Painting Cars at the West Coast Kustoms Auto Show

This weekend I went to Santa Maria, California to attend the West Coast Kustoms auto show to paint cars and had a blast! I brought my journal, some watercolor pads, my portable watercolor kit, and homemade easel. Wanting the maximum size to paint in my journal, most of the pieces span two pages of my 5×7 Lucca journal.

I did this because I realized that I really liked drawing and painting cars and saw that this show would have tons of unique cars and trucks with amazing details, colors, and history. The design and engineering that went into the cars in addition to the customization that the owners and craftspeople put into them made the cars such an awesome subject. I was also hoping to meet people to see if there was any interest in my new artwork commissioning venture.

I met all kinds of people, many who stood in front of their vintage car or truck with the pride that a parent has in seeing their child succeed. I found trucks and cars that I liked, set up my easel and started painting. Often, the owner of the vehicle would come up to me and we would start talking. When I do watercolor painting there is lots of time to talk while I wait for paint to dry in the sun and I used this as an opportunity to ask the owners to tell the stories behind their cars.

Then the photo albums came out. I heard stories about buying cars, inheriting cars, rebuilding, repainting, mixing parts from different cars and years, welding, hammering, hydraulics, adding A/C and modern sound systems. I do this to embed the stories in the paintings that I am making, as a way of remembering these priceless conversations. For me, these paintings each had 1,000 words.

I saw the 1:1 interaction that I was having time and time again similar to the type that I have had with musicians as I sketched them while they performed and then shared my sketch with them. In real-time, I am appreciating their artwork and they appreciate mine. In this case the cars are artwork, each one a unique instance of creativity and engineering expressed with welding torch, hammer, wrench, and mechanical devices. When I respond to their artwork with my artwork done with a pen and brush, I make a connection and I love that!

The first day of the show, I went around and did paintings across the Santa Maria Fairgrounds until I filled my journal. Many people came up to me who wanted to watch me paint and talk with me – asked me questions, see examples of my work. I met so many parents who were showing their kids that adults to artwork too – encouraging the children to keep at it. If they were interested in it, I would hand them a flyer about doing commissions from photographs of their cars.

Last page of my journal – time to order a new one from IonaHandcraftedBooks.com

The second day, having no more pages in my journal, I pulled out a pad of watercolor paper that had a grid of 25 1½” squares on it that I got at Case for Making in San Francisco and proceeded paint twenty five little sketches of cars around the show – each one took 5-10 minutes. This was a really fun exercise as the cars were so distinct, that even at a mini sketch, people at the show recognized the cars instantly.