EJ200 sketch

EJ200 sketch, a photo by Stefan Marjoram on Flickr.

It's jolly exciting working in a place that has one of these just outside the canteen.

Quick sketch of the EJ200 jet engine which will powering Bloodhound SSC. Done using Adobe Ideas on the iPad.

Matthew - iPad sketch

No life drawing today so i did this quick sketch in the harbour. I used the Adobe Ideas app. If you look on flickr there's another version with less colour - I can't decide which is best.

C Type Jaguar - iPad

Here's the more graphic treatment of the car I did the watercolour of. I used Adobe Ideas to sketch it then exported the layers into photoshop for some tweaking of the colours. Still can't decide which background colour is best. Probably blue, followed by red...

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.

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...

More Bugatti Sketches

Whilst drawing in the Bugatti Trust I met Charles Trevelyan, the owner of one of the other cars on display (the T23 in the previous post) who asked if I'd sketch his car too. I found it harder than usual - I need to find a way of dealing with the pressure of doing a comission instead of just drawing for yourself. I seem to be getting slower instead of faster too. Despite this it turned out to be a very exciting day as I got a ride up the Prescott hill in Charles' other Bugatti - a wonderfully sporty looking Type 37. This car drawing has become quite an amazing adventure - each drawing seems to lead to meeting another enthusiastic owner with another exciting car - getting the chance to occasionally ride in them is the icing on the cake.

Here's a quick warm up sketch...


A couple of longer A3 studies...


I felt they were getting a bit tight so I reverted to smaller, looser drawings. I'd be interested to hear which ones you think work better...

This is a car which also belongs to Charles. It's a Type 52 - which is actually a half-scale children's version of a Type 35 - the first one was built by Ettore for his youngest son in 1927. Lucky chap. It had an electric motor and the engineering, naturally, is superb - even featuring cable operated drum brakes to all four wheels...

Finally I ended the day with a quick sketch on the iPad using Adobe Ideas...

Look out there's a monster coming...

One of the most exciting cars in history has to be the Fiat S76 from 1911. Also known as the 'Beast of Turin' it has a whacking great 28 litre, four cylinder engine - good for shooting 3 yard flames, blowing people's hats off and singeing their eyebrows according to some reports. It's also supposed to be good for over 130mph - but it never managed to set an official record despite attempts at Brooklands, Saltburn ad Ostend.

Hopefully one day this will change thanks to a dedicated builder and racer of crazy automobiles I met recently. He's managed to track down the chassis, axles and steering of one car and the engine of the other and bit by bit the monster is taking shape again. Better still, he's very kindly allowed me to come and sketch the build. I couldn't be happier and I think it'll make a great parallel to the build of the Bloodhound SSC car that I'll also be documenting this year. I can't believe my luck at having not one, but two LSR cars being built on my doorstep.

Here it is at it currently stands. Whilst it awaits it's pistons it's having a beautiful oak frame built to support the seats and the bodywork surrounding the passenger area. Measurements are taken from massive, full scale drawings lovingly lettered with gothic script - the plans even show the wood grain! This first sketch was done as a quick warm up using Adobe Ideas on the iPad...

Next I thought I'd try a more detailed sketch in pencil and wash but I'm a bit rusty and it's a little heavy handed. Still, you can see the triangular oak supports an a bit of the massive flywheel which is attached to a crankshaft that looks like it belongs on a steam train...


There are several other of my favourite cars to draw too. This one's a GN Vitesse often seen at VSCC meets. It's currently being rebuilt after a rather frightening roll. The engine is an 8.2 litre Curtiss. The engine cover is where the seat should be, the seat is on the cowl and the back axle is on the floor...


A GN Anzani with a 3.5 litre V Twin. Apparently the first time it was started the front wheels were bouncing off the ground...


Day two and another quick one of the Fiat - firewall temporarily in place. There are some wonderful details such as streamlined covers for the end of the chassis - even the starting handle was sharpened to a point. People often write this car off as an over sized relic, built before people knew what they were doing but it's plainly not true. Fiat were one of the top, if the not the top builders of Grand Prix cars. Despite the massive size of the engine it actually has quite a small frontal area and was much more streamlined than anything else at the time...

Everard's Print Works

I made a short video about using Adobe Ideas for sketching and this is the subject I chose to draw. It's Edward Everard's print works in Bristol. They were designed in about 1900 and feature wonderful tiles illustrating some of Everard's influences - Gutenberg and William Morris. It's a beautiful building sandwiched between some modern attrocities - infact the building was almost demolished in 1967. That really would have been a great shame. Bristol lost much of its architectural heritage in the war but it seems they couldn't stop after either.

The sketch took about 50 mins. I'll add the video as well as soon as Adobe have released it.

More Ideas

Still playing around with adobe ideas. I'm enjoying making custom palettes and then just sticking to those 5 colours. I think it gives it a sort of screen printed look (although the colours do look slightly different on the ipad - perhaps it's a mac gamma thing).

More ipad fun

Still experimenting with the ipad paint apps. Here's a quick sketch of Cathy watching tv - done with the adobe ideas app...


And looking out of the window, a couple of cloud studies done in Art Rage...


I have a couple of new apps to add to the reviews too. First...

Quill. $0.99
Similar to adobe ideas in that it's vector based. Has the addition of an italic nib and filled shapes too. Worth a look for the price.
Like: Cheap, italic nib has more character than plain round, shapes
Don'tlike: They seem to get flipped when emailing the images as pdf's - perhaps I' not doing it right, crashed on me yeterday and I lost some doodles.


TypeDrawing. $2.99
Not sure how often I'll use this but it's still a lot of fun. You type something in, choose a font and then draw with the text...

iPad paint software review

One of the reasons I haven't posted much lately is because I've been distracted by a new toy piece of serious technology which I need for work. I've always been a pc user and I'm not going to get into a pc/mac debate - there are things I like about both. Actually I don't really think of the iPad as a computer - I'm not entirely sure what it is. It's silent, keeps cool, doesn't need to boot up and the battery lasts all day. The interface is great and very intuitive - and then there's the apps...

I've had a lot of fun exploring all the strange games and widgets but for me the single most interesting thing was the ability to have photoshop-like software with me anywhere. I quickly downloaded a few of the most popular ones and although I've only been doodling so far I thought I'd share my experiences. First up...

Brushes. $7.99
Like:Not too laggy. Good selection of tweakable brushes without being too cluttered. Ability to play back sequence of strokes is brilliant. Layers.
Don't like: Can't make a dot (tapping screen brings up menu), Can't make quicktimes from playback on a PC (as far as I'm aware)


Sketchbook Pro. $7.99
Like: Least laggy of the ones i've tried so far. loads of features and brushes, layers, symmetry, clever shortcuts, speed sensitive stroke/opacity- even found some storyboard templates yesterday.


Livesketch. $1.99
This is like a cut down version of the Harmony procedural drawing program.
Like:It's reasonably fast, very pleasing and unexpected results.
Don't like: It's a pity it doesn't have a few more of the Harmony brushes.


Inspire Pro. £2.39
Haven't tried too much with this yet. It's supposed to simulate oils (not something I've done much of).
Like: reasonably fast, uncluttered, nice blending.
Don't like: Cant draw dots easily (you can do it by putting your finger down and twisting it), splash screen :)


Adobe Ideas. $Free.
Funny one this - I think it's vector based. You can zoom in to huge amounts and draw really detailed little drawings the size of ants. The brush strokes get smoothed too. To export the vector images you export to email - otherwise they get converted to jpegs.
Like: Fast, smoothing, large document size, palette creating tool
Don't like:Limited tools (a pen and an eraser). Have to pay for extra layers (but it is free so I can't really complain).


Artist's Touch. $4.99
Like: reasonably quick, nice splodgy paint daubs for gestural sketches.
Don't like: Colour palette interface (big long list), can't draw dots (brings up menu again)


Art Rage. $6.99
I'm a big fan of this on my PC - it's cheap, has excellent tools and a very intuitive interface.
Like:Tools, layers, everything really
Don't like: Unfortunately it's probably the most laggy - but I am starting to get used to working a little slower


That's it for now. It's not very in-depth and there may be some things which I'm wrong about because I haven't found everything out yet but it'll give you an overview of what's available. One other thing that's worth mentioning is that none of these have the ability to tweak contrast etc. so I found a useful free app called PhotoPad which will do that and more. So far I've really enjoyed drawing on the iPad - even though it's not pressure sensitive. I'll post some more pictures done with it soon.

Oh, and the boxwave stylus seems to work quite nicely too. A bit short but glides nicely over the screen.