At last, a Royal Enfield painting by Ian Cater

Painting of a Royal Enfield Constellation by Ian Cater.

"Men and machines of character" are the subjects of artist and illustrator Ian Cater's work; specifically the cafe racers, human and mechanical, seen around the Ace Cafe, London.

And now he's done a painting featuring a Royal Enfield blasting into the early evening light.

It's not his only Royal Enfield painting. There was and earlier attempt — his first — of a Royal Enfield Constellation in a shed. He never finished it.

Ian explains:

"I’ve wanted to paint an Enfield Constellation for a long time as my brother owned one way back and it seemed at the time a very rare, exotic and powerful beast. It was originally attached to a sidecar but following an unfortunate incident with a parked car it got swiftly unhitched.

"The bike ended up in storage for a long time and I’m not sure where it is now.

"Anyway, recently I found a photo of a guy belting a Constellation along in an old book and used it for the basis of this painting. I just tried to give it as much impression of movement and speed as I could.

Ian's gallery of artwork can be seen at this website, Motorcycle Art UK.

There you can buy high quality, giclée art prints of his paintings . (Giclée refers to fine art digital prints made on inkjet printers.) They are printed on textured 310gsm art paper to capture as much as possible the feel of the originals, he writes. (GSM is grams per square meter. It's a measure of paper weight; 310 gsm paper is roughly 50 percent heavier than 210 gsm paper. One mil is 1/1000th of an inch).

Each print is available in two sizes, given in millimeters. Both sizes are large; about 17X24 inches and 12X17 inches.

"I've been trying to make a good Royal Enfield painting for some time without too much success, but this one turned out pretty well," Ian wrote me.

"There will be another one along in about 10 years."