This page is a retrospective of the work I did for various car magazines and local businesses. My journey began at age 20 when I wrote the editor of a small, niche magazine called Super Ford a letter and asked him if he would be interested in a column or column-filler art that would focus on unique or relatively unknown Ford based cars. He was excited to try it, so I created a monthly column called Sketchpad Speedway. Having to do this for a deadline really led to an improvement in my art. It seemed one job always led to another. It was very hard to keep up sometimes! Some of the more well known people or magazines who requested work were Wally Wyss, reknowned Cobra and Corvette historian; Jaguar Magazine; Street Rodder; Popular Hotrodding and CARtoons. Because magazines had to print in spreads or pages of four, Some of my art was put away (or stolen, e.g., Philly SCCA, Autosport Gallery in N.C.) for future filler material to make page counts. I do not know if it was ever used. Unfortunately, my record keeping was almost as bad as my business acumen, and I do not have any record of that work.
All of the art from this period was done with five Steadtler and Rapidograph pens that ranged from 000 to 1.0. Prepping them took about 20 minutes per drawing session. All the stippling was done by hand, so the finer pens took a pretty harsh beating and I went through 000's pretty frequently. Later, I mercifully found Letratone and used it for backgrounds and some larger areas. 40 years later, it's shrunken and deteriorated on some of this art, however.
I recieved a letter from Popular Hotrodding to 'please submit some work'. This really excited me, because the person who influenced my art the most, Keith Thorne, was the Art Director. I went on a marathon funny car drawing binge. As mentioned previously, I have no art schooling. That, combined with no internet, I did not have the knowledgebase available to me that people have today. It was like going on a road trip with no map. Wrong turns and deviations, expected. Many times I would have many hours in a piece and not be happy with where I was, but with deadline looming, I had to just see it through and hope for the best. Some of these were never finished. Most are lacking in some aspects ~ Now, I would do things differently, spending more time on background graphics, but overall, I remain eternally grateful that people saw potential and gave a dopey 20-something the opportunity to be a 'professional' for a short time. Especially, you Mom! I may go back and update these with some digital touch-up to document where I am now on this journey.
The Powers Steel Camaro is a bad XEROX and the Hell Fire 'Vette is distorted due to shrinkage of the Letratone. I have really come to regret not doing better archiving and record keeping when I see these problems now. Another non-issue in the new world of digital.
As I'm sure you can see, these cars were all statically shot with different cameras, so some variations in the tonality, saturation and general image quality, but I did not want to Photoshop too much of that out and risk losing the imperfect and organic feel that was intrinsic to a lot of (my) art in the analog era.
Putting this section together, I can almost hear one of those ads that use to be a regular thing on AM radio back then, the ones with the crazy monster voice-overs proclaiming "FUNNY CARS~ WILD FUNNY CAR MAYHEM~ THE SMOKE, THE FIRE, THE FURY!!! RACEWAYYYY PARK~ DON'T YOU DARE MISS IT!!!"
It would be unforgivably irresponsible of me to be from where I am, and not include hometown hero, Grumpy Bill J! Jungle Jim was another local hero, growing up. In 1969, My Uncle Bob would take my cousin Lain and I to Steve Kanuka's Speed Shop on 202 just to look around. We were mesmerized by all the chrome and sinewy headers hanging from the wall. A few STP stickers for the seats of the StingRay's too! We would pass Jungle's house along the way, and always try to catch a glimpse of his car when we drove by. I have an older version of one of his Nova funny cars queued up, hopefully that will be on the digital page sooner than later.
I wasn't sure if I should include the next two, but I like them for different reasons. I had to cut them out of a sea of badly placed, generic Times New Roman~The kind that is an afterthought placed by the poor stripping guy, who is also hopelessly behind schedule ...
This Cougar is another camera shot of a XEROX with aforementioned generic type and verbiage removed. I strive to keep the 'organic' feel of these~I did not have to try too hard with this one. The aging of the paper did that for me. I have a soft spot for these. My motorhead phase was spent building one up and racing it at the track and on the bypass. Keeping it pointed in a straight line was always an adventure.
Equine ...
And now for something completely different! An equine job broker in my hometown gave me work occasionally. This was the top half of a t-shirt design for the Saratoga Springs Triple Crown event. I had never done anything that was not a car up until that point, so getting these beautiful, sinewy beasts correct was quite challenging.
This design was commissioned for an off-the-rack t-shirt in the clients equine gift store. A Thoroughbred breeder in Chester County, PA. really liked it, so he screened it on the side of his work trucks as part of a logo. Here in Kentucky, I hope to revisit this subject matter to exploit the annual Derby insanity.
Architectural ...
This time-tattered flyer was commissioned by Chester County as a newspaper stuffer advertising West Chester's annual town fair. It is not my normal style because I was instructed to keep it very simple so a plate or screen might not clog easily. I was too naivé to specify one-time use, and it was used for almost a decade in different interations and garments. I was never given credit for it. Not my finest moment, that was no big deal, but, what really really tweaked me the most, was the Daily Local News paste-up artist mixing fonts! ARGHH!! C'mon man ...
This was commissioned by one of my favorite town vendors. He wanted a memorial t-shirt to commemorate a historical theatre in our town being razed. Chester County takes its history very seriously! Unfortunately, the art was too high a DPI to be used for screening. A huge mistake on my part turned out to be a piece of art he really appreciated for his house, however. Sadly for me, this second generation XEROX of a camera stat just doesn't do the original justice.
Epilogue ...
I hope you've enjoyed the trip in the Wayback Machine® to 1979-1984. Many thanks to you for taking time out to revisit this most profound time in my life, with me.