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Click on any image to get the bigger picture |
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Looking back at some of the artwork pictures, it is amazing just how ambitious some of the racers were a couple of decades ago. The pursuit of sponsorship is never easy but at the very least, the potential client would always be impressed with the added impact of artwork in the portfolio. The Lowes brothers, Stuart and Craig were regulars customers of mine and much of their artwork commissions came off, I'm glad to say. They certainly put a lot of effort into trying to raise the image of their racing activities. |
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Jon Lovett as we've seen before, was very proactive in trying to land a sponsor. Pioneer Stereo was an obvious candidate as they had been involved with funny car racer John Collins in the USA, amongst others. This was a 300 inch wheelbase Top Fuel machine sporting small diameter aircraft style front wheels, which were all the rage at the time. |
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To complete the impressive display, Jon's custom Peterbilt tractor unit and trailer would be pressed into service with matching livery and this is the third of four such combinations I did for the Redcar-based nitro pilot. |
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The Lowes brothers had started out with Jag-powered altereds but in the early '90s had progressed to Pro Comp (now Top Methanol Dragster). This is their first effort 20-odd years ago with Craig Lowes behind the wheel and brother Stuart looking on in the background. |
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This is the dragster in action at Santa Pod and the new car turned out to be unsurprisingly more competitive than the old one. |
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A close up of the nose and canard wings revealed the sposor logos and the team were kind enough to put my name above them on the top panel, which was most flattering. |
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The Lowes Bros were not finished yet. They had a new main sponsor with Total Lubricants and a smaller one with Loctite. The orange colour of Total had to be incorporated into the red and blue of the previous sponsors which obviously complicated matters. To most people, this is just a sticker co-ordination exercise which is why nowadays, to my eyes, most multi-sponsored cars look frankly, rather crap. By carefully hand drawing and manipulating the design and colours, the dragster lost nothing in its overall appearance. |
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The Lowes were pretty savvy about servicing their sponsors and Craig was often phoning me with a new idea. This is something very unusual. An illustration to indicate how the sponsor logos could be used in promotional material. |
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In this case, the Total Performance banner was used to show how it could be used on T-shirts, hero cards and window stickers. This was all under the headline 'Promoting Total through drag racing.' |
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To further compliment interest in Total, an illustration depicting the dragster on point-of-sale material was prepared. This included a counter display, posters and display headers which would go over the oil bottles in shops where Total products were sold. How much of this came to fruition I'm not sure, but the ideas were sound and I've never done anything quite like it since. |
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This is the car illustrated finished in designer's gouache and waterproof ink from a technical pen. Rather than just put on an oblong Union Jack, I made it flow into the paintwork design. |
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Wayne Saunders had recently come into drag racing, sharing the driving duties of an Altered called Animal with his father Mick. |
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Mick had raced in the '70s with a big block Chevy-powered T and the pair raced this very clean Bantam in the early '90s as I recall. Mick was infamous for vaulting over the Santa Pod fence with this car. |
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Left : Wayne then imported a Competition dragster from America for himself. It ran as good as it looked, again with Chevy power. It initially ran with the logo of its previous owner, Matt Cooke Racing. |
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Wayne asked me to do a design on his dragster to reflect the logo of sponsor Viking Tyres. |
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I haven't been able to find a picture of the artwork yet, but here is the dragster in action, looking photogenic in red, white and blue. |
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Here is an unfinished illustration depicting the second generation Paranoia altered. It is rendered in coloured pencil which can yield remarkable detail and was done about 20 years ago. One day I will finish it! |
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This is one of a series of paintings of classic drag racing vehicles I'm doing nowadays. It depicts Don 'The Snake' Prudhomme's Army Monza Funny Car and is painted in oil on canvas. I only started teaching myself to paint in oils around 2008 as I like a new challenge every so often. These are highly detailed and very accurate with
great depth of colour as that is what pleases me. |
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On a launch is the Hauge Bros Corvette Top Methanol Funny car. The body is one of the featureless Iversen Bros mouldings (they did a very similar Camaro that the NHRA were not too enamoured with as they both looked the same). Anyway, I liked watching Kara Hauge put the car through its paces and I remember buying one of the team's T shirts to support them as they were a low buck outfit. Their apparel was not the best design but everyone else was wearing the opposition's colours and I always like the underdog. The team used to operate out of a converted bus and all seemed to enjoy a cigarette as I recall. I remember them opening the bus door to pass me a T shirt and I was taken aback by the clouds of fag smoke that belched out of the interior! |
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This is the chassis of the Hauge Bros Funny Car. I seem to recall that their previous car was a small Datsun-bodied doorslammer. |
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On page two is depicted the artwork for the Kopex-sponsored Chevy Beretta-bodied methanol burning Funny Car of Mark Newby and Terry Revill. This is the completed car in burnout mode at Santa Pod and a neat looking machine it turned out to be. |
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All material on this site is copyright and should not be reproduced without permission |
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(First Posted on 27 July 2011) |
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