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It's been a while since I posted anything in the portfolio pages here- just busy I guess, or just plainer work, but here's a selection of basic to better stuff we've tackled over the last little while...
The 1910 Buick I mentioned last week is completed. The owner's comment was 'very tasteful-better than I expected- ornate where it can take it, to add class, and sombre where it needed it'. He's headed off to Perth (about 5 days drive west) in April for a national 1 & 2 cylinder engine car rally.
and I did a short movie of me striping a fine line on a spring, here HERE
I striped it in the theme/style or thought-processes of an old mentor I had years ago who did his trade as a coachpainter in the teens of the 1900s.
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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This was a sulky (two passenger horse-drawn vehicle), striped exactly as per the original style- the painter then really went busily with it... (And Army Dave O'Hanlon knew it before it was stripped & repainted)
[ February 16, 2010, 08:01 PM: Message edited by: Ian Stewart-Koster ]
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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This one was a before-and-after: Before... After...(except I'd not yet done the panels)
It's two layers of alupanel (like dibond) with the front being blue, and a white top backing panel behind the negative text/address, and panels stuck on the front as well. That makes it easy to apply & trim a digital print in situ.
A bit of 3D wholseale routing for a local signwriter for a school sign he was doing: ( I rejigged the file from the original vectors he gave me, and put a curve into the whole shield, so it's 1 1/4" thick in the centre, and 1/4" at the edges.) The shield's 2 ft square
The ribbon's just over 6 ft long:
[ February 16, 2010, 06:13 PM: Message edited by: Ian Stewart-Koster ]
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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A new sign for the back corner of our place- from an old 7 ft very-weathered slab of timber:
(I'll have to go & get a pic now that it's bolted to the strainer posts & pained all brown & white)
Here's a lithophane done as a wedding present for a friend :
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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This one was designed to be able to be hung over a towel rail, and the name is then visible on the top, which is why it's below centre:
A scroll painted for a story I wrote in an aussie sign magazine a few months ago:
This ski boat lettering was all cast vinyl- black underneath everything as an outline, white over that, and masking vinyl put on that so the white had an outline- then horizon colours airbrushed in a waterbased vinyl paint (Tautflex-air)
This was one of those 'competitions' (compromises) between what I didn't want to have to put on it, and that the so-called graphic designer demanded we have on the billboard- it's 8 x 7 ft- all enamel- no vinyl:
And Andrew, our eldest son touching up screw-heads:
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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These were nine 4ft square honour boards we did- not long before we got the router. I made a template/guide to shape the bottom edge, and made a screen for the council logo & printed it with a metallic bronze gold in varnish.
And a one of few room plaques- on dibond, with a faux tortoise-shell background, and gilded lettering, outlined in brown- 18" long
Not signs, but I found these graining combs at a market recently- $5 the lot:
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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Finally, we retyred these drover's waggon front wheels, as the tyres were so loose they would have fallen off if used:
The fire to heat them up-they were welded up to be about 3/8" smaller in circumference than the wheel's felloes, so need heating to expand them to get them over.
The un-tyred wheels
Cooling the tyre after it's fitted over & it shrinks:
Finished- just need painting now...
That's about it for now- some average & some nicer stuff, some machine stuff & some hand work-a bit of everything!
[ February 16, 2010, 07:11 PM: Message edited by: Ian Stewart-Koster ]
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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-------------------- Charles Borges de Oliveira Borges Lettering & Design Snohomish WA Posts: 352 | From: Snohomish WA | Registered: Mar 2003
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-------------------- Len Mort Signmaker1.com 11 Juniper Drive Millbury, MA 508-865-2382 "A Good Business Sign, is A Sign of Good Business"(1957) Posts: 811 | From: Millbury, Ma | Registered: Dec 2006
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posted
I love the rough cut plank with the horse head this is something I would like to try details please. I live in a farming community and farm my self 1500 acres this type of sign would sell itself is it old cedar and hand carved ? or blasted ? looks awsome
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Thanks for the compliments, folks. Maurice, I wish it was cedar! It's tallow wood - a very hard eucalypt, and was 7 ft long, and it weighed about 50 kg.
I used the cnc router to rout the letters and to carve the horse's head. I didn't expect it to be overly neat due the the varying top surface, because of its age, and chipping. The letters are about an inch deep- the router just refused to accept that the timber was 5" thick and it behaved as if it was 4" thick, so went deeper than I'd hoped/planned. There must be some setting in the driver file where you can tell it the maximum Z depth limit. I know X & Y are variable & I've changed them, but I didn't expect Z to trip me like it did.
We have done a lot of freehand-routed stuff like that over the years- (usually 10-12mm deep)- the problem really is in getting s decent slab of timber to begin with. I took a pic of it this afternoon- mounted in place, so I'll upload that later.
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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LOVE that redo on the Margaret street sign bit improvement
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Ian, the car turned out great! As did everything else. I love the bold and deceptively "simple" look of the striping on the Buick. Very graceful. It is really nice to be able to see such a large selection of your work. Thanks for showing it to us. Love....Jill
Posts: 8834 | From: Butler, PA, USA | Registered: Jan 2001
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Thanks, Bruce- big difference! The old sign was 8 x 4, with posts outside that. I took advantage of the foldability of dibond/alupanel, and vee-grooved the back, and used a 10 x 5 ft sheet, to give us capacity for the top shape, and also tidy ends & back folded around.
Jill, there was much more time spent on that little car than a stopwatch would ever record! The owner spent a bit of time telling me what he was not fussed by- but he didn't really know what he wanted at the time, and he'd been told to 'just trust me' which was nice, and really helps.
The hard part is how out-of-practise you get, and you forget how to squeeze into all those tight spots- sometimes the left side of some area is OK, but the right is darned-near impossible to do, when fitting between chassis & mudguards etc, unless you start to get a bit ambidexterous for the occasion & area.
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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Thanks, Bob. George, the old bloke I knew in the 80s & 90s used to do his buggies & waggonettes, and a few pre 1911 cars like that on the undercarriage parts.
The spring paintwork is a fairly universal style about Qld & the eastern states- I've seen many old vehicles with remnants of original paint, done by scores of different painters, where the concave parts, with the long flat surfaces are striped in either of three ways: 1. the pattern is run down the length, and stopped abruptly about 3/4" short of each end, 2. the pattern is run right through, up & over bolt heads, and around the spring scroll ends & stppped underneath, 3. the pattern is stopped further short, and ended with cross-lines, making each end into a Tee, like I did.
The first two are more common when you have a broad line and distance fine lines, rather than a broad line & edged fine lines.
Then there's the spring other surface where you have all the rounded ends of the leaves- 2 options are common: 1. what I did, running the edged broad-line style around the edge, tspering off 1/2" before the next leaf, 2. running the design down the centre, over every junction-this is tedious, less common, and if done, it goes with no 1 or 2 above, seldom with edged lining.
I omitted the other common aspect which is striping the outer edges of the lowest & second lowest leaf of the bottom set of springs.
The black tapering dart, edged with fine lines always looks neat- used on the spoke sides, and on any tapering body parts.
The axle treatment: I have seen close variations on this theme on many occasions from about three different painters in the trade, back in the days when they were doing it as a daily job pre 1920. As for why it was done like that, I can't say decidedly, but after you get tuned in and used to seeing it, and doing it that way, it becomes 'normal' in your mind, and when it's missing, it tends to make the painter look as if they'd been a bit lazy in skimping over that part!
Another thought process which may help describe it all is that on the best painted parts- the body- which was painted to a good finish- the lines are very plain- just enough to accentuate the style or shape of the outlines of the panels-quite sombre really. On the undercarriage, which unfortunately looked like it had been painted with a worn straw broom, and where the paintwork was pretty rough, the lining was reasonably intricate.
What it does, is that it makes lookers focus on the lines underneath in the chassis or undercarriage, and their attention if taken away from the cruddy paint job beneath those lines.
The larger areas of black in the lines underneath also takes a lot of the starkness out of, or breaks down what were formerly just large areas of red.
It also adds harmony, bringing the black body colour down underneath, and also makes spilled black grease or oil a bit less obvious!
If the underneath had been painted to a much better finish, I cpould have & would have done even more- and it would still have looked appropriate, and would not have taken any longer to do, and the better finished areas are easier to stripe. It's the rough bits that slow you up.
Hope that helps explain what I was thinking- it was once all pretty standard stuff in these parts downunder. I guess North American styles would be a bit different again...
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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-------------------- Sam Staffan Mackinaw Art & Sign 721 S. Nokomis St. Mackinaw City, MI dstaffan@sbcglobal.net Posts: 1694 | From: Mackinaw City, MI | Registered: Mar 2004
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Maurice, here's how the wooden sign looks, in situ:
This pic is fairly side-on, to get some of the horses in the pic-
and front-on-
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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I just found the original photos of the completed sulky, pictured above:
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"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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