Playing With Classic Cars

Often times I start a painting, get frustrated with it, take it off the easel and set it aside, put it back on the easel a few days later, get frustrated, set it aside again and so on.  Most often these frustrating paintings eventually get covered and the surface used for a totally different painting.  Occasionally I'm actually able to make the painting turn the corner and turn into something worthwhile, that is what happened with this one.

"Yellow 1953 Buick", Acrylic 12" X 16"

This is a 1953 Buick classic car.  I started this painting a couple months ago and it did a couple stints on the easel, the third time was the charm. The car in my reference photo that I took at a local car show was actually kind of a pale green, I decided it needed to be something more dynamic and painted it yellow. I painted this one mostly with brushes with highlights applied with a palette knife and thick paint.  I kept it loose and impressionistic.  I also added some splatters at the bottom.  I kept the background abstract in blue and violet.

A Six Day Blue Art Challenge

 Last week I participated in an art challenge put on by an administrator of an art forum.  The challenge was to produce one piece of art, start to finish, each day for six days and each piece must contain the color blue.

"Small Autumn Tree Study" acrylic, 8" X 6"

"Autumn Bushes Study" acrylic 6" X 8"

For the first two days I kept it simple and just painted two small acrylic autumn landscape studies with blue skies.  The first one is an autumn version of a summer landscape I did for the green challenge, the other just on an old photograph I took in Wanship, Utah.

"Tall Blue Trees" acrylic, 12" X 9"

For the third day I revisited my abstract trees series.  I started by adding texture using pieces of tissue paper wrinkled and fixed to the surface using gel medium.  Then I applied high flow paint and water and let it drip, then refined the composition and colors using heavy body paint applied with brushes and then added a bit of line work using acrylic markers.

"A Big Blue Barn" acrylic 9" X 12"

This one is a little out of character for me.  Ya, it's a rural landscape, and it's an autumn scene, but I've never painted a barn blue before, I don't believe I've ever seen a blue barn but I wanted more than just a blue sky for this one to comply with the theme of the challenge. The reference was a photograph I took in Liberty, Utah.

"Abandoned Blue Chevy Dump Truck" acrylic 11" X 14"

It's been a while since I've painted an abandoned vehicle so I picked one for the fifth day.  The reference was actually green but it's no big deal to make it blue.  The truck in the reference was actually in a junkyard in Nephi, Utah, I put it in a field backed with bushes.

"Blue 1935 Buick Sedan" pastel 12" X 16"

For the last day I really pushed my skills.  This painting was popular with the other participants but I'm not especially happy with it.  I decided to use pastel instead of acrylic for this one.  The painting is very loosely based on a vintage black and white photograph of a 1935 Buick driving in traffic on a highway somewhere in California. I focused on the Buick, removed the traffic and modified the background.

I've been doing a lot of challenges lately and am now rather burnt out on them.  I think this last one especially pushed me.  Time to do something a little different I think, maybe some pen drawing.

That One Distinctive Feature

Most classic cars have one, that one design element that immediately tells you what make, model and year the car is without seeing anything else.  The 1959 Cadillac tailfin with it's bullet taillight lenses, the 1957 Chevy headlight with the vent screen in it's surround, and the 1971-73 Buick Riviera's with their boat tails.

Boat Tail Buick

Acrylic, 16" X 20" on 1/8" panel

(click on image to purchase)

These unique design elements are what I hope to focus on in my close crop paintings like this one of the aforementioned early 1970's Buick Riviera.  Actually the whole car is distinctively designed from front to rear.  I chose to focus on the boat tail in this painting because that is my favorite element.  The profile of these cars is nice as well, but I'm not too much of a fan of the front end, the design makes it look like it has the overbite of a great white shark.

I have to admit though I don't hate the front end as much as I used to, it's grown on me a bit.  If one this nice showed up in my garage I definitely wouldn't kick it out anyway.

Here are some close up detail photos of the painting so you can get a good look at the texture.  (click on the images to enlarge them.)