Watercolour/drawing process

Somebody asked if I could do a step by step series of one of my sketches - so here it is. This is a 1914 car called an ONO - based on a Fiat S74 chassis with a Pope Hartford engine. It raced in the Vanderbilt Cup Races in San Francisco.

This is a quick sketch to work out the angle and get used to drawing the car...

On to the posh paper now. I lightly put in the horizon, perspective construction lines and body with a 2H pencil...


Then I add the wheels and other important features...


I switch to a softer pencil - perhaps a HB or B - and strengthen some lines and add more detail to the area at the front of the car. I've also added a wash to the background though sometimes I do this last...


Now I add colour to the rest of the car. I like to leave areas unpainted and sketchy as it focuses your attention on just one part and it helps to keep the image loose - which is tricky when you're not working from life...


Finally I use a pencil to add a bit of contrast and clarity to any bits that need it - and also a white pen for some highlights and it's done...


Here's a close up...


... and my desk showing the tools I used. Hope it was interesting...

Hereford Trials

Having never witnessed one, I really wanted to visit a trials event this year and by a massive stroke of luck I was invited not to come and watch but to actually take part! My job was to be a 'bouncer' - to help provide traction for the back wheels as Duncan raced the Anzani GN up the muddy slopes. As it happened, we had the most gloriously sunny day and there was barely any mud in sight. Traction was not an issue at all and it became a fantastic sightseeing tour of a beautiful part of the country in what was definitely the most exciting car there. Ben's nippy Bugatti Brescia was a delightful sight to follow (though my dust and castrol filled eyeballs won't agree). Another spectacular sight were the big Bentleys packed with friends and family of all ages - what a terrific form of motorsport!

Bugatti T35

Back to traditional drawing materials. Went up to Prescott for a meeting and had a bit of spare time to sketch one of the cars in the excellent museum. This one was on loan from Nick Mason. Quite pleased with how it came out so I might make it my next print edition...

Inkpad app

Been playing with a new app on the iPad called Inkpad. It's a bit like a cut down version of Illustrator and seems to work very well. It's vector based and allows you to draw using shapes, lines and bezier curves. The results are usually quite crisp and graphic but I have seen some very warm, almost painterly work done with it too.

First, the remains of an old matchbox car my son dug up in the garden...

This time I traced an image from the excellent www.autofrei.wordpress.com.

2 caricatures and a house

I've always struggled with caricatures - or indeed any sort of likeness. I even have trouble just recognising people. Perhaps it's some kind of face dyslexia? Still, I have a bash at a caricature every now and then and I think this one of David Mitchell sort of worked - even if he's not quite so tubby in real life...

Here's another try at a caricature - this time it's the latest Dr Who - Matt Smith. I tried Bill Wyman after this and just couldn't do it. You'd have thought he'd be easy...

Finally, here's a quick sketch of a delapidated building. All of these were done with the Zen Brush app on the iPad...

Life Drawing

Recently we started some lunchtime life drawing session at work. These were done with the zen brush app on iPad (using a 1 pixel brush). I like the way the pen bleeds when i stop moving the stylus - it has a bit of a felt marker feel. First ones are 90 seconds and the last one is 10 minutes - and I added some colour with art rage later...

Antigua

Just returned from two weeks in the sun - jolly nice it was too. So nice in fact that I didn't do half the amount of drawing I planned to do - prefering to lounge around on beaches, float in the warm turquoise water, drink rum punch...

Not making you jealous am I?..

Here's a couple from Falmouth Harbour - it was filled with the most amazing collection of super-yachts - very shiny, very expensive...

Just next to Falmouth Harbour is English Harbour and Nelson's Dockyard. Still used as a harbour and features a beautiful collection of restored buildings which were once sail lofts, workshops and stores...

I loved all the different types of palms - here's just a few of them, the second one done on the iPad...


Still battling with the watercolours - here's a couple of tries at a lobster shell...


There was a wonderful old church in the neighbouring village of Liberta. It's made of a pale green stone which can be found on the island...

Almost forgot this one. Antigua's a wonderful place but compared to where I live in the UK it can be really quite noisy at night. Tree frogs, crickets, noisy cars, distant discos, noisy neighbours and the dogs! bark, bark, bark, bark, bark.... Bark, bark, bark, bark... Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, and on, and on...

Anzani GN

A couple of quick sketches of the car I hope to be bouncing in in a few weeks time...

Fiat - rear former

Today the former for the rear bodywork was temporarily put in place to give an idea of how it would fit. Suddenly the car looks massively long - and very purposeful. The finished thing is going to be very impressive. I've started a flickr gallery of photos of the build too...

Fiat - Front axle

Thought I'd try something with a bit more detail today. I've seen people like Scott Robertson using ballpoint pens to draw futuristic car and spaceship designs and thought I'd try it out. It actually works quite well - I can't write with one at all but they're not bad for drawing with - allowing you to lay down very feint perspective and construction guides which can later be made heavier and clearer.

This image shows the front axle, part of the suspension and the wonderful radiator which comes up to about nose height. That swooping shape on the left arm of the chassis is a wooden former for a part which will later be made in aluminium. There are various pieces like this which can be bolted on to make the car more streamlined...

I later added a bit of colour in photoshop. With a bit of tidying up I'd be able to hide the outlines altogether. If I get time I'll give it a go...

Fiat - rear suspension

The rear wheels were off today and a little more of the wooden frame is in place. This will be shaped to fit the curves of the rear bodywork and will support the seats. It also houses the fuel tank. Mostly it's held together with beautifully done joints but the firewall has been screwed on - using big reclaimed screws from the same period...


An interesting thing i saw today was how almost every part right down to individual nuts and bolts are stamped with matching pairs of numbers so that you know exactly where they belong - almost like the joints on an oak framed building. If you look closer still you can see other scribed lines and dots - showing where to cut or file to. It's great to be able to see marks made by the engineers 100 years ago - it really brought home to me how hand-crafted cars used to be compared to todays machine made ones.

Workbench with gearbox

Bit pushed for time today so I picked the most complicated thing in the room to draw. This is the gearbox for the Fiat laid out on the workbench. I'll try to do a longer sketch one day which shows it in a bit more detail...

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.

New Print - The Land Speed Record

You may have spotted the post about the Bloodhound Art Show, well this is the print i made for it. It features (hopefully) all the official land speed record holding cars. I wanted to highlight how the size and shape have changed over the years and so they are as close to the correct size in relation to each other as I could get them (I used a combination of photos, stats and video clips to try and establish the sizes).

Like the last VSCC print they are signed and numbered, on museum quality paper and printed with archival inks. This time it's A2 in size and it's an edition of 1000 (to match the 1000mph the Bloodhound team are aiming for). The cost is £40 +p&p and £10 of every one will got to help fund the Bloodhound Educational Project. Hope you like it...

ZenBrush App - quick test

ZenBrush - $2.99
Found another nice drawing app for the iPad. Again it's quite limited in terms of features but it makes up for that with a really nice, speed sensitive brush mark. It only has three opacities of black and an eraser, no zoom, no layers and only one undo. But that makes it very quick and intuitive to use. Plus points are - there's not much lag, a beautiful brush and a few different paper options. I can see myself using this for sketching quite a bit.

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).

Bloodhound SSC Art Show

The Bloodhound team are having a little art show on the theme of 'Speed'. It opens this Friday and should run for a week I think. Some of the art will be auctioned off to raise money for their education programme. I've got a couple of prints on display - one of which I've done especially for it. The full size show car will be there too. So if anyone is in the Bristol area please pop in and have a look - or if you come on Friday, say hello. (Follow signs for the SS Great Britain and next door to it you'll see a square, red brick building which used to be the Maritime Heritage Museum - it's in there)...

UPDATE...
Just heard that they have a photographer coming to do a shoot so the show has been taken down early. That was quick wasn't it. I'll let you know if any other interesting events happen.