La Vie En Bleu, Prescott

A wonderful weekend at the French-themed festival. There's always a great party atmosphere with musicians, can can dancers and very funny performers dressed as chefs, policemen and onion sellers. Got to see some old favourites and also some cars that I'd hoped to see for a long time. Didn't get an awful lot of sketching done - too many distractions. I'll add some photos soon.


I love this huge-engined monster. 4 cylinders and 17.5 litres...

Another favourite of mine. Very low slung. I love the way the big V8 and exhausts stick out the sides...

This is a beautifully engineered car - very crisp looking in its bare metal with a stunning supercharged engine...

I've wanted to see this for a long time. It's one of my favourite cars and I really enjoyed sketching it. Originally it had a 16degree V-Twin - it's now fitted with a single cylinder engine of the same vintage. Frustratingly the original motor is rusting away in a garden but the owner won't sell it...

Wonderful aero-engined beast - capable of over 130mph - if you're brave enough! Starting to get bored of the black Prismacolor pencil so I tried sketching with a blue pencil for a change...

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.