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My first Jetski job was a bit of a step into the unknown. Because of all the stripping down and rebuilding required, this job took quite a bit longer to get through than anticipated but it is now completed and headed off to Spain with its owner Steve not long after I completed it in early 2007.

The design brief was to paint a union jack at the front of the machine and half way down merge it into a black and white chequered flag. The flags were to have folds and shading as if they were flapping in the wind.

After stripping everything off that would come off the surface of the fibreglass body was sanded down to get a completely matt finish. Whilst doing this I noticed some damage to the surface at the nose where it had obviously bumped into a harbour wall or something similar so the fibreglass repair kit came out to mend it. There were also some marks where I'd had to be a bit forceful to get some of the trim off on the sides, so that needed to be repaired in a similar way. The affected areas were primed and then basecoat black sprayed over to get the whole thing in a straight colour before I started applying the artwork

The first stage was to mask off the black areas of the chequered flag. This was the most laborious task and took some time to get completed, using 3M masking tape, a pencil, a scalpel and many packets of disposable blades. The black base was to provide the black of the checks but the rest of the panels needed to be painted white, both to provide the whit eof the union flag and the white checks, but also to provide a good base for the red. The blue will work on either a black or white base but red works better with a white base or lots more coats are needed.

After the white was applied, the red areas of the Union Flag were masked off and sprayed, followed by the blue. Then time was taken to make sure there weren't any bits of overspray or untidy lines by touching them up with the airbrush or mini-jet.

Now that the main design was completed it was time to add several coats of clear so I could flat them down and get rid of any raised edges. I did this before airbrushing the shading and highlights on because if I did the airbrushing first and then clearcoated, any sanding down I did afterwards could easily break through and damage the airbrushing where the edges were raised.

All the shading and highlights were added with the airbrush. This was the quickest part of the job as there was no masking required apart from the odd bit of card to get a sharper shading. This part of the job is the most satisfying though as it only takes a few minutes to really bring the artwork to life - giving it depth and texture in just a few airbrush passes.

Finally, several more coats of clear were applied before wet-sanding it all and giving it a good polish. The jetski was put back together before Steve came to collect it and whisk it off to its new home in the sun.

The gold seats and trim don't quite match the paint scheme of the jet ski now but Steve was planning to get that sorted before it left the country.

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