Cruisin’ the Classics
Painting classic cars… this idea never crossed my mind. One day, back in 2017, my musician friend‘s wife, Marilyn Kirkpatrick, came up to me after church service and said, “you should paint classic cars!” She said that would be easy for me. But what she didn’t know is that back in the eighties I was an auto parts illustrator for Sacramento Vintage Ford. She told me about a classic car fundraiser coming up, so I got signed up to try my hand at plein aire (painting on-site). Before the show even started, I had 3 people signed up for paintings! I ended up painting 4 cars that day – each at $75 a pop. They were a bit crude, to say the least.
We were in the process of moving to Oregon at the time. But when we got settled, Maggie and I started attending car shows with a couple of sample paintings. That’s when things really took off. Last year alone I had at least one car portrait commission every month. Needless to say I was up to my knees in paint!
Please go to my “Classic Car Portraits” page to see many more samples. Enjoy!
