Today, I released the fourth Lowly Gentlemen print in an ongoing series of artwork meant to introduce automotive passion to the world of interior decorating. This particular composition is one that has been sitting at the back of my mind for some time now. I have always wanted to mesh my background in oil painting with the more refined blueprint style that I’ve developed in my automotive work. The messy brushstrokes would offer the perfect contrast behind a set of penned blueprint lines, so I turned to the prototype cars of the 80s. With their intricate tube frame construction and aerodynamic contours, they offered the complexity needed to compliment the minimalist nature of the print. I landed on the sleek silver body of the Sauber Mercedes C9 and with that, I got to work.
The artwork started out on a pile of blank paper and a set of quickly penciled lines to develop a rough guideline for the proportions. Once I had established the general shape with a pencil, I turned to a mix of pens, markers, and paint to build the line work. The trick to the drafting style that I’ve used over the years is to remain loose and not worry about perfecting everything. With the scratches and scribbles of a ball point pen and splashes here and there from a paint marker, I worked on the varying line weights that would give the car its dimensions. For those wondering, this artwork can also be done with the use of a cheap drawing tablet.
Once I was happy with the drawings, they were scanned and brought into my computer where each line was converted to a vector in Adobe Illustrator. Vectors allow the image to be scaled up and down without any loss to its resolution, and I would need a high resolution to properly translate the small details onto a silkscreen. With the drawing in its graphic format, I arranged the halves of the car and introduced the typography element that would grace the bottom of the print. The two colors are kept on different layers to separate them for the printers where the black graphic was used to burn a pair of silkscreens.
The printers then dragged one color after the next over the screens and onto the charcoal paper. I chose a high quality #100 Cover paper card stock this time around. The texture and the grain present in the special Kraft paper adds an additional dimension behind the two inks and is one of my favorite aspects of this print. I started the day off by adding the last finishing touch to my own personal copy with a large wooden frame and mat. It was such a rewarding experience to see my original vision come to fruition on the wall of my studio. For my fellow Group C and Design fans, you can pick up a signed and numbered copy of the Sauber Mercedes C9 Art Print in the Lowly Gentlemen store. The print measures 18″ x 24″ and is limited to just 200 copies.
