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...

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...

Bugatti T23 Engine

Had a spare half-hour whilst visiting Prescott today so I nipped in the museum and made a quick sketch...

New App and quick car doodle/paint

Here's a little test done with my latest iPad painting app - Procreate. It doesn't have loads of features but it does have some great brush creation controls and a nice simple interface. This was done entirely on the ipad - starting with a quick zenbrush sketch...

... and here's the Procreate part. The app allows you to make your own brushes using images for both the shape and texture. It also has layers and is reasonably fast. The new version will apparently be higher resolution - which is good. It costs $7.99...

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...