexible twist ties.

Ebay Motors gave out useful swag. Red shop rags and funnels. Can't have too many of those.

One of my favorite swag items was the purple magnetic super duty clip from Mystik Lubricants. There are never enough clips for clipping chip bags closed. Lincoln Welders gave out these cool clippy magnets, I got a few of those.
Artool gave out this killer sweet stencil shield. Now that will come in very handy in our shop.

House of Kolor's best swag was their scarab logo pin.

And sure there all were all kinds of pens and markers that companies gave out. In fact we ended up with so much swag that we shipped it home as it would have made our bags weigh too much.

When we unpacked the 2 boxes, the swag score filled the kitchen table. Lifetime supply of pens, but not nearly enough super duty magnetic chip clips.

Pictures from SEMA

The House of Kolor booth at SEMA. They had artists airbrush all kinds of items this year. There were the water coolers, trash cans, giant fishing lures, pinball machine. You could actually play pinball at the booth. In fact, the House of Kolor booth was probably the one of the most interesting booths at SEMA. It was definitely sensory overload. There were artists airbrushing, pinstriping, it was amazing. There was a charity silent auction, foot massage machines for tired SEMA feet. Then of course there were all the new HOK products, like their new Low VOC Shimron2. People could spray a test panel of the this new product. There were the new pearl colors. Famous artists and car builders like John Dagostino had autograph sessions there. Plus what was very cool were all the painters and builders who came by and hung out. Gene Winfield spent alot of time in the booth. Darryl Starbird was there. House of Kolor even had their first ever Induction for the House of Kolor Hall of Fame. It was a place that many people came back by every day.

Here's a teaser shot of Kris Krome's AMD winner. The full article will be appearing in Cycle Source.

On location at Mondo's shop, Denver's Choppers. Mondo was letting us us his shop to shoot the bike. Mondo has come out with this new wicked cool powdercoating. He can do nearly any color or effect including this very cool black chrome. Check out Denver's for more info.

Shooting Joe Gregory's wicked '66 Impala SS up at Red Rocks outside of Las Vegas. We had to get up at 5am to be there for sunrise shooting. More pictures on my website.

I even got to drive the Impala to the shoot. I was nervous driving this car, I went slow as hell and everyone was passing me.

Airbrushing at the SATA Spray Equipment booth.

Jon Kosmoski inducts Gene Winfield into the House of Kolor Hall of Fame.

David and I with super incredible airbrush artist AD Cook and pinstriping legend, Gary Jensen. AD is based in Vegas and you can see his art at http://www.adcook.com/.

Our friend Mitch from Jus Cus Custom came down from Canada to show off his wild spray gun tattoo. I'm so jealous. Maybe I should get one.

Criag Fraser airbrushed a panel of the Lucky 7 airplane bike we painted. HOK had artists doing panels and those panels will available on the HOK website. People can go and bid on them and the proceeds will go to the Kyle Petty Victory Junction Gang Camp.

Craig airbrushing the airplane bike.

There weren't that many prototype dream cars at SEMA this year. This caddy was one of the few.

These guys came down from Montana to show off their brutal John Deer powered rat rod. take a close look, this thing start with the crank you see on the side of it.

Jack Giachino airbrushed and striped at the SATA Spray Equipment booth. SATA debuted their new spray gun, the Foose gun, at the show. Chip displayed a truck at the booth and people lined up all over the place to get his autograph. of course I did not get a picture of Chip or his truck. SEMA was one big blur for me as I had to so much to do while I was there. Not much playtime.

Cool painted transmission.

Fraser's Clipboard of Doom. This dude is so super organized and ran the artist end of the House of Kolor booth. He kept right on top of things, and it all ran like clockwork.

David and Mitch. Mitch is not high, he just kept blinking when I would take a picture. Notice the black banner in the background that says SCOO?

They were giving out these super cool chrome skull keychains, and unlike other booths than never bring enough cool giveaways, they had plenty. David and I searched all week for the Scooo booth and could not find it until Friday when I took this picture and saw the banner in the background.

Mike Lavallee's unreal fridge. Mile had a few wonderful things displayed at the HOK booth. Mike is just way too talented. He makes airbrushing look easy.

Gary Jensen with his panel that I did not win.

Me with the Lucky 7 bike. I need to get cooler shop shirts. The polo thing just ain't doing it for me.

Very sweet bobber at SEMA.

Kris at the Heavy Metal booth with his AMD winning triumph.

HOK pinstriped panel.

Probably the coolest truck parked in front of the convention center.

Vegas has a serious hot rod scene. This merc ( I think its a Merc) was part of a weekly hot rod gathering as my friend Robert's restaurant.