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This is the second time I've painted Brian Shaw's trike. The first incarnation was the 'Dragon Trike' which was one of my earliest large priojects several years ago. Whilst the Dragon won quite a few prizes at rallies all over the UK, my skills, techniques and the materials I use have improved hugely since then, so when the trike came back in for a make-over, I knew that the new paint scheme would blow the 'Dragon' into the weeds.

All the panels were stripped, prepped, primed, basecoated in a coarse House of Kolor silver before being sanded down ready for me to start airbrushing.

Next, using a combination of masks and freehand, I airbrushed all the detail onto the silver in black. This was the lengthiest part of the job and took squite a few full days of intense concentration as the designwork crept across the panels.

Once this has been done, the final stage was to cover all of the panels in a gorgeous House of Kolor Cobalt Blue candy - a translucent blue through which the course silver comes through with a fanastic glistening effect in the sunshine.

Several coats of clear were then applied, sanded and polished before Brian picked all the panels up and rebuilt the trike. It's now up and running and will be doing the full tour of rallies during 2009. I'm very pleased with how this job came together. The materials are spot on, the Cobalt Blue is stunning and the artwork seemed to flow naturally out of my airbrush. I painted a couple of matching crash helmets to accompany the trike and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it fares during the 2009 biking season.

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