Tag Archives: Cafe Racers

It’s never too late to finish something.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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V-Bobber by ©JonTremlett 2014

While work on the “Catch Me” picture progresses and it moves slowly to its conclusion I thought I’d post a couple of other things in the meantime. For me it’s really important to have more than one work in progress at any one time, it helps to keep me inspired, assists in keeping my drawing hand active and my eye “in”, and most importantly of all, prevents me from getting bored.

So first up is this picture which some long term followers may recognise, it having made its first appearance on the blog about two years ago. Back then it was just a picture of a bloke on a bike, sat in the middle of an empty page, and since then it has sat in a drawer here waiting for me to finish it. Every now and again I’ve taken it out of the drawer, put some pencil lines in the background and promptly put it away again, unhappy with what I imagined would be a fitting background. I’d lost count of how many times this had happened. Here’s a link to that original post.

The other day though, something clicked, a penny dropped and I finally discovered what I wanted to do with it. Based on the idea that the guy riding the bike is going somewhere, I imagined him escaping the world he occupies during the working day, jumping on his bike and heading out somewhere better. It’s probably a context shared by many of us who wind up spending a great deal of our time in those slightly crumbling semi suburbs around the edges of cities, full of light industrial activity, crappy cafes and diners and run down buildings festooned with strange advertising hoardings. It puts a little back story behind the image and brings it to life a bit more. Why I hadn’t thought of any of this before escapes me. Creating this background reminded me that this is a great way to inject a bit of humour into a picture and include a level of detail that draws the eye to the image beyond the great big bike stuck in the middle of it. I’m so glad I did it this way and it has prompted a whole string of thinking about dealing with some other images I have failed to finish and are lying in a drawer waiting for their moment. I hope you like it too.

That’s more like it.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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Pencil layout by Jon Tremlett 2014 for Soulcraftcandy

As I mentioned in the previous post, the composition of the first picture for Mr. C needed further work resulting in a bit of a redraw. It’s funny how it works sometimes. In your mind you’ve got this image that you think is what you want. Then you draw it out and it’s a million miles away from what you are actually after. So after staring at it for a good while you redraw, thinking that this is going to be a bit of a marathon, and “pop” out comes what you were looking for in the first place. This is not the first time this has happened, so I don’t waste any energy thinking every first rendition will be the right one.

So what you see above is the tightened version made from the blue pen sketch. I use my small home built light box for doing this. It’s essentially a tracing exercise where all of the details are positioned where I want them and I sort out the final angle projections for the wheels and stuff. The hardest bit is getting the position of the figure right, and this will often involve several bits of paper as I try and find the right one. For example, the lower leg and foot in this picture was particularly problematic, for some reason I just couldn’t “see” it. I have a Japanese made posable figure here which I use in situations like this, he’s a very useful piece of kit.

Police car by Jon Tremlett 2014

I also had to do a fair amount of work on the chasing police car down in the lower right hand corner. The one in the main picture here is a kind of modern version based on something they might use right now but, it doesn’t sit well with the overall feel I’m looking for. Something more retro was called for as I want to create a notional connection with the original age of the bad boy Cafe Racer. Searching the web, as you do, turned up some fabulous old pics of what we would call here in the UK, Jam Sandwiches and Panda cars. Just like all modern societies we seem to relish the opportunity to give anything to do with law enforcement a nickname. So the force, “Plod” would drive “jam sandwiches”, essentially white cars with a dirty great red stripe down the side. These superseded the “Panda” cars which were oddly light blue with white doors and very slow. I digress. The other picture here today is my final choice for the police car. An early “Jam Sandwich” of the Triumph 2000 variety, suitably festooned with period accessories including the big illuminated box on the roof (a massive air brake), crappy roof mounted spots and a great big siren mounted in the middle of the bonnet to aid engine cooling. It takes me back to my youth tearing about the neighbourhood on my old Yamaha avoiding these characters.

From here there follows another light box session to transfer this onto Bristol Board ready for the final step which is the biro inking stage, which oddly I’m looking forward to a great deal as I haven’t done one of these for some time. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes, and thanks for dropping by today.

Going large, how blowing up images changes their character and impact.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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Vinyl banner print by Jon Tremlett for Soulcraftcandy.

Another project that has spent many a month in the pipeline is the continuation of an experiment I started last year, where I wanted to see what impact it would have if I blew up one of the drawings to something like life size. While I’m still very much trying to figure out a way of being able to draw at this scale, it seemed like a good idea to get something printed in order to be in the position to make some judgements about how to approach such a challenge in the future. Initially I’d enlisted the help of a good friend, an architect with a big format plotter, to run out a couple of A0 sized sheets with the sketch image of the above drawing on. Taped together, these looked pretty impressive though the paper wasn’t too keen on staying very flat for long. Follow this link to that particular post.

After some further investigation, and with one eye on the possibility that I could use such prints for other purposes, it became clear that the best thing to do was get something printed on vinyl as a kind of banner. So this is what you see above, hanging in my dining room. It’s a metre and a half square, roughly 60 inches across and high, and is a thing of beauty, even though I say so myself. Well, I would, wouldn’t I ?

Vinyl banner print detail by Jon Tremlett for Soulcraftcandy

The jump up to such a scale causes you to regard the image in a very different way. The first is that it challenges your perceptions in that one hardly ever sees a cartoon at this size, so one is confronted by a strangely proportioned interpretation of a man and his machine. Some things fit and others don’t. The other change is that the print doesn’t hold any of the information in it back. Every single mark, line and cross hatch is revealed in all its glory, and so what appears a very neat drawing at normal size takes on a looser and more sketchy feel. As the creator, this change is not unlike revealing ones inner secrets of technique and skill to the viewer. Letting them see every stroke of then pen, every guiding thought and inevitably, every mistake. All unexpectedly liberating to see everything laid bare in this fashion. The good thing is, though I may stand to be corrected by others, that the drawing doesn’t suffer for this jump up in size in my mind, it still looks like a drawing, just a very big one done with a very big pen.

I’ve resolved to have some more of these prints done, and it would be really interesting to see what happens to one or two of the colour drawings. To see how every small daub of paint is shown in minute detail. The main challenge will be choosing which one to reproduce. Some would suggest that a painting should never be enlarged beyond its original size but, we do this to photographs so why not something made by hand?

Before I go I’d just like to mention that although vinyl banner printing is a widely available service, it pays dividends to find a printer one can talk things through with before placing the order. So many companies offer a web based service and instant file upload facility, but it’s the ability to see what your final print will look like where many fall short. Luckily I found one who did, so I’ll be visiting them again. If you need to know who they are please contact me.