I thought I would tell you this time about one of three new digital images I worked on over the last couple of months. Ever since making the Little Queenie image a couple of years ago I had toyed with the idea of drawing a male counterpart, and to otherwise add to and expand on my digital portfolio a little, probably with other motorcycle pieces. Christmas cards aside I had to wait until other projects were finished before I could think of clearing my decks enough toward on them, and then just as I was getting ready to get started I was contacted by the organisers of the Kickback motorcycle show in Chelsea, London asking if I could exhibit some prints at the forthcoming December show - so not only a time slot to do some work in but also a good kick in the side to get on with it!
First new image was always going to be that Little Queen follow-up, and he was always going to be, in my mind, riding an old British café racer. Unlike Little Queen, who was all about attitude, the bike was to be a big part of this picture, and after a few doodles to decide on composition I eventually made this ink sketch using sharpies.
Scanning it into the computer and tweaking the image to a solid black on white,I was then able to start adding tone and colour to depict mood. Night time seemed to be the right time for my leather clad speed freak to be barrelling along the roads on his BSA A10 Golden Flash, and so the stark black and white line drawing began to sink into nocturnal hues.
As I worked on it I wanted to add just a little context to the background without having or wanting to confuse the image with too much detail (I did try out street lights and road signs and stuff like that in doodles, but was never happy with any of the ideas). And then the dark tones I was using, plus the fact that right outside my studio window the leaves were falling from the trees as autumn progressed, I figured a cold autumn night was the perfect setting for a very British scene....maybe adding rain would have completed the picture and I did contemplate that too...but no, a few leaves would be good, and here was the way I suggested them on the colour rough
with the way it was looking I went back to my original line drawing and made a cleaner version of it, and scanned that in and tweaked it in photoshop - this is a detail of that.
And so all that remained was to go through the colouring process again, a little more thoroughly this time, and this was the end result.
The Chelsea Kickback show is at Stamford Bridge on the 12th and 13th of December 2015. I will have four large prints at the show - 'Little Queenie' 'Café Racer' and two more, and will post information about the other two prints here before then :-)
