Random Rendering

A couple nights ago I was trying to keep my mind creatively active for a little bit and came up with a quick sketch of this car. It's not a real car in that it's not drawn from any reference- it's completely made up. However, it does have some references to it- like a mid 30's roadster that I guess I was thinking about while drawing. The next morning I decided to put some color to it while I was drinkin' my coffee. Since I used markers and pencils, it went really fast. Its not as super nice or clean as some of the others, but it still has a cool look to it. Definitely on the rougher side, but thats part of the fun. Besides, I think doing these quick little practice drawings is totally worth it. Doing something like this with a 'no boundaries' attitude can bring out ideas that can't be used in a task with lots of parameters.

Prints are available!

Custom 69 Camaro Rendering

UPDATE 12/8/12:  This piece was SOLD!! But you can still buy a print on the store page of the website:   Pinstripe Chris Store

When we moved to California I started working at a hot rod/restoration shop that is currently home for this 69 Camaro. I also started working on the car itself... I'm actually still working on the car. It landed at our shop for body and paint after having had some pretty significant customizations done at a different shop. The car was originally supposed to be painted black, but a possible spot in the BASF booth at SEMA this year meant that it could not be painted black or white. So the idea was to paint it a nice deep metallic blue that has a pearl in it that would brighten on the body lines of the car. A couple renderings of this car have already been done via CGI (one in black and one in blue), but that just wasn't doing it for me. So I offered to do a blue one using traditional media- airbrush ink, acrylics, and pencils. I whipped up a couple sketches and went with the angle I thought most effective- then I went to town with tape and paint. Once the car was done I added the gradient blue back panel to help bring out the picture. Then I went to FedEx and had a reverse color copy made so that I could put it under the paper and give the impression of lightly reflective floor. The paper is pretty transparent, so all it took was lining up the wheels to get the effect. The end result is a nice sharp blue rendering of this 69 Camaro. This piece definitely gave me lots of good practice and as always, was a blast to do!

1935 Ford Custom Rendering

A couple days I ago I was reading about some practicing techniques for doing renderings. One suggestion was to do smaller drawings so that the entire practice process would go faster, and less time would be spent on detail- basically an effort to work on just proportion and color. I found a good reference pic of a 35 Ford in a magazine and began drawing away. I didn't want to just re-draw the car I was looking at so I made some changes. The back end is stretched out a bit further then stock and the rear fenders are stretched to match. I added the ultra thin Cadillac style tail lights, but had them taper to a point at the bottoms so they'd emulate the tear drop style of the car. The back glass in the picture I drew from seemed too slim to me and was oval shaped, so I changed it to something a little more modern. Although the goal was not to spend too much time on detail, where I could I did. This drawing was the first time I used Steve Stanford's method of color blocking and airbrushed gradients. A lot of really tiny pieces of masking tape were used. The drawing is almost 10 inches across and a little bit of marker, airbrush ink, and acrylics were used. Photographing these drawings seems to be a bit of a challenge since each medium reflects light a little differently, but it turned out ok.

Ferrari Concept Car

Last weekend I broke out some new markers, pencils, and paper to make a fresh new rendering from scratch. This gave me the opportunity to practice some new technique with new materials. Years ago I did a bunch of Ferrari style concept cars since they are my favorite. I really wanted to try and render something red, so I thought this type of car would be a good start. I also wanted to try a view that I'm less comfortable with just for practice. Normally I'd draw a car with the front end on the left and work to the right- this time I did the opposite. The car itself is a mix of F360, F430, and F458 styling. I used a little bit of marker, chalk pastels, pencils, and acrylic paint for details. The only thing I didn't use that I normally would is an airbrush. This gave me the chance to practice some other mediums so that later I can use the airbrush more efficiently.

Ferrari F-50 Rendering

This one's an olde but goode. I started drawing cars in the 6th grade and pretty much never stopped. This particular F-50 I started in high school and finished the coloring about a year after graduating. This is back when I was doing everything in pencil and colored pencil and I was learning to use multiple versions of the same color. Now it's much easier to achieve smooth gradations and color transitions using an airbrush- but we all started somewhere. This was the last colored pencil drawing I did... the shop I worked at at the time was where I began airbrushing. Fortunately, this one has a home an a wall at my friend Alix's house   :)

Custom 54 F-100 Rendering version 2.0

About a week ago I decided to start fresh with a completely new rendering for my brothers 54 F-100. In light of recently meeting one of my personal heros, Steve Stanford, I was inspired to step up my game. So I looked at my original rendering after seeing lots of Steve's work and saw that I needed to go in a different direction. So I started from scratch with a brand new sketch that had a more effective perspective, as well as just being more accurate overall. It took me a couple evenings after work to get the colors down- it seemed like every time I looked at it I wanted to make more changes, but I just needed relax. This piece gave me the chance to practice some new things as well as complete a design. The truck itself has many customizations from a stock F-100. The biggest customization is the cab- it's a 56 cab that has 4 doors (a short rear door) that's done in a 60's "hard top" style (no frames around the doors and no center post). The other big customization is the front end- the running boards have been removed and the bottom of the fenders chopped to meet the level of the bottom of the doors. The grille is a phantom style grill that hides the headlights. Since the wheelbase is stretched with a longer cab, I drew in over sized wheels to try and keep stock looking wheelbase.

As with always this was a lot of fun to do!

Custom Vw Beetle Rendering

Last night while we were watching a movie I decided to break out the new pencils and get something down on paper. Since I now own an old Vw Bug, I thought what better place to start. There are a good number of Bugs running around here each with their own little twist... but I've got a couple new ideas I wanted to demonstrate. Starting with cutting the roof down significantly while retaining that nice sloping shape that the Bugs have. After having driven around in one of these tiny things, I can safely imagine that if you cut the roof down enough on one of these Bugs, you'd need to move the front seats back a little bit- so the front doors need to be a little bit longer. I also removed the frame around the door and and side windows making it into a 'hard top' style. The fenders are modified to allow for over sized wheels and tires to fit once the car is lowered as well as having exaggerated body shape to them. The hood is cut down so that it sits back off the front of the car allowing the fenders and lights to appear to stick out a little past the hood. The hood is also at a more gradual slope to unify the low cut shape of the entire car. This car would take a million hours to make- however it only took the length of the movie to draw. And as unrealistic as it seems, who cares- That's what putting concepts down is all about!

Ferrari 355 Rendering continued...

Quickly after I started doing the 'paint' on this piece I realized I was really doing this the hard way. Yes, I can admit that. But at this point, if it's going to be finished then it must be finished in the manner I started. So I've been masking areas, working color transitions... dark to light, then light to dark, then highlights... then some more pencil to freshen up some lines. After all that, I untapped the main mask to reveal exactly where I'm at at this point. Everything looks Ok... not wonderful, but not a total waste either. Next up would be the wheels and windows. I am also getting ready to get started on at least 1 new rendering today of something else entirely. It'll give me something to bounce back and forth on. Hopefully by doing that I can combine a few coloring techniques and new ideas to make things look better.

The pic is a bit darker then the rendering actually is... but yea. Some areas still need to be darkend, and some still need to be lightened/highlighted more- but I'm figuring on doing those touches very last.

Again, even if this particular rendering becomes a wash, I've still learned plenty of what to do and not to do on the next ones. Can't learn without making a few mistakes, right?

Ferrari 355 Rendering

Since I'm supposed to be on 'vacation', I decided to spend some of my time reacquainting myself with a few things as well as trying to learn new things. In this case I decided to mesh a few things together- Drawing, Airbrushing, and Ferrari's. All things I love. If I were to practice painting a Toyota Corolla, I might not care as much for the finished product. Even if this piece becomes a disaster, I've still learned from it. My initial drawing is on smooth bristol paper. I masked out all the body color areas as well as the ground reflection so all of the coloring could be done at the same time. And it's a good thing too because it's taken layers of different colors to get everything where it is... so duplicating them at this point would be a challenge. I've been using Golden Brand Fluid Acrylics for all my shades of red. Rather then paint the whole picture red and go over it with transparent black and white for shading- I'm using different shades of red to build shape. The body is close to being done.... it needs the appropriate pinks in the right areas to show highlighted reds and to add a gloss look. Then the addition of the grills and scoops will clean up some of the edges as well as deepen those areas. So far not too bad... I managed to burn up one of my airbrush compressors yesterday by over use. I'm havin lots of fun tho!

The pic doesn't quite do it justice... the painting isn't that grainy and there is much more distinction between reds. Straaaaaaaange...

Sharpie Ferrari

I got my copies back and started drawing away with the smallest sharpies ever. Here are the 3 ideas i've got so far. The 1st has the side panel separated by sharpie art- kindof filling in the area and splitting up the car. The 2nd is more of a basic scallop look filled with designs. Obviously since the drawings are fairly small, it's difficult to do much else then basic designs. Neat touch tho without being over powering. The 3rd is pretty interesting... it's kind of like looking at the old Pipe Dream screen saver but they end in a group of arrows. I like this one the best. You can follow all the lines and they all go somewhere. I would do the back 1/3 of the car this way; bumper, sail panels and maybe into the roof. And the lines could be done on many different colors and even drop shadowed individually. Retro and modern at the same time. Neat o.

Sharpie Ferrari

My task this weekend was to do a few concept drawings of the kind of sharpie art work i would do to a Ferrari F430 Challenge, should the opportunity arise. But I wouldn't be doing this if i didn't think there was at least a possibility. The first task- draw out a side profile of an F430. A little airbrushing and marker here and there and were done. The reason i did it in black & white was so that once i was done with the drawing i could go to an office supply store and have them make me several copies without color. This way i can add my own colors and do as many variations on the sharpie artwork as i can think of without augmenting the original. The drawing came out cool... i'll be back later with some ideas!

Sharpie Camaro?

In hopes of convincing a local dealership that a brand new Sharpie car could really be a big deal for them, i whipped up this concept pic last night around 1am. After about 3 hours i has done getting my idea on paper.... a little pencil, marker and airbrush go a long way. My idea is to do a semi-2 tone look that has no exact boundaries... it looks more natural. This pic has just basic sharpie art, but the possibilities are endless. I suggested a Camaro or muscle car theme. A Camaro themed Camaro has a cooler ring tho. The 2010 Camaro in question is yellow and they're seeking ideas to make it stand out. Well... i definitly think a Sharpie Camaro would be plently marketable and unique. Hopefully, they'll take me up on this. And hopefully it catches on.

Tomorrow i get to go back to talk to the higher-ups... im lookin forward to it. Not sure exactly what to say yet, but it's a situation im good at.

ps- freds gay.