Painting a YZR500

[adlabs6]

Or at least I'm going to try! What is a YZR500? It's a 500cc racing bike by Yamaha. Here is a link or two on the machine:

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And pics of the Tamiya model, which I'm using for a perspective reference while I sketch.
http://www.acshonda.com/yzr500833.htm

So my opening work on this will be with pencil and paper. Nothing special, just copier paper and an ordinary pencil. First attempt to establish my idea scanned:


It's got some perspective issues, this is freehand and my wheels are way off. So I cut some paper ovals to guide on my second attempt. For this second shot I also started at the front tire and worked backwards through the bike, to ensure that everything is in reasonable proportion.


It's better. I can make it work from here. Next I'll use another sheet of paper to draw a driver on, probably using my lightbox to sketch him in place on the second drawing above. Then I'll cut him out and test fit him on the second drawing to see if I like it.

[BLOWHARD]

COOL! Very nice to see this stage by stage

[adlabs6]

Thanks Blowhard. Another small step as of last night. I laid the drawing of the bike on my lightbox, and then another sheet over that. On the top sheet I drew the driver so he fit directly over the bike. That allows me to have the bike with and without the driver, and no messing up my previous art.

So in Photoshop here is the scan of the driver, cut out and super imposed on the bike. I did some work to make his helmet clip behind the windshield, which of course the paper doesn't do.

I'm debating from here where I want to go with this.

[adlabs6]

Been too busy and tired to work on this today. But I did get to re-scan my drawing at 300 dpi as a guide for my painting in GIMP.

[Kamikuza]

Neat! Looking forward to it :yes: real men ride NSR500's though :laugh:

[adlabs6]

For whatever strange reason, I opened GIMP and actually worked on this project today.

I felt the upper portion of the bike was too large vertically, so I made a selection and scaled it down a bit. Also, the body work around the seat was too steeply angled, so I rotated that area, and re-drew the lower corner back there as well. I like the result. I had the drawing of the driver cut out and scanned a long while ago, he is now dropped into position in the layered file.

Also I did some work on the front tire and wheel.

[gamary]

Nice! I'll be waiting for more!

[adlabs6]

More brushing in the smaller details, brake discs, and the start of a rear tire/wheel.

[Jesters-Ink]

Are you doing this on your PC?

[adlabs6]

The penciling was done on copy paper, rider and bike separately. Scanned the drawings and from there I'm over painting the drawing in GIMP. I'm not using any perspective tools, just an occasional selection mask, and looking at my reference Tamiya model.

I had considered turning this into a base for a marker drawing, I've got some cool gray Copics. I also have some black and white Liquitex acrylics, but I didn't feel like putting that all together.