Ultimate comp#1 Tribute to New York City Fire Fighters!

Joined: Jun 26, 2006 Posts: 156 Status: **Offline**

A New York city fire fighter asked me to paint a 9-11 tribute body for him. Here is the step by step process of painting it. This picture shows the uncut body with decals. I first trimmed the body and applied the window masks.

All of these pictures are taken extremely up close so you can see the detail. They are about 5 times larger than the actual image! What may appear to be large clunky brush strokes are actually very small delicate!
On one side I’ll be painting a fireman walking thru the smoke and dust at the ruins. Here I’ve started by painting some rubble in the foreground. This is painted in darker colors to bring it forward as I’ll be trying to create an illusion of space or depth. I’ve done this by applying some black and adding water to get it to flow about in an abstract pattern. Then I’ve added some solid grey to fill in some of the areas. I’ve painted in a few pipes etc.

In this picture I’ve sprayed white, misted it, keeping it transparent as I’m creating the smoke .

Now I’ve sprayed fastint, which is a window tinting color that is a dark transparent charcoal color to give the space that dark, dusty feel.

I’ve gone back again with a misting of white, creating more space and depth.

Here’s I’ve painted a fireman and more rubble coming thru the smoke. These are painted with bright colors but because there are behind 3 layers of transparent white and grey they appear to be soft and dull .

In these pictures, I’ve backed some of the area with black to give it some life. I’ve sprayed on more white however I don’t like the secondary rubble and am scratching away with a tooth pick to break up the transition of the rubble. I’ve taped a blue arrow pointing to the area I don’t like. The dark speck or scratches is what I’ve just removed. This last picture shows the subtle difference in the secondary rubble

Now I’m putting in the third layer of rubble, backing it with black and adding more dust/smoke with white and window tint. It’s finally coming together.

Here is the logo I’m putting on the hood and how to reverse the image before sending it to the vinyl cutter. The fire station is local 1394.

I’m NOT putting in all the painting steps as this tutorial would go on forever! Here are the basic pictures. This is the other side, showing firemen and rescue personnel carrying out a victim. First picture shows the initial image painted then ½ backed to show how to back it. The final image shows the addition of more smoke and dust.

These pictures show the roof of the truck. The first picture shows the images painted from the inside. Note the flag going backwards (Everything is painted in reverse to it looks normal from the outside). The second picture is a close up of the fireman, I don’t like it as it looks like he has a black eye, so I remove the dark color and put in a more toned down color. Also note I’ve put the unit number on the helmet of the fire fighter. The last picture shows a detail of the statue of liberty.

Here is the image I’ve painted on the truck bed and you can see the truck starting to come together.

Now I’m going to paint the main body. I want it to be a charcoal sparkle fading into black at the front and rear of the truck. To create the sparkle charcoal, I am misting on a transparent layer of Fascolor Satin Silver, then I spray the entire truck with black.

Now I’m going to paint the front hood logo. Here I’ve removed everything that will be black and sprayed it. Note there is some over spray on the “Local 1394” and in a few corners at the top. This over spray can be removed with a toothpick without damaging the plastic.

Here I removed the rest of the masking material and sprayed on fastint for the darker areas, then sprayed FaslucentRed, then backed the red with white for the high lights. Now I’ve backed the entire image with silver.

Here I’ve sprayed the front bumper with Mirror chrome paint.

I’ve backed everything with black, sprayed on 3 coats of sealer, removed the window masks and tinted the windows. Here’s the finished result

Joined: Sep 17, 2006 Posts: 953 Status: **Offline**

Sick as always TW!!!!

I love how you created the depth with the layers, especially the fireman walking through the smoke and debrit.

Wow great job. Super tribute !!!

You outdid yourself Pat! Great job!