Okay Bestnews from Maryland, I gotta admit...

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Being a Mustang (cars) enthusiast, I really like your Avatar.



Of course everyone is familiar with the instantly recognizable Mustang emblem, like this one on the front of my 1988 (Foxbody) Mustang GT 5.0:



Your Avatar reminded me of a few years ago, around six years ago now in fact, as I was restoring the '88 Foxbody, I was considering what I might do in terms of hood treatments that would be a little different than the usual things regarding paint, or air scoops, air vents, etc... and that's when I came up with an idea. We had for decades seen the running pony image above, but we had never seen "The Face of Mustang". Or at least I hadn't.

I considered several designs, and in doing so I must have looked at hundreds of images of horses on the internet such as your own avatar before I settled on the final image. The concept was to paint a gloss black image of the face of mustang on a flat black background. Sort of a "dark horse" coming out of the night so to speak, making the image barely visible, so much so that one has to catch it in just the right light to even be able to see it. This does however make it very difficult for the average photographer like myself to capture it with a photograph. Honestly I have tried to do so dozens of times over the years in various lighting conditions, but have only had marginal success in photographing it. Though it is more visible to the naked eye than it is to the camera. Now after all these years the overall condition of the hood paint is not as nice as it once was, but I do at least have a couple of reasonably decent photos.

I will start with this one. After finding a photo of the horse online that I wanted to use, I imported the photo into AutoCAD, a standard computer aided drafting program, and drew a freehand overlay of the image, taking a little "artistic license" as I saw fit. Then I printed it on a D-Size (22"X34") printer. After which I used an exacto knife to cut out a paint stencil. I then used some removable adhesive to stick the stencil to the hood of the car, and then simply shot it with clear gloss paint.

I give you, my concept in stencil form.






And here, mounted on the hood of the Foxbody, ready to paint:



And the finished product, though several years down the road, and about as good as I've ever been able to capture it with photography:

Face of Mustang



Here are the current Ponies in my stable. From top to bottom 2008 GT, 1998 V6, 1988 5.0 GT:



Gridleak

 

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