Harley-Davidson Illustration

History of the Harley-Davidson Illustration

Deneba Software artist Dave Rumfelt describes the history and techniques used in the Harley-Davidson 1949 Panhead illustration that was featured in Canvas 3.5 brochures and advertising:

For this project we contacted David Kimble, the artist of the F40 illustration, and asked if he had any Harley-Davidson illustrations. He came up with sketches for a project that he hadn't finished. Fortunately for me, he had all the line art done including the detail in the cut-aways. This made it easy to scan and place on its own layer in Canvas.

The Canvas 3.5 for Windows version was in beta at this time so I started the project on a PC to beta-test how well the program was working. On a second Canvas layer I drew all the outlines for the parts as they appeared in David Kimble's drawings. Unlike the F40 illustration, I did not need to grid out the drawing into small squares.

Our initial idea for this piece was a combination bike, the back end being a classic Harley, the front end, a Sbarro Motorbike 1. The Sbarro is a concept bike built by S.M. Sbarro Mottas Engineering.

It features the Osmos Orbital wheel which is center-free or hubless, it has no axle so the bike is supported by the lowest part of the rim. The wheel rides on bearings around the stationary rim. It's a beautiful bike and very futuristic looking.

As part of the Canvas 3.5 brochure, I also made technical "plan"drawings of the orbital wheel, as well as a combination cut-away / technical drawing elevation view of the wheel.

This past summer, we recycled (no pun intended) the orbital wheel for use in the Canvas 5 campaign. With Canvas 5's added image-editing capabilities, we used Canvas to convert the line drawings into the image you see here, then used an alpha-channel mask in the shape of a 5 to give the image a transparent-looking colored area.

Originally, I had outlined all the parts in Canvas for Windows and then ported it over to a Mac to colorize it. The first version was in a teal color like the Deneba Software logo. The transition to the Sbarro bike was just forward of the steering post. The idea of blending the two bikes was great on paper but really didn't work well visually. Everyone agreed that the classic Harley alone was more interesting, so we went with that in the ads and brochures. But here you have it, the seldom seen Harley-Sbarro Special!

All the coloring for the teal and red versions of the Harley were worked out by referring to stacks of pictures of motorcycles and cycling magazines. It was important to get the right reflections and chrome effects to make the illustration realistic, and I used the same method that I used for the Ferrari F40 to colorize the bike by using blends of objects. The Canvas file is 8.9 Mb and has 28,000 objects.

If you would like to download this file visit our web site.