Click on the thumbnails to enlarge

When I set up the business in 2004 this was one of the first major jobs that came in. Keith and Kath from Halifax already had a metallic blue base colour lined up for their Kawasaki VN1500. To go over the top they wanted artwork incorporating wolves for the petrol tank and sidepanels. The large howling wolf on the petrol tank is taken from a large poster on Keith and Kath's front room wall. For the rest of the scheme I searched the Internet for photos of wolves to work from for the five stood on the snow and the wolves on the side panels. The background scene on the petrol tank was made up from scratch. The main wolf was entirely airbrushed freehand whilst the others were rendered with fine paint brushes. To finish the job off, metal flake was dropped into the Dupont lacquer which really works well as it gives an icy glisten to the snowy scenes. You can't really see the effect on the photos here but you can see specks here and there - that's not dust in the lens, just the flake reflecting back.

Because Keith and Kath were local to my workshop which was in Halifax at that time, as well as being friends, whenever I needed an example of work to show potential customers, they were always on call to either whip the petrol tank off so I could take it to where I was going, or bring the bike down in its entirety to display at local bike shows.

Thanks to both of them for their help and support whilst I was getting myself going. They are now resident in Ireland and the bike went with them when they moved. Luckily when they went I had amassed a lot more work to use for demos so I wasn't so reliant on their bike any more, but it was very much appreciated and really helped to launch the business.

The bike was also used in a photo session involving my lovely other half, Julie. I've Photoshopped one of the resulting photos and included it above.

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