Chequered flag

Dean

Double Actioner
Hi I have been asked to paint motorcycle fairing in chequered flag, they are currently red, what's the best way to approach it? They want the flag really flowing and with lots of creases etc, had a try on test panel and harder than what I imagined... Any advice of how others do it I.e step by steps etc would be greatly appreciated, thanks
 
This is how I would do it (and have done it a while back :))

1. mask off everything except where the flags is going to be.
2. paint the flag area white.
3. Keeping the red masked off also mask off your white.
4. draw the flag
*keep in mind the checker flag won't be straight forward squares when you draw it. the squares will deform with the flow of the flag
*Get yourself a reference to make it realistic. I just painted squares on a sheet and made a couple of pics for it, I'm sure you could also google one with the shapes you like)
6. Cut out the black areas.
7. paint it black :)
8. keeping your red still masked off remove the mask from your flag area.
9. With black (I'd advise transparant) paint in your shadows.
*You'll have soft shadows where the flag just go's up and down a bit. This you can freehand
* you'll have places where the flag folds completely back here you'll have one side with a hard shadow, use a freehand mask, or just mask of the hard shadow side.
10. "Optional" with opaque white put in the highlights (don't over do this)

Little quick pick which I hope makes it a bit clearer:

checker1.jpg
 
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Chequered flags are all about vertical and horizontal lines and, when waving, they have squares, deformed squares and sometimes diamonds that don’t’ even seem to line up depending of how the flag is folding. If it were me I would make my life easier and start by finding a good reference to copy from.
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=...fMkwWHnoCIBg&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=637


I’d paint the area white.
The I’d draw the flag on taking careful note of which shapes are to be black.
Mask up the white parts
Spray the black parts solid

The shading for the folds is important. It’s always better to start lightly and slowly build them up. I found it doesn’t take much dark paint to give a good creasing effect. Take note on your reference if there are hard or soft shaded edges, where the darkest part of a crease is and how far to blend it out.

The highlights need to be lighter passes again…. It really doesn’t take much.

Do a little then stand back at look at your reference, then back at the image you just painted.

....hope that helps :)
 
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Thanks Haasje and Canvas, I had wondered about this myself since it can be handy for my models, almost all of our planes have a chequered flag of some sort on the underside of the wings so that we can determine top from bottom at a distance, the link form Canvas has gone straight into my bookmarks, plenty of choice and ideas there, therefore, handy info from both of you for a lot of us.

Your both top of the Christmas card list, lol

@Dean, with a little tom foolery in photo shop you can easily manipulate many of the references in the link to suit your project, keep us posted and show us how it ends up if your successful which I don't doubt, lol

And I found a super cool reference in the link for my paint pals project, so a very productive thread indeed.
 
cool madbrush!! it's always a good feelin to know i've helped :) :beguiled:

also , dean, here are 2 flags i've airbrushed before.... they are not very good... but just as an idea of how silly the shading on the folds are lolz:watermelon:
smallMG_9869.jpgsmallMG_9864.jpg
 
cool madbrush!! it's always a good feelin to know i've helped :) :beguiled:

also , dean, here are 2 flags i've airbrushed before.... they are not very good... but just as an idea of how silly the shading on the folds are lolz:watermelon:
View attachment 23701View attachment 23702

Yep not very good at all, I can't wait till I'm "not very good" instead of just being crap, lol

Whatever you think of them they do show how it works and it all helps, but I think they are both cool.
 
lol that's funny because i look at everyone else’s art and think it's really good, then i look at mine and cringe as i see all the mistakes and imperfections.

but thanks for the compliments


.... and your work is soooo far from crap it's not funny.
 
Thanks for all your help guys, great advice will post pictures up once I have finished it
 
lol that's funny because i look at everyone else’s art and think it's really good, then i look at mine and cringe as i see all the mistakes and imperfections.

but thanks for the compliments


.... and your work is soooo far from crap it's not funny.

The "mistakes and imperfections" as you call them the are in fact the small things that make it yours' without that it would simply be a copy, the best examples are the competitions, everyone receives the same reference or subject but are encouraged to put their own twist on it.

As for my work, there are some here who are knocking 2 or 3 masterpieces in a few hours, whereas everything I do takes weeks sometimes to get to a point where I like it and can accept it as being done, I do it for fun and even then only till I get frustrated, I started a long haired cat a while back but got frustrated with an airbrush I had and stopped, I've done nothing since then but that is about to change.

We are now going into out third paint pals promo, and I can tell you that this is the second time the same promo has forced me off of my arse and got me back into it, I've already found my ref (thanks to you) and now I can't wait to get into it, I saw something and thought "I have just got to paint that", I know we all have those moments now and again and it's a damn good feeling when we do, and the beauty of it all is I have more than six weeks to do it, so no pressure, lol
 
Ok so I have finished the mudguard for the bike, I found it harder than I first thought but thanks to all your advice got there in the end. There's quite few bits I could of changed more shadow and highlights but didn't want to overdo it, and learnt a lot about way I would approach it if I had to do another one, customer was over the moon so all good.
qeqe7avu.jpg
 
Ok so I have finished the mudguard for the bike, I found it harder than I first thought but thanks to all your advice got there in the end. There's quite few bits I could of changed more shadow and highlights but didn't want to overdo it, and learnt a lot about way I would approach it if I had to do another one, customer was over the moon so all good.
qeqe7avu.jpg

That is totally amazing Dean, excellent neat lines and the red just pops, the whole thing just stinks of awesomeness, no surprise the customer loves it.
 
I would be proud to have something that awsome on a bike I owned. Everything just jumps at you and you can't stop lookin at it
Well done.....
 
You didn't mention that it was bike parts you're doing.
The curves on those can play havoc with the type of pic that was done, and they're not that easy to do properly in the first place.
Good job.
You should be very pleased with the outcome of this so far.
Everyone is their own worst critic when it comes to our art.
 
That is awesome...great job. Nice work on the photo also. I just chequered a fender today,... wish I had seen this for inspiration.
 
Cool job, excellent for a first try. I think I might have considered laying out the wrinkles of the flag perpendicular to the hot rod flames, this will give a totaly different feel to it, but this is of course personal taste. Nevertheless, you should be proud of it, it's a good job.
 
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