Cars For Fun

I'd been thinking about this combination for a while before I actually drew it, but here is the "Shits & Giggles" pair: a '27 Model T hot rod with a '53 Mercury Flathead V8 and a Meyers Manx with a '60s Ford 289 c.i. V8 dropped in place of the VW motor.  

More Car Art: 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc.

Yesterday, I talked about how most of my car drawings were attempted imitations of real life images.  I'm not sure if I would actually consider those "art" because there isn't much thought or personal style that I intentionally put into these illustrations, but I could be wrong.  I guess what came out really does reflect my personal style, even though I tried my best to make it *gasp* like real life.  Well, I suppose they could be art because things like the realistic paintings from the Baroque period are without a doubt considered art.  Either way, I don't really care.  I just draw for my own satisfaction.

I also briefly mentioned my numbering systems for different scans of my car drawings to deal with my inability to decide on colors.  I'll go through a sequence below with my '57 Lincoln drawings first.

'57 Lincoln Premiere 0.0 on the left.  I forgot that I wasn't supposed to color it yet so I reverted the scan to black & white and had to sort of blot out the taillights on Microsoft Paint before printing it out on my non-color printer.  '57 Lincoln Premiere 0.1 on the right was the result.  

Monsters In The Garage

I always keep a list of cars to draw when I have time since my mind is usually thinking about this kind of stuff.  It's weird, although drawing is sort of fun, the main reason why I draw cars is because I have an image in my head that I would like to see in real life.  My habit is that if something I want doesn't exist or isn't obtainable by me, I make it myself.  Therefore, when it comes to images of cars, I attempt to make most of my drawings very realistic so that I can capture the image from my mind and put it on paper.  I also don't usually do art to express any feelings.

Cardboard Trucks

Cardboard, paper and have been my main building material ever since I was just a few years old.  Scrap was always readily available and Mom bought a huge pack of construction paper back in the day that must have lasted eight years.  I'd make rudimentary three-dimensional models of things like telephones or vehicles from my favorite cartoons and then try to color them with Crayola markers.  Scotch tape was just about my favorite office supply and I used tons of it.  Sadly, I think I have tossed most of those things before going to college. I don't seem to have taken any photos of them either, which is pretty uncharacteristic of me.  I also remember, in second grade, constructing a saggy, crumbly, five-foot long model of the new 2002 Ford Thunderbird entirely out of construction paper.  I reinforced the wheels with popsicle sticks like I'd seen my mom do on other crafts but that didn't help the rest of the structure much.  When my parents came home that night, we didn't have anywhere to put it so I dismantled it and kept the steering wheel and column which I still have today.  For the record, I was never interested in, nor have I ever been good at origami.

Slowly, the construction paper turned into cardboard and Scotch tape became duct tape or hot glue.  More of my crafts started having a more functional or practical purpose.  I made portfolios for artwork, boxes to carry gadgets, and gridded trays to carry Hot wheels cars.  This skill with paper and cardboard comes in handy pretty often and it is nice to have in the studio classes at the architecture school.

Sewing My Childhood Together

During the second semester of college, I took a sculpture class.  Many people have said that architecture and sculpture went hand in hand and I hadn't taken an art class since 8th grade so I thought, "why not?" It turns out this class was a "found object sculpture" class.  I still made the most I could out of it and had a lot of fun. (If any readers out there, by any sliver of chance, can take a class by Andrew Thompson - he teaches at three different schools now - do take it.  He's an awesome guy)

Many people seem to miss their early childhoods and usually refer to them as the good ol' days.  I've said to many friends, when asked, that I don't miss my childhood at all.  Life has just kept getting better and better for me.  I have usually thought of it to be mostly boring, somewhat deprived, and aside from some nice moments or events, I felt that there just wasn't really anything special about it.  Yes, my childhood as a whole  was pleasant and has helped me become the person that I am today but that period of time, I'd say, from when I was born to about 5th grade, wasn't very extraordinary in itself.