Prescott - La Vie en Bleu

Just got back from a terrific weekend at the Prescott Hill Climb Circuit. I camped over for a few nights which meant I could get in two full days drawing - and a bit of photography too. The weather wasn't great during the day - a bit blustery and grey - but the rain held off most of the time. They'd really gone to a lot of effort with the French theme - Can Can dancers, mime artists, a wonderful accordionist, an angry onion seller - they'd even found French versions of all the signage that a racing circuit requires.

I got to see some excellent cars - some old favourites and some which I thought I'd never see - such as this Bedelia. I'd seen amazing period photos of these taken in Africa. The driver sits behind the passenger...


There were quite a few Coopers and other 500cc racers too. These are the sort of thing my Grandfather worked on during his time at Cooper...



This strange looking thing is a Triumph powered hill-climb car built by Tico Martini in 1962. He went on to build F3 and even F1 cars...


The campsite was full of interesting vehicles, among them this Citroen panel van (done on the iPad with the Adobe Ideas app) and rather handsome 1920's Renault...



As the day went on I managed to loosen up a bit. Quite pleased with this Sigma...


Managed to keep the loose work going the next day. Here's a Very large V8 engined Berliet...


... and one of my favourite cars, the JAP GN. Perfect proportions, exciting noise and the attention to detail in the build is staggering. I've taken a few photos which I'll be posting soon...


Here's a very pretty Vernon Derby - I only leaned about these recently. It has some lovely features such as wire wheels with integral drum brakes - a bit like the alloy versions on the Bugattis. There are a couple of photos of this on my flickr site too...


One last page of watercolour sketches. Two Austins and and Amilcar with a great wwoden boat-tailed body in the middle...


Lastly here's a page of quick thumbnails of interesting shapes which caught my eye over the weekend...


Hope you like them. I'll post the photos on Flickr soon. In the meantime - if you'd like to see some amazing period photos of cars like these I can't recommend The Old Motor blog highly enough - there's always something new and eye-popping to look at.

I don't just blog here you know...

I was lucky enough to be asked to be a guest blogger on the Adobe Ideas site. I talk a little about how I got into ipad art and also turning an Ideas drawing into a print...

Stefan Marjoram on Adobe Ideas

Sketchbook app revisited

I haven't used the sketchbook app for a while and just discovered they've added some nice new brushes and made the interface a bit more friendly too. It's great! Particularly the spatters and halftone dots. If you're lucky enough to have an iPad2 it higher res - pity they couldn't make that work for the iPad1.

Jaguar, Tatra and Alvis

This week I've only had to travel as far as the next village to get my fix of exciting cars. First there was this rather splendid Jaguar C-Type replica. I'm also working on a more graphic front-view using Adobe Ideas...


Then I returned to Edwards Motorsport where I made some of my earliest sketches. Here's a quick one of the Tatra which I drew the motor of. The body has been resprayed - but the many rivets are supposed to be bare metal - which meant a difficult time for the sprayer. You can also see one of the engine blocks on the floor in front (although it's not really a block - more of a circle)...


... and here's an Alvis called Georgina looking quite sporty without her rear mudguards (drawn on the iPad with the Ideas app)...


They had also just finished a major restoration of a Frazer Nash motorshow car which I'm hoping to go back and sketch soon.

More life drawing on the iPad

I've been experimenting with using the iPad for the quick 1.5min sketches we do at the beginning of our life drawing class. These are done with the Adobe Ideas app...

Quick visit to the Anzani and Fiat

Haven't been to visit Duncan for a while so I popped in one free afternoon to catch up. The Anzani was being readied for the Lands End Trial and the Fiat had it's gear box mounted and was about to have the rear wooden frame sent off for the bodywork to be fitted to it...