Practically Classics Forum

I've not seen a 156 in the real world for ages and ages, maybe they've all migrated over to you? Sometimes I can't sleep and sometimes drawing helps me get to sleep, that's how this very 80s Ford Capri sketch happened.

Looking good
Having seen your watermark over the Capri's headlights, I think it would look good with a charger style grill hiding them.

mach1rob wrote:It must be a sign! 156s have been haunting me all day!

it means that you have to buy some

Volvo P1800 £40 inc. P&P worldwide



Neat mildly modified Volvo painted grey sat on the street on a rainy day. Ludicrously pretty cars these.

does that look a bit batmobile or is it my eyesight??

They have a batmobile vibe to them thanks to those very silly fins. They're less prominent on the estate and I *may* have enlarged them ever so slightly from standard on this picture.

nicely done..all i need is a cape & mask

Well it looks pretty darned fine to my eyes!
It's just a shame that the makers of the 1/12 scale diecast MK1 mini Cooper I was looking at in the Model Zone section of WH Smith earlier today hadn't asked you to do the working drawings for that model because it was just all wrong. Now I don't doubt that someone would have measured the real car, made copious notes and calculated the dimensions of that model to the last 1/64" but it simply didn't work! The thing looked dreadful and all I found myself thinking as I looked over it was that there was no single identifying part of the shape that I could have looked at in isolation and from which I would then have known what car the model represented, the whole thing was just annoying.

Your drawings, on the other hand, all capture the essence of their subjects beautifully so when I look at the Volvo as an example, that rear quarter (or the grille, the shape of the door, the wheels, etc.) instantly tells me what the car is before I've even had to look at the whole thing and that, thinking about it, is what that £130 model mini failed to do; it just didn't have any one detail that was close enough to the original to make the whole car work as a piece of art but at the price, nor would it have been the sort of thing you'd give to a child to enjoy as a toy, meaning that the model, for me, had no clear purpose. Your drawings do, I look at those and I like them.

JPB: That's one of the best bits of feedback I've ever received, very kind of you to be so complimentary and I'm most pleased that the effort I put into the cars to make them look 'right' though not necessarily photo perfect comes across so well! That Capri picture is now finished, though the scan has made it look a bit strange and I'm not sure why. Scanners are a law unto themselves.

Ford Capri £50 inc. P&P worldwide



A slab of eighties retro goodness with a backdrop of Council tower block badness.

Commission of a Porsche 944 and dog on holiday in a static caravan. The scanner did not treat this at all kindly, it was a lot of work to get it to look even this good.