Colorful Abstract Hot Rod Sketch Paintings

 I decided to do some small paintings on paper to experiment with bolder color and abstraction, below are the results.

The first one is a blue flathead powered Model A Ford hot rod roadster with a vibrant orange, yellow, green and blue background and a violet and pink foreground.

The second sketch is a red Model A Ford five window coupe hot rod with an orange and yellow background and a pink and purple foreground.

The third painting is a 1936 Ford chopped coupe hot rod with a red and blue background and a pink and blue foreground.

I really enjoyed these little sketch paintings and plan on exploring this colorful abstract style further.

Three New Car Paintings Runny and Splattered

 I completed three new automotive paintings this week in a somewhat expressionist style using drips and spattering as well as scribbly line work using paint pens.

"Red Jaguar XK120"
Acrylic, 9" X 12" on 1/8" panel

"Mint Green 1954 Mercury Monterey"
Acrylic, 16" X 12" on deep cradled panel

"1934 Chevy Pickup Rat Rod"
Acrylic 12" X 16" on 1/8" panel

Car Show Season, Finally!

 It's been a long winter, still snowing up to less than a week ago, the week when car show season usually starts.  Of course snow fall cancels car shows so there were no shows last week.  As bad as the snow was early last week it abruptly stopped and the temperatures climbed 30 degrees in just a couple days.  Monday, the day after Easter the sun was out and we had the highest temperatures of the year so far, it hit as high as 77 degrees.  This has been quite a shock to the system, wearing a heavy coat to shorts and short sleeves in just a few days, I won't complain though because I have been anxiously waiting for spring and to finally go to car shows.  

The first car show I went to was just an evening cruise night on Monday but it's obvious everybody else was anxious for the car show season to finally start as well since the parking lot couldn't hold all of the cars that showed up which gave me plenty of sketching opportunities. 

The first sketch was of a 1930 Model A Ford hot rod pickup, old school style without fenders with big and little skinny bias ply tires, my favorite.  I used a Tombow Fude pen and watercolor.

I was able to do the next sketch without moving, a 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner classic muscle car.

The last one was a highly customized 1937 Ford Phaeton. Unfortunately I didn't capture the sweeping shape of this unique car very well.

It was a little windy and I forgot to bring a couple binder clips with me which meant I had to keep one hand holding the sketchbook at all times which limited the techniques I could use a bit. I'm not sure it is worth bringing all that watercolor gear with me anyway, just complicates things and really this is more about drawing practice, I'm not making masterpieces here.  I'm leaning towards just taking pens and grayscale markers to future shows.

Sketchbook Wednesday #3

 These week I'm sharing a couple pages out of my daily sketchbook.  I've been developing a habit of sketching first thing in the morning.  This week I decided to do multiple small sketches on each page based on photographs from a magazine consisting of custom cars and hot rods.  

These sketches are only for my own practice and to add to my visual library.  I start each sketch with a fine black pen with no lay-in, just straight to it.  I pick a shape, draw it and then start drawing and adjacent line or shape until I've sketched the whole car, then I shade the sketch using gray brush pens.

Playing with Paint Pens

 I've had a couple dozen or so Posca acrylic paint pens for a while now but only used them to embellish other art, recently I decided to use them as the primary medium in some sketches, below are a couple examples.

"Abandoned Chevy Dump Truck Sketch"
8x10, multimedia on paper
Click on image to purchase

I used acrylic inks to tone and texture 140 lb Arches hot press watercolor paper in a block before laying out and coloring with the paint pens. Since I have a limited range of colors I had to be a bit more creative with the color, which I kind of enjoy anyway since my objective is never to be realistic. I kept the strokes open for the same reason, I just like the energy squiggly, zig zaggy, open strokes give, this also serves to visually mix the colors a bit.  The subject is a 1946 Chevy dump truck from a reference photo I took at the Erickson Ranch in Wallsburg, Utah.

"Red Model T Ford Hot Rod Sketch"
8x10, multimedia on paper
Click on image to purchase

I used the same paper for this one but used watercolor and gouache for the toning and texturing. I went even more colorful and sketchy with this Model T Ford V8 equipped hot rod I photographed at a local car show.

Since making these sketches I've picked up a bunch more Posca paint pens, in fact I now own all of the regular colors, they were that fun to use.  I've also started a couple new sketches but on canvas paper toned with acrylic paint, hopefully I'll have those ready to blog about next week.

Sketchbook Wednesday #1

 This is the first of a weekly series sharing sketches from my sketchbooks.  Yes, this one is a day late as I intend these posts to go up every Wednesday. 

1947 Mercury Convertible Sketch

The first sketch was done using a Tombow Fude pen for the line work and gray markers for the tones on bristol smooth paper and features a 1947 Mercury convertible from a reference photo I took at a local car show.

"Abandoned 1950 Chevy Flatbed Truck Sketch"

The second sketch is done using brown (sepia) pens and markers.  I intended to do most of the line work using a small brush pen but it turned out to be dried out. The linework is done with a Faber Castel brown pen, the tones were added using Tombow markers all on bristol smooth paper. The subject is an old Chevy medium duty truck with wheels stacked on it's bed from a photo I took at the Erickson Ranch in Wallsburg, Utah.

"Vintage Model A Ford Hot Rod Coupe Sketch"

And the last sketch features a Model A Ford five window coupe hot rod equipped with a V8 engine with dual carbs. This sketch was done using a Tombow Fude pen for the line work and Tombow gray markers for the tones on bristol smooth paper.  I used a vintage photograph as my reference.

So, keep an eye on this blog in the future for more sketches posted every Wednesday.

Pushing the Color

 I recently painted a couple experimental compositions with a focus on vibrant color and abstraction.

"Grassy Hillside in Autumn"
Acrylic, 12" X 9"
Click on image to purchase

The colors on this small autumn landscape aren't too crazy except for the purples sprinkled throughout, the sky is mostly blue and the trees and grasses are yellow and orange, still the colors are mostly bright and vibrant.

"Tri Carb Hot Rod Rod"
Acrylic 11" X 14"
Click on image to purchase

I went more abstract with this one as a challenge to see how far I can go towards abstraction while keeping the subject recognizable. Parts of the old school hot rod are not fully defined, colors overlap in non-objective ways, random brush and knife strokes add variety to the blues, purples and oranges with touches of red and yellow. Finally I added lines, some random using paint pens and random splatters using fluid paint.

Both paintings are definitely attention getters, the color in the hot rod painting is especially vibrant, almost pushing into pop art territory. 

Colorful and Sketchy

 I've been creating a new series of artwork lately, I call it "Colorful Sketchy".  It's an all automotive series, consisting of classic cars, vintage trucks, hot rods, custom cars, abandoned vehicles and more.  They are all "line and wash" sketches, which means I use pens and watercolor.  My goal is not realism, rather I purposely try to make the drawing and washes of color loose and give the subject extra character. I have been doing as many as five of these a week for a couple months now.  Below are a few of my favorites so far, but you can see all that are currently available in my Etsy store here" Colorful Sketchy 

"Blue Hot Rod Ford Pickup" pen and watercolor 8" X 10"

"Yellow Hot Rod Ford Pickup Sketch" pen and watercolor 8" X 10"

"Green 1946 International Farm Truck" pen and watercolor 8" X 10"

"Orange Ford T-bucket Hot Rod" pen and watercolor 8" X 10"

"Purple Custom 1956 Mercury Hardtop" pen and watercolor 8" X 10"

A New Video - Hot Rod Charcoal Sketch Demo

 It's been a while since I made a video, finally got around to it this week.   I made a loose, even semi-abstract sketch of a 1932 Ford roadster hot rod using vine charcoal, regular charcoal blocks and pencils and tinted charcoal.  I also used alcohol to create splashes and drips.

Prints Available

And the Winner is...

Last week I posted this photo to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

I asked my followers which one of these they'd like to see me paint next.  By the time I was ready to start painting the Model T Ford roadster hot rod had the most votes, so that's what I painted.

"Little Hot Rod Roadster"

As you can see I chose a close crop as I often do. I also made the car blue instead of black and ditched the high rise tunnel ram intake and replaced it with a regular intake with small, round aircleaners. Of course I painted it with palette knives to make it a bit abstract and create lots of texture.

The rusty old Chevy truck came in second in the voting and I'm working on that painting now. The abandoned antique Farmall tractor got a couple votes also and so may be my next painting, or maybe just a sketch...or maybe both.

Here are a couple close ups of the hot rod painting so you can get a good look at that texture.

Hot Roddin' With Paint

I've been slacking with my posting lately, sorry about that,  and this one is going to be a short post, sorry about that too, but at least I'm giving you a video to watch to give you something to occupy 15 minutes of your stay at home time.




This painting is based on a photo I took at a big car show last year.  The car was built at a shop in Grantsville, Utah and is a bit famous having been published in Wheel Hub magazine so I stayed pretty true to the colors and features, of course the palette knife applied layers made it more abstract, but it's still quite obvious that it is a 1932 Ford hot rod.  Here's the finished painting;

"32 Hot Rod"

Click on image to purchase

Close Crops

There are a couple of ways to abstract something yet keep it representational.  You can alter and/or simplify the shapes but not so much they become unrecognizable.  You can obscure the object with abstract marks.  Or you can use unexpected colors, or any combination of the three. A fourth way is to focus on only a portion of the subject rather than include the whole. That's what I chose to do with these two paintings, that and alter/simplify the shapes slightly which is an automatic result of using knives to paint instead of brushes.

Orange Studebaker Champion

Acrylic, 16" X 20" X 3/4" cradled panel

(Click on image to purchase)

The 1950 Studebaker Champion has a very distinctive front end, the center of which is often referred to as a "bullet nose" so of course I composed the painting to focus on this feature.

Tri Power

Acrylic, 18" X 20" X 3/4" cradled panel

(Click on image to purchase)

Subject number two is a Model A Ford coupe modified into a fenderless hot rod equipped with a Chevy V8 engine sporting three, two barrel carburetors, hence the name "Tri Power". I showed more of the car in this one, nearly half, because I felt there was more story to tell.  Obviously that hopped up motor is the focus.

Hemi Hot Rod

I like my hot rods "old school", which means I like the traditional styling from the late 40's into the early 60's.  To me that era was the epitome of cool in the hot rod and custom car world.  It can be hard to find a car around here built strictly to that style, many come close but then install modern street radials which often kill the look.  I admire a car owner that keeps true to the old school aesthetic, it isn't exactly easy and you have to give up a bit of comfort and drivability, to me the look is worth it.

"Hemi Hot Rod"

12" X 16" Acrylic on panel

The hot rod depicted in this painting is one of those cars that gets it right.  The early hemi engine makes this ride even sweeter.  The Chrysler corporation hemispherical engines were in the thick of the early overhead valve engine displacement wars of the early 1950's and so were a prime candidate for an engine swap into a Model A Ford or '32 Ford hot rod like this one.  This is one of my favorite local cars, I love it.

I feel this is one of my most successful abstraction attempts to date, as abstract as the engine is I think anybody that's into vintage cars will recognize it as an early hemi...one hot rodded with four single barrel carbs and lakester headers.

All Caught up on the Ten Minute Sketches

This post will catch you up on all my ten minute sketches, that's partly because it's been a few days since I've made a new one, I've been a bit obsessed lately over a medium I haven't used in quite some time so I've neglect the TMS', my next post will have details.  As in the last post these are all pen.

This one was a test for a minimalist landscape design.  It came out with kind of a graphical feel, I kind of like it for it's simplicity and boldness.

This is a vintage gas station scene based on a photo I took in Wallsburg, Utah. I may make a drawing of this.

A 1932 Ford tudor hot rod sedan, just for the sake of sharpening my drawing skills.

This one is based on a photo I took in Lynndyl, Utah.  I move some things around a bit and added the truck.  I think it came out a bit busy so if I do a drawing or painting of it I'll have to cut some clutter.

And finally my last TMS, a barn and trees based on a photo I took in Midway, Utah.  This subject will make an appearance in my next post.