Art by Erika Taguchi-Newton

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Mustang Sally - Pinup Girl for 24 Hour Lemons

Mustang Sally - 24hr Lemons pinup girl

Finally completed, "Mustang Sally" is ready to go for a ride!

Mustang Sally - 24hr Lemons pinup girl

The paint brushes did not like the rough texture of the hood that's been spray painted with matte black. So the details had to be done with charcoal pencils, and I really like the effect.

We did a quick test fitting on the car:
Mustang Sally - Test fitting

A progress shot in my studio:
WIP - 24hr Lemons car hood

The race will be held at Palm Beach International Raceway on December 31, 2010.

The race team's blog - http://teamexperimentals.blogspot.com/
24hr Lemons site - http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Transferring Large Drawing

When I was a kid I saw a movie about Michelangelo ("Agony and Ectasy"), where Charlton Heston was transferring a large drawing onto the wall of the Sistine Chapel. He had punctured pinholes through the paper, outlining the drawing, and was rubbing chalk onto it to transfer dots onto the wall. I've never seen anybody do this in real life, probably because projectors are much easier.

Well, I didn't have a projector handy, and I didn't want make a mess on the hood by doing the grid method. I scanned in my original drawing, scaled it up in Photoshop, and printed it out in pieces. I taped the pieces together, then tediously punctured holes, following the lines of the drawing.

WIP - 24hr Lemons car hood

After taping it into position on the hood, I used a soft white chalk and traced the drawing. Then I redrew the sketch on the hood by connecting the dots.

WIP - 24hr Lemons car hood

I can't imagine doing a complicated drawing this way, but for this one it worked out great.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Work-in-progress: Pinup Girl for 24hr Lemons

There's a hood of a car on my dining table! Living with a grease-monkey husband, I got use to the dirty door knobs, transmission on the patio, and his fellow grease-monkeys working on various cars on the driveway. Well... maybe not the dirty door knobs...

WIP - 24hr Lemons car hood

Actually, the hood is there for a good reason this time. I'm painting on it! It's for my husband's latest obsession - 24hr Lemons Race. The entry cars are suppose to have a theme. Since his car is a Mustang, the theme is P-51 WWII fighter plane called the Mustang. As you know, the pilots painted pinup girls on the nose of the planes back then.

My husband is great - he's been so supportive of my goal to be a working artist. I wanted to do something for him for putting up with MY obsession last couple of years.

WIP - 24hr Lemons car hood

Normally, I would do this kind of thing out on my patio. And normally, Florida would be beautiful outside this time of year. But we are having some freakish cold weather down here, so dining table it is!

I also had some great help last night from our roomie. Thanks, Rama! If he can keep helping (hint hint) this will be done in no time!

The race team's blog - http://teamexperimentals.blogspot.com/
24hr Lemons site - http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/