Art cars gathered in Providence, RI. Image via Wikipedia

Recently I wrote about how to keep your art car rolling for as long as possible. Here are a few more thoughts on creating art cars, especially about safety, using the right materials, and making sure your vehicle will be street legal when you are done.

Decorating  just any old car you happen to have access to may not be the best idea. Why put hundreds of hours and possibly thousands of dollars into an automobile that simply cannot be kept running for very long?

Before you decide to either buy an old car to turn into an art car or use one you have, be sure to have a good mechanic check it out. A car may run OK now but have serious problems that could cost you thousands of dollars to fix in the near future. For many people that could mean the end of their art car project.

In How to Keep Your Art Car Rolling I wrote about how to find a good repair shop in Houston, where I live. I’m not sure it was clear that the website I mentioned can help you find a good automobile repair shop anywhere.

For example, you could find the best Chicago auto repair shop for a 2002 Toyota Camry, or for any car. Or you could get information on the site about what to do if your check engine light is blinking.

If you are painting your art car, you want to make sure the paint will stay on. You do not want your artwork to peel or flake off because you failed to prepare the surface properly or used the wrong kind of paint. I have had paint start to peel in just weeks. That is ugly!

And you want to use a UV protectant coating so the paint and any glued on objects resist fading in the sun. Without UV protection sun-fading can happen much faster than you may think, and it can ruin your artwork.

If gluing on objects, be sure to use the right glue. After much experimentation, I recommend the kind of glue used for attaching rearview mirrors to windshields. It was the only one I found that worked reliably when gluing glass to fiberglass, for example. You do not want things falling off your car after just a few hours or days.

CAUTION: Whether you are gluing, painting, spraying, fiberglasing, sawing, grinding or sanding, be sure to always wear a mask and be sure to work in a well-ventilated area! No art project is worth permanently damaging your health or dying for.

I want to stress again that you should have your potential art car checked out before you start working on it. And if you are doing more than just painting the car, you should get an auto repair shop’s advice on how to make sure your car can be maintained after it is finished.

Certain modifications, even small ones, could potentially cause problems with your car or make maintenance difficult. Worse, from the artist’s perspective, some designs could be damaged during maintenance or repairs if they are not planned properly.

It is also important to keep your art car street legal. It may take a pro to tell if the mods you want to make will make it illegal to drive your car. That is especially important if you plan to use your art car to get to work or for road trips.

If you only use your car for parades or art car exhibits, extreme mods that impair visibility, prevent getting an inspection sticker, and so on, may not seem like a problem. But how are you going to get your car to the venue if you cannot legally drive it on the public streets? Will you tow it? Carry it on a trailer? Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to legally drive it there?

Laws vary from state to state and even from city to city on what is legal and what can be licensed to drive on the street. Even a small difference in modification could make the difference between being able to license the car or being able to get a permit to park on your own street in some cities. A mechanic who inspects cars for your state should be able to tell you what is legal where you live.

Getting some good advice before you start arting your car may save a lot of heartaches—or backaches. It is easier to change your plans than to undo and redo hours of painstaking work. Even if it costs a little money to get advice, that advice could save you a bundle later.

With all that in mind, nothing beats the fun of taking an old, ugly car, truck, or van and turning it into a masterpiece of kitchy art fun.

Image by L. Marie via Flickr

I live just a few blocks from the Art Car Museum in Houston, TX. There are art car parades and events several times a year, so you often see art cars on the streets.

Art cars range from simple and cheaply decorated to elaborately modified and expensive. One of my favorites is a little jeep, decorated as if for use in a safari theme park—with a life-size baby giraffe on the roof.

Another favorite is a giant metal armadillo, created by a local metal sculptor, with headlights for eyes. The armadillo art car is huge. It is so completely covered by the silvery metal sculpture that you cannot even get a glimpse of the vehicle itself. There is no telling how the driver gets inside.

Making art cars is popular in my part of town. In my neighborhood you see art cars parked in driveways, in front of the grocery store, at restaurants, and so on. Most are old cars that have been hand-decorated by one or two people in their spare time.

The first art car I ever saw was just an old car with random plastic, glass, and metal objects glued all over it, inside and out. It was funky and wonderful. It looked as though years had been spent decorating it.

Most people use very old cars to decorate as art cars. Some drive them only for parades and art car shows. Lots of others use them as their main form of transportation. In any case, given the amount of money, talent and time invested in creating art cars, it is very important to keep them running for as long as possible.

So how do you know where to take your art car for repairs and maintenance? We all know the dealer is usually the most expensive place to go, but how do you find an honest, skilled, and reasonably priced auto repair service?

There is now a web site where you can find the best Houston auto repair shops. If you live elsewhere in the United States, you can find the best repair shop in your area, too. RepairPal.com shows the shops near you on a map, and you can read reviews of the shops, written by actual customers.

You can even get a price estimate on line. You select the brand, model and model year of the car,  select the type of service, enter the zip code where you want the work done, and click the Get Estimate button. For example, you could check the price of a repairs for a 1998 Acura Integra.

You can find out which shops offer the kind of repair you need, such as air conditioning recharge, or you can find the best place to get routine maintenance such as an oil change or tune-up.

One of the main values of this service for art car artists is in evaluating an old car for purchase. If you want to buy an old car and them spend weeks, months or even years decorating it, you want to know what kind of mechanical shape it is in and how expensive it will be to maintain.

In designing your art car, you may need to know whether a certain modification will make maintenance difficult or impossible. Dealer repair departments are often too busy to even discuss such things.

Art cars are far out of the mainstream. Dealers may not even want to work on them.

A small car repair shop can be a great partner in keeping your beloved art car alive. And now you know how to find a good one.

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Those tricolor leads (red-blue-green in a pie wedge arrangement) are made in Taiwan, but you cannot buy them directly from the factory. They are sold to manufacturers.

Texas Art Supply recently had packages of a Marvy Color Tricks pencil with a supply of the tricolor lead for only 78 cents here: http://www.texasart.com/g3582/Marvy-Color-Tricks-Mechanical-Pencil.htm I hope they still have some.

A few years ago I ordered a supply of just the lead refills from the pencil manufacturer, Marvy Uchida, and just the lead refill packages were a dollar each. So I think getting the leads and pencil for 78 cents is a super deal. I recommend stocking up while you can.

You can also try the Marvy Uchida website (http://www.marvy.com) and see if they still have the lead. It may be cheaper there by now.

I just checked the site and could not find Color Tricks, but their search was not working right. I could have missed it. However, at the time I ordered the extra leads, the order-taker told me that the product was about to be discontinued.

I wish another company would start selling the tricolor lead. If you find anyone selling it, please leave a comment and let everyone know.

A year or so ago I wrote about Koh-i-Noor Magic FX pencils. The lead is a checkerboard pattern of three colors. The pencils come in several color combinations. They are great for making textured backgrounds on paper.

Since then I have found several other multicolor pencils that you may also want to look for. 

Magic FX Multicolor Pencils

At the time I first wrote about them, Magic FX pencils were pretty easy to find in hobby and craft stores, discount stores, even in drugstores. Last autumn, however, LaQuita wrote in a comment that she could not find them locally and asked if they can be purchased on line.

The short answer is Yes, they can be ordered on line. One place to find them is Texas Art Supply. The trick is to finding them on the web site. So here is a direct link to Magic FX pencils on the Texas Art Supply website. 

Quattro by Cretacolor Junior 

Since then I have found another interesting pencil that does the same thing, the Quattro by Cretacolor Junior, made in Austria. This you would most likely only find at art supply stores. Texas Art Supply sells it, too.

The Quattro has a four-color lead, with red, blue, yellow and green arranged like the wedges of a pie chart. In the picture below, the Cretacolor Junior Quattro pencil is at the top, and a Koh-i-Noor Magic FX pencil is below it.  As you can see, the Quattro is a little slimmer than the Magic FX.

Rainbow Swirl Pencils by RoseArt

A few months ago I found similar pencils at a Target store (a discount chain in the U.S.). In these the colors are arranged in random swirls instead of a checkerboard pattern, but they should do about the same thing.

They are called Rainbow Swirl pencils. They are made by Rose Art, which is a good-quality cheap brand that is sold by several discount stores in the United States.

True to Life Pencils and Twist-Up Crayons by Crayola

At Target I also found two brand new products by Crayola: True to Life pencils, and True to Life twist-up crayons.

So far, I have only seen these at Target, but Crayola does sell their products at their web site, http://www.crayola.com, so you should be able to order them there.

If you find any of these or similar pencils, especially if you are outside the U.S.A., please leave a comment, letting everyone else know where to buy them. IMPORTANT: Put no more than one link to a web site in each comment. Otherwise, my SPAm filter may delete the comment before I ever see it. But feel free to leave a comment for each source that you find. Thanks!

How do you learn? Formal academic courses are not necessary. Many people don’t have access to them. More important, they are not always the best way to learn. In college, for example, I found that my art instructors expected everyone to already know how to draw. Our drawing courses were more for practice than anything else.

Learning to draw is not a matter of hand-eye coordination. It’s about learning to really see what you’re looking at. The best way to become good at drawing is to practice. Books and good drawing courses can help, though, in showing you what to look for, and training your eye to really see.

I recommend a self-teaching course that is used by drawing students, teachers, and even professional graphic designers and illustrators who wante to become more versatile and improve their skills. It’s called the The ABC of Art Skills, by Jenny Gibson, a professional illustrator and teacher.

(On the cover, you can see her on the right, standing in front of a larger-than-lifesize mural.)

The course takes you step by step through six professional secrets that Gibson uses in her work as an illustrator and in teaching others. It also comes with a set of drawing and painting reference materials.

On of the great things about this course is that, as a professional illustrator, Gibson can draw, and teach others to draw, in several different styles. Some artists teach only a certain style–theirs–though they may show you examples of other styles.

This seems to me like the best way to get started drawing on your own or to learn to draw better. It would make a great gift for an adult or older child. And it could be a wonderful shared activity for parents and children.