Maristela the Van.

When my friend asked me if I wanted to paint his van Maristela, there was no way I was going to say no. I had complete freedom to draw whatever I felt like and use whichever colours I wanted. The owner of the van only wanted to see the end result so that it was a pure, unedited work of art. This was the result 😁.

Using vinyl was far too expensive, and I'm useless with a spray can, so the alternative was to grab a paintbrush, and hand paint the van. The biggest challenge was trying to figure out which type of paint to use. I did a lot of research online, and asked a lot of people who deal with paints and vehicles, and everyone seemed to have a different opinion. In the end, the folks at the Resene Colour shop thought that using water based exterior paints should stick, as long as I primed areas I would paint over first.

The project took about 3 weekends to complete.

Special thanks to my amazing partner Sam Bunny for all his help and support on this project and to the following friends: Miles, Robyn, and Anna Illemann for allowing us to use their garage over three weekends and feeding us between paint coats, Xavier Martin for lending us his dodgy yet super useful projector, and of course, Bruno Isaú Pedrosa for letting me tattoo his van in the first place ✌️​​​​.

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