And now for the big project I've been working on since about August of this year. After getting back in the swing of working on my art again, I decided to try making something tangible with my art that I could sell. After discussing it with my family and friends, I decided the best starting point for selling my art would be to make a children's coloring book to sell at my dad's shop,
Gasoline Alley Classics Inc. in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. Dad doesn't have a lot of stuff for kids in his shop right now, so we figured that with my cartoony style, I could make a series of coloring and activity books for kids who are travelling Route 66 with their families. I'll also make some sticker packs using the same designs in the coloring books, but that's for later.
First things first, I had to figure out what the subject of the coloring book would be. I like drawing classic and custom cars, so the theme for this first coloring book will be all '50s Rod and Custom cars. Once that was decided, I had to figure out the art direction for the coloring book. That's where these first 2 pages come in. Most of the designs on the left were about figuring out how "custom" the custom cars would be, as well as deciding how much detail I should or shouldn't pack into a coloring book for young kids. The designs on the right were all about exploring different art styles, though I ultimately stuck close to the style of the 7th Mercury lead sled on the left page. Still, I never toss out ideas, and I'll certainly come back to those other sketches at a later date. (Especially #15; I want that design on a T-shirt!)
Now onto the cars that will be in the final coloring book. One of the earliest cars I worked on was a '50s-era T-Bucket Ford. As you can see, I went through multiple designs before landing on #10, and even that one will need some refinement down the road. I'm used to adding a lot of detail to my illustrations, so it's kind of a challenge to take a "less is more" approach to my art, given that this art is supposed to be colored in with crayons and markers by 5-year-olds. Still, it's a fun creative problem to solve, and it's satisfying when I figure it out!
Some designs feel like they're right, until you come back to them at a later date. That's what happened with most of these designs for '32, and '33/'34 Ford hot rods. I liked them at first, until I looked at them again a few weeks later and realized I could do better, especially after drawing other cars.
Some cars are... admitted tougher for me to draw than others, for whatever reason. This '40 Ford Coupe proved particularly difficult to draw just right, so much so that as a way to vent, I drew the 7th '40 Ford the way I'd
rather draw one, as a radically chopped, channeled, fenderless hot rod unlike anything else I've seen before. Obviously, it's not making the cut for this coloring book, but I like this sketch too much to do nothing with it later.
Sometimes all it takes is one more try before you get it right. I just changed the angle I drew the car, lifted it off the ground, and gave it a '39 Mercury grill, and it worked!
Another iconic lead sled: a 1951 "shoebox" Chevy fastback.
It wouldn't be a '50s Rod and Custom coloring book without some finned '50s classics! I wanted to draw 2 of my favorite finned '50s Mopars, the 1957/8 Plymouth and the 1957/8 Desoto. The Plymouth is kind of special to my neck of the woods, given the
1957 Plymouth Belvedere time capsule "Miss Belvedere" that was buried then unearthed here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That said, the 1958 Plymouth Fury tends to be a slightly more popular version of the same car, (and in my opinion, a slightly better-looking one too) most likely due to a certain Stephen King book and film that featured the car. So to avoid making this Plymouth one version or the other, I drew it from the side and removed the side trim, that way it could be whichever year or trim level of the car the colorist wants.
I also made it a little less obvious if the Desoto was a 1957 or 1958, though the rear bumper is off a 1957 model based on the exhaust tips.
The next car I drew for the coloring book was a 1956 Oldsmobile, a popular choice for lead sleds back in the day. I made this one a 4-door, partly because I own a 4-door 1964 Mercury Comet, and because I found some period photos of 1955-1957 4-door Oldsmobiles built as custom lead sleds. Even back in the 1950s, there were folks out there who loved themselves a good 4-door!
Another personal favorite of mine: a 1949-1950 Shoebox Ford, chopped, channeled, and slammed to the ground. This one took a few tries to get the roof just right.
#19 was the final design for the custom '49-'51 Mercury lead sled that started this project.
Remember how I said it sometimes takes one more try before you get it right? Well that's how it panned out with this '33/'34 Ford coupe and '32 Ford roadster.
I wanted one more hot rod to help balance out the large amount of customs that'll feature in this coloring book. It's still 5/7, but it's close enough. I chose a '37 Chevy, as it had a cool body style, and it'd help balance out the amount of Fords in the coloring book. Admittedly, it was very tempting to draw this one as a slammed-down lead sled, but I stuck with it, as difficult as it was to draw this car this way.
And last but not least, one more Mopar to round out the customs. This time I picked a 1939 Dodge coupe, as I'd seen a few cool examples of these cars chopped and dropped. I may need to tweak this one further, as I removed the vents in the hood to simplify it, but I may need to add that back as it's part of the look of these cars.
Sometimes you got to try all the methods to find out which one works best for you. That's what happened with the next stage of my '50s Rod & Custom coloring book.
I tried cleaning up my line art using Photoshop and my Cintiq tablet, only to quit after 5 minutes when I realized I'd spend more time using the eraser tool than the brush tool. I then tried tracing over my sketches in Adobe Illustrator, which yielded quick results, but made my art look kind of bland and soulless. What I found worked best for me was to tape a piece of copy paper over my Cintiq tablet, and directly trace over the original sketch (or in this case, the earlier vector trace) with a fine line Crayola marker. Now the lines look crisp and clear, but they still look hand-drawn! I'll polish everything in Photoshop to really make this designs nice, but for now, this is a good start.
I also wanted to embolden some of the lines to make my designs pop a bit more, while leaving the detail lines thinner, sort of like how some of my favorite cartoon characters were drawn over 20 years ago. That worked well for the Plymouth shown below, but once I got to more detailed drawings like the Desoto and '32 Ford, it became trickier to figure out which lines to embolden, as well as just how many detail lines there needed to be. At this moment, I'm back at the start of the inking phase, trying to find a solid art direction that'll work for all 12 designs that I plan to put into this coloring book. Hopefully I'll figure out this next step after I spend some time experimenting on it this week.
So that's what I've been up to as of late. It's been a series of challenges between making this coloring book and learning how to use
Instagram to help promote my work, but I'm determined to figure it out as I go, because I can't think of any other way I'd like to earn a living than by doing something I love.
