I was 15 when I enrolled myself in the Fine Arts course at TAFE and at the time wasn't
really sure that's what I wanted to do but was pushed by my mother at the time or my
mother to do something if I wasn't going to be at school.
It was, you know, find something to do and the thing that I loved was art and design
and drawings.
After three years of TAFE I went straight into window tinting which I currently still
do now.
The first part is probably the opposite to what a lot of traditional sign writers do.
I started doing signage and vinyl cut letters and so on on race cars and trucks and so on
and so forth which then opened up another avenue and I learnt about traditional sign
writing.
First introduction to pinstriping was Rat Day, one of the early rat days which me and
a bunch of mates went along to and I watched a guy named Tony laying down some really
really nice lines and just got to chatting to him and was really inspired by the work
that he was doing and asked him a whole bunch of questions on how I could get brushes and
how do you learn, how do someone learn how to do this.
You know, after watching him laying a whole bunch of lines down on my valiant and you
know, the bike that I had at the time, I set out to get those brushes and paints that he
told me and give it a go.
I think I did it pretty much every night or every second night for six months and saw
myself sort of not getting anywhere.
My friends just kept on pushing me and kept on pushing me and said look, stick with it,
you know, you're getting good, you're getting somewhere, you know, if you keep with this
you'll be somewhere, you know, in the next few years.
So I'd been pinstriping then for a few years and friends of mine were asking me, you know,
how do you reckon you'd go on an airbrush and I said look, I don't know, it's somewhere
where I've always loved to, you know, expand to and see whether I could be able to do it
and so yeah, mates just started lining up and we always stripped bikes and started airbrushing
panels and painting them and started, you know, finding a real sort of knack at doing
that as well.
Every day goes by, I walk in this door and something new is put in front of me, whether
it be a new shaped bike tank or another helmet or a different way to lay paint out, you know,
a different brand of candy paint that you've got to use and it is, yeah, every day is a
learning, learning curve and a learning experience but it's a fun one, you know, I love it.
My name's Kyle Smith, I run a custom paint and pinstriping business in Sydney called
Smith Concepts.
