Tag: vehicle

every sketchbook needs a race car

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automuseum 1988 IndyCar March 011523 sm

On one of those many ridiculously rainy days in January we went down to the California Automobile Museum to look at the old cars. I only ended up drawing one of them this time, and of course it had to be a race car. The 1988 March, driven by Steve Saleen in the 1989 IndyCar world series, was a cool little vehicle I just had to sketch. What I really want to do is sketch a Formula One car. I am more than a little bit obsessed with Formula One, and have been into it since I was a kid, my dad would watch it, back in the days of Mansell, Prost, and of course Senna. I’ll never forget the weekend Senna died at Imola, because I was watching the Qualifying the day before when Roland Ratzenberger died, and it was pretty shocking. I couldn’t believe the Sunday race went ahead, but when the greatest driver himself then died also? I still feel shocked and stunned by it. I still followed Formula One through the 90s with Hakkinen, Hill, Villeneuve and the other great Schumacher, everyone’s favourite loveable villain, who after a glittering world-beating career on the track ended up suffering terrible injuries in a skiing accident and has not been in public since. He was a classic racer, extremely annoying and easy to dislike early on, but by his later career you couldn’t help but be in awe. Then there was Alonso, who somehow is back and has three podiums out of three this season already, and along came Lewis Hamilton, a real British superstar right from his rookie season. When he won his first title with McLaren in his second season, on that final race in Brazil, I was watching on a terrible feed with no sound on my TV in California, and while I was delighted for Lewis, I was very sad for Felipe Massa who thought he’d done enough to win it, but it wasn’t to be. Lewis of course won loads more with Mercedes, and though at the time it felt like a gamble to switch teams to the Mercs, it really paid off. In between though we had the Vettel dominance with Red Bull, when my son was very little and that cocky young’un Seb was his first sporting hero (followed by Luka Modric and Gareth Bale), and the 2012 season I remember as being one of the greatest. Back then he loved his toy cars and we would draw these huge race tracks on poster board, one for each F1 Grand Prix, and play with the cars on them. Then the years of Lewis becoming all powerful, and even though some years it felt easy for Mercedes (that’s the nature of the sport, a great driver needs a great car, it felt like that with Schumacher and Ferrari, it feels like that now with the Red Bull and Max, even when Hakkinen was winning that McLaren felt unstoppable) there were some high drama years and I watched as avidly as ever, and I’m a big big fan of Lewis, and I hope he still has another good challenge in him. I am still feeling gutted and angry about how the 2021 season ended, when he’d done so much to come back and lead the title, only to be stitched up by the FIA on the last couple of laps of that race. That had been an amazing and dramatic season, the Max v Lewis, Horner v Toto, Red Bull v Mercedes season. And then the cars changed, Mercedes created a dud, and Red Bull got it completely right, and with Max Verstappen steaming away at the front they look like they will be unstoppable for a few years. Our nickname for Max is ‘Waluigi’, he reminds us of that Mario Kart character. (Side note, I love Mario Kart, and it was my F1 obsession that led me to buy the original Super Mario Kart not long after it came out, as it was the greatest racing game, and me and my brother will still play the original version all these years later). I’m not particularly a fan of Max, I don’t like his character much, but I do have admiration for him as an unbelievably determined racer, and the lad’s got talent. He may well be another Schumacher, if this Red Bull keeps developing. I’ve not even mentioned Jenson Button, who was one of my favourite racers, and the season he unbelievably won the title in a Braun, that white car with the neon yellow bits on it that looked amazing, in a year that felt like Formula One was turning upside down a little bit during the global economic downturn (remember that), that was still one of my favourite seasons of all time. Now, a lot more people over here are getting into F1, thanks to the popularity of Drive to Survive, which has for me at least brought the less well-known racing battles into greater light, the midfield drama that we often overlook when focused solely on the podium places. Formula One has always been a soap opera for me, and unlike football, where I only really love Tottenham, mostly indifferent to everything else (though I’ll sometimes watch Serie A) except for the kits which I’m obsessed with, and of course the World Cup, which is enjoyable except when watching England when it’s agony, or Ireland when it’s 1994. I don’t support a particular team, or even a particular driver, I just like the sport and the characters and the drama, and I just want good racing, although I have always loved Lewis. Here’s my sketch after he won that first title back in 2008, right before Obama won the presidency. I’ve not watched a lot of IndyCar, to be honest, whenever I do it’s really just to watch the few former F1 drivers taking part (like when Alonso was involved for a bit), but that’s usually a lot of fun as well.

lewis hamilton

Utah 5: Moab and Salt Lake

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Utah hiking trip

This was my ‘journal’ page in the sketchbook where I wrote a bit about the trip. I always mean to do things like that in my sketchbooks as I go along when I travel but sometimes forget, or I draw it with stupid cartoony Petes doing stuff badly, but I liked the tone of this in pencil, and it kept with the pencil and paint theme of my sketching in the parks. I always worry that the pencil will smudge as I used my book (one of the reasons I don’t draw much in pencil, though when covered in watercolour it doesn’t seem to happen as much). On the last day in Moab I went for a walkabout; Moab reminded me a lot of Radiator Springs, the town from the movie Cars (which we watched about 7000 times when my son was younger); the backdrop mostly, but some of the shops too. So it was quite funny to see one of the auto repair shops had converted a truck into Lightning McQueen’s buddy Mater (full name “Tow Mater”). I had to draw him! There were a lot of vehicles in Moab I could have drawn, and by that I mean (1) Jeeps and (2) ATVs. So many ATVs. ATVs are all-terrain vehicles are those funny looking buggy things, and they look like they are only driven by people who would not like them being called “funny looking buggy things”. But my descriptive skills are tired from all the hiking. You see? That sentence doesn’t even make sense. Well dad-gum, as Mater would say.

Tow Mater in Moab

We left Moab for the long drive back to California, which would take two days, across mountains and deserts, through snowstorms and sunshine, but boy were there snowstorms across the Great Salt Lake Desert. We stopped off in Salt Lake City once again, so we could get some more delicious waffles and frites from the little Belgian place we discovered, Bruges Bistro. This place was amazing, and I had a nice chat with the Flemish guy who ran the place. I had once more a huge waffle covered in s’mores (a nice mix of the Belgian and American), with sauce andalouse to go with my frites. This is the place below (I drew that after I got home).

Bruges Belgian Bistro SLC

After lunch we headed off to Temple Square to see the Tabernacle and the historic Salt Lake Temple. You can’t go inside the buildings (and the Temple is undergoing a major renovation, it looked like the foundations of the church itself were being completely updated) (that’s not a metaphor by the way, I mean the building itself). You’ll know of course that Salt Lake City is the epicentre of the Mormon church (real name The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) (which is a long official name; I like long official names, like “Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club”, “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles” (the real name for L.A. though not really the official name) and of course “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” (still correct at the the time of writing but check back again soon)). They usually go by “LDS” but are mostly known as Mormons. It was interesting to learn that the streets in Salt Lake City all emanate out from Temple Square. I did a very quick sketch of the Temple while we explored the square, which is permanently walled off but still open to visitors. there were many friendly guides about to give information, but we didn’t stay long. It was interesting. Surrounding the square were a great number of large and very corporate buildings for all of the church’s global administration. The city itself was surround an most sides by mountains capped with snow; I forgot that would be the case, but they did have the Winter Olympics here many years ago. The Great Salt Lake is just to the north, and we drove past that on the way back towards Nevada. 

Salt Lake City Temple Square

I didn’t draw on the rest of the journey; we listened to podcasts, and an audio book (Neil Gaiman’s “An Ocean At the End of the Lane”; appropriate as there was a Great Salt Lake at the end of the road), stopped in Elko again and eventually made it home. A long road trip. Next time we go we will fly, but it was fun to see a bit more of America.