Green with Envy at Absolute Custom Paint - Steve Vandemon

It was St. Patrick’s day here in SoCal. A recent visit to Absolute Custom Paint, Steve Vandemon’s shop in Anaheim made for a colorful afternoon. After all, Steve’s shop is full of color - bright color. Lots of color. And Steve’s favorite color: green - how timely.

Steve told us that he started out lettering on boats about 12 years ago, and now paints just about everything imaginable including cool hand-sculpted mannequins and fiberglass swordfish. His unique style is all about creating the illusion of motion in all his works. For example, his fire looks as it would if it were actually flickering, with char marks and all. Creating a motion effect is what he likes to do. And he does it with big color. But it’s flames he’s best known for - an old schewl approach with a unique Vandemon twist.

We had a chat over a burger at the local greasy spoon and talked about Kustom Kulture, art, family, music - the works. Also joining us was Tom Prewitt of Monster Garage fame. We’ll try and catch up with Tom for an industry chat that we can share with you all sometime in the near future.

Some of what we found out is… Steve just quit his band so he could focus more of his time on his young family; a wife and young son. His long term goals - to do more fine art, which he does beautifully, by the way, with automotive paints. In fact, he has a few pieces in the Laguna Art Museum. Steve’s early influences include tattoo artist Guy Atchison, Frank Frazetta and Roger Dean.

Steve’s advice to newcomers: Start small and build slow. You don’t have to have a large shop and tons of tools to get started - just a pinstripe brush or airbrush, and some paint.

Enough talk…. Let’s check out some pics.

Steve pinstripes those green flames with quick strokes of white.

There’s a lot going on at the shop. Projects in various stages of completion await their turn for graphics.

Cool hoods adorn the walls…

with plenty of them making their own artistic statement.

Did we mention that Steve likes green?

An impressive collection of art and panels line the office walls.

Tom Prewitt with a custom painted helmet in the works.

A.D., Steve, and Tom (and a horse of a different colour painted by Debra Mahan).

Click here to visit Vandemon online.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 9:25 am and is filed under Artists, Hot Rods, Motorcycles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.