Bagger line drawing/profile for testing ideas

[Traakon]

I did a search on both the web and the forum for line drawings or profile drawing/outlines of bikes (baggers in specific) to ink out some ideas for paint and hit nada.

Anyone have an idea where to look, the right key word or a source?

I have a couple simple designs in mind that I could fine tune if I could just add ink/color to paper.

As always, thanks for the great responses and wealth of information.

[kustom_flames]

House of Kolor sells a software program...but it is pricey and does not include every make of bike. How about scoping ebay, printing a pic in color and then you can trace it and make copies...

Seems to me like photoshop would be good for you too, but again pricey and you need to know how to use it...

[Traakon]

Thanks for the thoughts.

If I don't come up with any other options I will have to go those routes.

I was "hoping" since there are several painters (like yourself) that follow this forum, there might be one that did renderings for clients and had the bike templates. Not looking for a freebie per say, I'd pay for a clean profile and rear blank but I have to find them first.

Thanks for the response.

[kustom_flames]

There might be some that do it that way...I personally do not. I will sometimes do a sketch of a tank, but the reality is most of my work (95%+) is done direcetly on the piece as it is 3 dimensional - I find that sometimes things may look good on a 2d 'flat' surface, but may not actually work when doing on a 3d surface...this is especially true of multi-colored jobs when the top color may be different from the bottom color...

I would suggest doing the tank method, where you take a piece of paper, and draw a large side view of a tank, then make some photcopies of it, or you can use tracing paper. If you use photocopies you can just sketch out some designs right over that. If you use tracing paper you can put a design on each sheet and then put over the tank to see which one looks best.

It will be much easier to sketch out a design on just a tank at a larger scale than it would be on an entire line drawing of a bike on the same seix sheet.

Still look at ebay, maybe find a good pic of a white bike and make copies of that and then you can color over....

[Traakon]

I completely understand your perspective.

My proposed design is simple in concept, maintain the '03 anniversary silver over black but carry the colors/line from the tank (the simple part) down across the side covers, down the extended hard bags and around the back to an undetermined end.

In this it is more about the line and where it falls over the length of the bike than any single piece that's being painted. No tribal twists, no flame edges or scallops, just the perfect visual line.

Since it is an 100th anniversary edition bike, the theory I am working for design is..."If Harley built an anniversary RK bagger this is what it would have looked like".

I am pretty anal in my minds vision of what it would be so I want to be sure it translates to the bike and then to the painter.

Thanks for all the suggestions and thoughts on how to achieve this.

[kustom_flames]

Ok. Will be relatively easy....but the fronts of the bags will be the tricky part. It is easy to envision how it will look from the side, but you then have to be sure that translates to the fronts of the bags too.

If you are just going to do silver and black you should be ok, cuz getting that anniversary tape is impossible! So really, just try and find a pic of your bike in all silver or black if possible, and then use a silver marker if it's a black bike and do your design, or black if its a silver one. You don't need to necessarily find the same year bike...

[Harleypingman]

Buy some narrow 3M masking tape and tape off what you want on the bike itself. That way, you get an actual, 1:1 perspective, and it's very easy to change the design until you find one or more masks that you like--and take plenty of digital pics of what you like.

Good luck with your project.