REMEMBER THE JESTER?
If I’m asked to name my favourite style of scooter the answer must be, ‘One that the owner’s got their hands dirty on.’ I can’t think of a better example than The Jester, our February 2018 cover scooter.
Built by Mark Jepson (‘Jep’), The Jester is a superb illustration of what can be achieved in a home paint booth. Admittedly Jep’s got talent but he’s never received any formal training, in fact airbrushing’s a relatively recent hobby. “I did art at school,” he began, “but only to ‘O’ level standard then it was time to go out and get a job. My dad was into custom cars and as a kid I’d spend most weekends at custom shows. The techniques back then were pretty basic, using paper doylies and net curtains as stencils seems outrageous now but the results were often quite impressive. It was only when I started to plan The Jester that I seriously thought about airbrushing. I bought a basic kit and messed around with it for a while, but it had been stood on a shelf for 18 months when I picked it up in anger.”
Other than a couple of test pieces, Jep’s first serious attempt at airbrushing was when he tackled The Jester. “When I contacted the dealer who sold me the airbrush to buy some supplies he asked what I was working on. When I told him it was a full scooter he laughed and said I was brave.
“I don’t think that’s true, I just worked through things slowly.”
Having applied the base coat, Jep moved on to the geometric part of his design. “The masking took a long time to get right but I got there. Once I was happy with that part of the scheme I applied a few coats of clear lacquer. I knew I was going to try my hand at painting some murals but figured that if they went wrong and I’d sealed in the geometric design it would just be case of sanding back to lacquer again. Would I encourage anyone to have a go? Absolutely. I know The Jester’s not perfect but I guarantee there’s no better feeling that thinking ‘I did that’ when someone pays it a compliment.”