In 1978, after 11 years away from motorcycle racing, Mike Hailwood made a comeback in the Formula I race at the Isle of Man TT. Riding a Ducati 900SS, few gave him a chance of being competitive. But he only went and won it!
Nicky Hayden, 2006 MotoGP World Champion, who has died at the age of 35 whilst riding a bicycle.
Here’s the completed painting. I added Jorge Lorenzo on the third bike, with a grandstand in the far distance. Apart from that, today was just a matter of adding “bling” – specular highlights here and there, smoothing off some jagged edges where they weren’t appropriate, thin highlights on the edges of panels, a few more…
The nice thing about an opaque medium like oil paints is that you can scrape back and repaint an area if you aren’t happy with it. I’ve done that here with Vale’s helmet. I’m still not entirely over the moon with it, but it looks better than it did before. Those black lines are especially…
See here for Day 3 of this project. I’ve been doing some studies to figure out the correct angles on the kerbing and to figure out how big to paint the bikes in the background. I need Rossi to look like he’s on the correct racing line coming out of the previous corner of course,…
Here’s where I was up to on this painting when I left it on Sunday. The next stage is to continue defining the forms by adding more detail. I don’t want all the painting to end up with the same level of detail. The focal areas (the front of the fairing and the helmet) should…
Here’s a reminder of where I got up to yesterday with this painting. Today I concentrated on trying to improve the underlying tonal design and making sure I have described the forms correctly, by which I mean all the areas in shadow are darker than any of the areas in the light, regardless of their local…
Today I started on a new painting, a picture of Valentino Rossi. I thought I would post photos of my progress as I go along. This feels like a bit of a risk, because the painting might not work! I’ve already come up with a plan for the painting. On this occasion I worked up…
John Surtees, 500cc motorcycle World Champion 1956, 1958, 1959 and 1960, Formula 1 World Champion 1964 (pencil)
