Wednesday, March 16, 2011

The Pin up Trucks

"Lucky Ladies"


This series of Pinups were rendered on the side panels of three tow trucks for a trucking company out of San Jose. The owner wanted his fleet of trucks to have the look of bomber planes from WWII. The three trucks were based out in a gray silver and then cleared and cut then sent my way. With the help of Taylor Shultz the trucks were airbrushed with rivets accented with water stains and a little rust for character. This gave the appearance of aircraft paneling.
With some reference material from Al Buell and Gil Elvgren (two of my favorite pinup artists) and the guidelines from the owner that there be a blond, brunette and a redhead, I went to work on painting the pinups. I started out by lightly sketching out the figure on transferite paper and the gently cut out the basic outline of the pinup. I then built up the details in white of the entire image. I then moved into the flesh tones. Starting out with the lightest in tones and working my way to the darkest. I had as many as 10 to 12 different hues in my pallet to build the flesh tones. I used transparent colors so that each successive color would play and build off the last.

After completing the details of the rest of the figure, eyes, lips, hair etc. I back masked the ladies and worked on the dresses. Working in much the same manner I built up the depth of their garb using darker shades then back to light for highlights.

Completed with bombs and titles, these ladies were ready for the road. The images were duplicated to the other side of the truck, a daunting task considering I had to reverse the image. This was a fun and challenging project and I look forward to doing more pinups in the future (nothing like studying the female form).