Sketchiness, Volume One
Looking back, I guess you could say it was a dark time in my life. Nothing seemed to be going my way, and my favourite concept to draw was the hearse variant of the car shown in this scan:
It was 20 years ago, summer of 1987. I had dropped out of college and signed up for the Army, too young to know that when my girlfriend said, "Maybe we should just be friends for a while..." that it meant she was done being my girlfriend (I had taken the suggestion literally, hoping for a return to intimacy). I was just a kid, and a troubled one at that...
At the time I didn't know that the pentacle originally represented the path that the planet Venus traverses in our sky. Drawing pentacles, whether in crumbling concrete or in the centers of crosses, was mere irreverent doodling.
Something that I could not possibly have known was that 2 years later, Mitsubishi would 'steal' my car name. Nor did I realize that Peugeot had used it in the 1930s...
Back in high school, a modified 1975 Lincoln Town Car started showing up in my notebooks. It was no more than a hot rod / pimpmobile, but it kept evolving and growing. Something so big and fabulous, to grab your attention and block out your view of anything else, should naturally be called Eclipse. I began to draw a dark spot in the sky in my sketches, and as you can see, the Eclipse has its own unique hood ornament (it lights up in eerie ways). Before Mitsubishi introduced its little 2+2, I had even decided to name my car company the Eclipse Motor Foundation...
Ah, well. Such is life.
Believe it or not, beyond drawing my Eclipse as a sedan, limousine, and hearse, I also did a coupe and a 'speedster'. It was to have a monstrous 24-cylinder engine so that despite its size, it would go like Hell. Its appearance was at once regal and menacing. It was the ultimate in conspicuous consumption, wretched excess pushed to an aesthetic limit.
Perfect for a rock star's funeral procession.
While in the Army I had plenty of free time, much of which I would spend at the desk in my room, drawing for hours on end. Years later, the demands and conditions of fatherhood curtailed that activity somewhat. Still later, the arrival of a computer in my life upset the apple cart almost completely, and these days I hardly ever reach for a pencil...
...but I've been meaning to. Now that I've been able to work with 3D CAD on the EXOVAN concept, I have a clear vision of what it might look like -- and now that I am no longer able to use that program, scanning a pencil sketch seems the best way to share that vision in this space.
Look for more scans, of sketches old & new, in future posts.
Phil Smith
June 5, 2007
PS
I found my big stack of old sketches, tucked away. This one, from 1990 (pretty sure) I remember liking the unfinished look of -- if I continued, it might not look as good...
...and here's one from late '88 or early '89:
_____
At the time I didn't know that the pentacle originally represented the path that the planet Venus traverses in our sky. Drawing pentacles, whether in crumbling concrete or in the centers of crosses, was mere irreverent doodling.
Something that I could not possibly have known was that 2 years later, Mitsubishi would 'steal' my car name. Nor did I realize that Peugeot had used it in the 1930s...
Back in high school, a modified 1975 Lincoln Town Car started showing up in my notebooks. It was no more than a hot rod / pimpmobile, but it kept evolving and growing. Something so big and fabulous, to grab your attention and block out your view of anything else, should naturally be called Eclipse. I began to draw a dark spot in the sky in my sketches, and as you can see, the Eclipse has its own unique hood ornament (it lights up in eerie ways). Before Mitsubishi introduced its little 2+2, I had even decided to name my car company the Eclipse Motor Foundation...
Ah, well. Such is life.
Believe it or not, beyond drawing my Eclipse as a sedan, limousine, and hearse, I also did a coupe and a 'speedster'. It was to have a monstrous 24-cylinder engine so that despite its size, it would go like Hell. Its appearance was at once regal and menacing. It was the ultimate in conspicuous consumption, wretched excess pushed to an aesthetic limit.
Perfect for a rock star's funeral procession.
While in the Army I had plenty of free time, much of which I would spend at the desk in my room, drawing for hours on end. Years later, the demands and conditions of fatherhood curtailed that activity somewhat. Still later, the arrival of a computer in my life upset the apple cart almost completely, and these days I hardly ever reach for a pencil...
...but I've been meaning to. Now that I've been able to work with 3D CAD on the EXOVAN concept, I have a clear vision of what it might look like -- and now that I am no longer able to use that program, scanning a pencil sketch seems the best way to share that vision in this space.
Look for more scans, of sketches old & new, in future posts.
Phil Smith
June 5, 2007
PS
I found my big stack of old sketches, tucked away. This one, from 1990 (pretty sure) I remember liking the unfinished look of -- if I continued, it might not look as good...
...and here's one from late '88 or early '89:
_____
1 comment:
Wow. I'm hoping that you go on a mad scanning rampage so that people
out there can check out what I already know exists...an unbelievable
treasure trove of mind-boggling artwork in those old sketchbooks.
Certainly you should continue to devote lots of time and energy to
your ongoing creative endeavors, but digitizing your amazing archive
of older art would be a very, very worthwhile undertaking too...this
stuff needs to be preserved digitally.
Plus seeing some of that work again, all high-resolution and on the
computer screen is very inspiring to me at a creative level...I wanna
see more.
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