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Car art - on the Art Career Track - Brief Article - Column
Arts & Activities, June, 2002 by Dona Z. Meilach
Cars used to be thought of as a male thing, a "macho" interest. Today, however, girls are just as interested in owning and caring for a car. Caring often means customizing the car's body with pin stripes, a pet name for the car, or some individualized expressive symbol. It's part of the pride of ownership. It makes the car more a status symbol than merely a means of transportation.
Customizing cars is also a major commercial industry. Cars offer a surface for poster-like images that become moving billboards and a place to carry advertising messages.
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Usually people think of car designers as those who deal with the shape of an automobile body. Certainly, these have changed over the years. It's obvious that car chassis today differ greatly from those in the past. Old cars that have been saved, and well maintained or restored, become "Classic" or "Vintage" cars. They are sought after by serious collectors and are very expensive. Classic car rallies are held throughout the country and car owners spend thousands of dollars to decorate their cars artistically. These cars are kept in such mint condition that every component, inside and out, is polished to perfection.
Designs on Classic cars are painstakingly hand painted by artists who command high prices for their work. These same painters may also do contemporary cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, race cars and boats, and be very well-paid.
Customizing is popular on contemporary cars, too. Instead of costly hand painting, customizing consists of vinyl overlays that are applied much as a decal. Special mastics are used to adhere the vinyl to the metal and these can last for several years. Rub your finger over pin stripes or other decorations on today's cars and vans to feel the raised vinyl edge of the overlay.
Designing overlays is a huge business that employs top graphic artists. New designs are constantly in demand. Customizing car services have scores of catalogs from which a customer can select designs, mix them and combine them. The variety is staggering. There may be wood grains for dashboards to very avant-garde designs for advertising. There are do-it-yourself overlays available at automobile supply dealers. If you have a steady hand, you can easily add a pin stripe to a car by rolling the stripe from a spool, as you would use narrow adhesive tape. You can buy lettering and pre-designed symbols that may represent a club, a special interest or just an artistic image.
Classic car designs use similar elements but their mix-and-match variety is infinite. They may represent fire spewing from the motor to suggest speed. There are lightning bolts and teardrop designs. The color combinations are striking and quite different from cars you see on the road. Reds, yellows and oranges dominate, but there are also blues and greens. Highly contrasting colors seem to be combinations that catch the judges' eyes. Classic cars also express an owner's individuality.
Subdued colors are popular, too. There is a car with silver on white, others with two-toned front and back, or top and bottom, and several with green and purple combinations. Study the examples for color scheme and placement ideas, and think of how you would like to customize a car. Here's your chance to try whatever you envision from a simple, traditional customizing job, to one that is as fanciful and artistic as your dreams can conjure.
When you're on the road today, or in a shopping mall, observe how many cars are detailed with stripes, lightning bolts or rectangles. Note those you see with logos, names of companies or products, and other advertising messages and you'll begin to have some idea of the market.
PROJECT IDEAS
* Paint model cars: Many people collect replicas of classic and modern cars available from toy stores, collectible stores and so on. Adding paint to them, or pasting pieces of vinyl or paper onto a surface will yield a customized look to the cars.
* Look for illustrations of cars in motor magazines, and newspaper and magazine ads. Draw designs on cars in the ads.
* Request posters of cars from automobile agencies and decorate them.
* Make templates of cars, cut models from construction paper or cardboard, and decorate them. Decoration ideas may be from classic cars or from cars seen on the streets.
* Have students notice cars with advertising slogans or company logos. Design a logo for a car.
* Select an art theme for decorating. Try details from master paintings that might apply; either cut them out from illustrations or draw them on. Try lilies from a Monet painting, umbrellas from a Renoir, or dripping watches from a Dali.
* For a more ambitious project, hold a car rally. Have students create paper or plastic cutouts and customize their own cars. It's possible to enlist help and sponsorship from local automobile agencies.
* Explore the possibility of careers in customizing automobiles.
* Explore the Internet under "Classic and Vintage Cars." There are about 750 sites devoted to the hobby.
