lowrida....

time for some non tattoo art.....when i was a teenager, before i started driving, i was obsessed with cars. every month, i would pick up magazines like car and driver or hot vw's. my favorite part was always in the front of the magazines, where an artist would render new models or concept cars before the company would release any pics of them. they usually came from spy photos and their imagination. most of the mags featured art by guys like thom taylor and chip foose. the medium was usually prismacolor pencils and pantone art markers(no computers yet). this led me to purchasing my first set of prismacolors about 20 years ago, and trying to figure them out. up till then, all of my drawing were usually in black and white,and usually copied pushead and m.c. escher art, or jim phillips(santacruz) and courtland johnson(powell peralta) skateboard graphics.
trying to figure out all the surfaces, reflections and paint finishes of the cars was really challenging. soon after this, i discovered the art of robert williams and ed roth in books and later attending the kustom kulture art show in 1993 which featured paintings and actual cars from these guys, it was sick!
so leading up to the time i started tattooing, cars and hot rod based tattoo flash was my favorite thing to draw, never mind the fact that i could never afford the kinds of cars i was drawing. when i first saw flash by dave waugh, little vinnie, aaron cain, and eddy deutche, i flipped out about the way these guys were using prismacolors.....
so flash forward to a month ago, a friend of mine commissoned me to draw her boyfriends mini truck, which has been featured in many national publications, for a christmas present. she didn't even know i used to draw so many cars. mini trucks have never really been my thing, but this was really fun to draw, and i hope this may lead to doing more things like this...

contrast this with some old ones. i did this '65 falcon for seth ciferri in 1996...

a couple tiny ones from 1994ish...

an audi tt for an add in 1998? i think...