Classic car photos. Car faces

Recently, I've been obsessed with trying to achieve the perfect crop. Last weekend, I stopped by the Spring Grove Cemetery Car Show / Cruise-In. It was pretty much the last big show of the season, so I knew I needed to get down there for my fix of corner crops before the long winter season.

All five of these could be possible candidates for future illustrations.

1966 Pontiac Bonneville

This vector illustration was a long time in the making. It's a little more personal than the rest, because this is an illustration of my car. The headlights were worked over and over again to try to balance style with realism. Plus, since this is such a dramatic crop in comparison with the others, it was important to spend a lot of time on the chrome on the bumper and the headlight bezels. The Bonneville is over 18 feet long. The long horizontal format pays homage to a very fine land yacht.

Nova SuperSport Illustration

I've decided to continue with this style. I really like it, and I haven't seen anybody else doing this. Automotive art only seems to have a few distinct styles, and I don't really care for any of them.

This was composed in Adobe Illustrator. It's all vector art, but I started from a photograph. There's still evidence of the auto trace feature in there, but a lot less than you may think. For those of you not "in the know," auto trace isn't a feature you draw autos with. It's a feature in Illustrator that turns a photo into vector art. It may sound a lot like cheating, but I'm not. It takes a lot of fine tuning and retracing to get the look you want. It is a great starting point however.

The plan right now is to start printing these directly onto stainless steel. I think they'll look amazing, and hopefully a few potential buyers will too. A new blog is on it's way, dedicated to selling automotive art. Check back soon!

Nismo Cube

Over on my other blog, I comment on how much distaste I have for the Hello Kitty Nissan Cube. This is a go at it as more of a sporty box to take on the xB. The roof is chopped, it's lowered, and I've taken out the bubble windows. Instead, I've gone with a canopy without visible B, C or D pillars. Maybe it needs more vinyl graphics.

new hobby at splitwheel

My father in law turned me on to a website where they're using a forum to design a car. I think this is called open source, but I could be wrong. The purpose, in short is to design a new car for Caterham, a British car company famous for the Caterham 7. The Caterham 7 is incredibly cool, but impractical without such commodities as a roof, or doors. It's a performance car that may spend a considerable amount of time on the track, but must be a true road car.

Here's my first go at it. More to come. Check out www.splitwheel.com for details.

a porsche sketch

I posted my distaste for the Porsche Panamera a little while back. Naturally, I thought I should sketch my thoughts on a four door Porsche. I started this on the back of a receipt at dinner and decided to take it home and try it a bit larger. This version has a more retro flair to it than the original. It's missing the fender flares that it would take to really make this a Porsche. Maybe I'll revisit this drawing again soon.

two tone el truck

for those of you who don't speak spanish, "el truck" is spanish for "the truck"

actually, i just don't know if it's a truck or an el camino.

Super Sport is...Super

This sketch was a long time in the making. It started out as a Cadillac coupe and just kept getting reworked and reworked until it wasn't a Cadillac anymore. Now it's a Chevrolet. I can't seem to stop drawing Chevys.

chevys are square

This sketch was hiding out. Notice the date. This was my last sketch in 2008. I like square cars in case you haven't noticed. I'll go into this a little deeper in my other blog, but to sum it up; a square can never go out of style, because it was never in style.

I think this looks like it could be a little brother to the Camaro. It keeps the idea of a wide mouth grille like the Camaro, but has thin vertical headlights. I'm sure some color would really help you figure out what's going on in the front. Maybe I'll have to revisit this one because I really like what's going on in the rear 3/4 panel.