I knew master artist Eric Herrmann, before being an artist was cool. He lived in the desert outside Phoenix, rode bikes, and was a devoted family man. Eric isn't your standard notion of an artist; he's the bull in the China closet type, when he painted cactus flowers and desert scenes for interior designers. Then unfortunately he snorted metalflake paint, met Bandit, rode out to Laughlin and became a Hamster. His life slipped into the chrome and pearlescent abyss, of wild women and fast motorcycles. He started painting anything that glistened. “I even painted Bandit's second book cover,” Eric said. “I was living on the dark side.”
Eric moved deeper into the desert with his family and found a creative nirvana that fit his mental and physical motif, motorcycles. He rides dirt bikes with his sons around cactus and yucca trees on his property. He's painted for Nascar, Jack Daniels, and Arlen Ness. He's painted posters for the Laughlin River Run. He's painted through the good times and the bad, always with custom motorcycles as the theme. With this economic downward shift, Eric switched gears to keep painting. He's now painting originals on ever popular tin, like in the old vintage tin sign days. He'll paint your bike or any bike you love and bring it to life on everlasting tin sheets.
We were fortunate to catch big Eric on a soft day during the holidays and he offered to paint something from the Bikernet collection. “I'm going to display and create a painting during the Barrett Jackson auction,” Eric said. “I need a very cool eye-popping subject. Don't let me down.”
We immediately rolled the Bikernet 5-Ball Factory Racer out back and took shots. Eric accepted our humble submission and painted this original on tin during the big buck Barrett Jackson auction in Phoenix. Here's how it went:
Here’s some photos of the painting process on the 5 Ball Racer, started and completed during the Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction.Starting with 16” x 30” metal panels, which have been primed & coated with flat black paint, a drawing is created in a white pencil.
The ground and background colors are established next as they will be the colors that appear in the chrome of the bike. On the 5-Ball Racer they only appear in several places, like the muffler, because there was very little chrome on this bike.Other colors are worked up on the bike as it began to take shape.
The finished product will be clear coated, and framed, ready to hang in the Bikernet headquarters, shop, office, or flooded basement.
It was a great bike to be working on during Barrett-Jackson and drew lots of attention. I normally turn a painting like this within 2 weeks to the customer for $500.00 bucks.
I just finished an order for a dude in Florida with 20 bikes. He’s hanging them in his garage, so he knows where to park each bike. Jim just turned 70, has been riding for 50 years, and has ape hangers on every one of his bikes.–Eric Herrmann
www.EricHerrmannStudios
(480) 575-7559
