As I got into cars in my high school years, I saw many of Greg Tedders clean, one and two car designs on the backs of show-goers, and came to love his style. Clean art that really lets the car or cars themselves shine through. I love auto art like this. Car t-shirts are a form of Auto-Worship, in my opinion they should take center stage in the design! Fortunately with this new design the ’57 got to be the prominent feature once again.

However this time I re-rendered it  as all vector art. The folks at Classic Collision fell in love with this car, and it turned out their shirt printer couldn’t use my typical Photoshop spot separations, so I decided to have fun with the bezier tool and do my best to emulate the original artwork. This is a 6 color design.

I also realized, while working on this design, how many other amazing cars I’ve ‘inked’ over the years and are sitting languid in dusty old digital files, hidden away from enthusiasts… well that’s going to change.

Please stay tuned to my site for an upcoming announcement offering bad-ass Automotive Clip Art by HotRodKristina.

If you can’t afford a full custom shirt, but you still want a killer design for your local cruise-in, you’ll be able to buy my artwork at a fraction of the price for download. I’ll be offering a mixture of vector and photoshop spot separations for you to use, along with a few tutorials on how to make them integrate into your designs in the most effective manner.

Once again, thanks for looking, and be sure to find me on Facebook and Twitter if you’re FaceTwit inclined.

- Kristina

These days, when I get a chance to ‘toon’ a vehicle (like the Big Tow I did) it brings back those happy memories, and the design just flows right out.

Recently a friend of mine contacted me about doing such an illustration for him of the three loves of his life: His wife, his dog, and his Mazdaspeed3. Heath is the main force behind the MazdaMovement, which is a great social platform promoting Mazda’s small cars and bringing together enthusiasts from all over the web. Heath has a sexy blue Mazdaspeed3, and he wanted me to give it a little car-toon lovin’, along with caricatures of his wife and boston terrier in the car.

My photo reference:

Isn’t Mia cute? Gotta love Boston Terriers!

The next stage was a sketch, which I tightened up and scanned in to start my digital inking of.

I don’t usually ‘toon’ people, so this was a fun challenge. With my foray into pin-up art, however, I’ll be doing a lot more of it.

Here is the final artwork, showing Heath’s lovelies cruising in the Florida sunshine.

Stay tuned for more small car updates, as we’ve just purchased a new 2012 Ford Focus, and I plan on throwing up some posts about the modifications to our ‘anti-SUV’.

Thanks for looking!

- Kristina

For instance – take a look back at industry auto shows leading back to the very beginning of mass-produced automobiles, and you’ll see a pretty woman standing on the (possibly spinning) podium, microphone in hand, extolling the virtues of the burgundy Corinthian leather within. I remember the bikini contests at the old California Truck Jamborees – girls with giant hair, florescent bikinis, white heels, cavorting on stage to Motley Crüe. And let’s not forget the SEMA Show booth hoochies…

A recent trend is the rebirth of the classic pin-up girl, which I find refreshing. Women of all body types; with the right wardrobe, hair, and make-up, can become glamorous just like the famous beauties of yesteryear.

One website that I follow on Facebook and Twitter – DeliciousDames.com – takes ‘ordinary’ women and transforms them into, well, Delicious Dames! They’ve got a great crew that artfully combine hair & makeup, wardrobe, props, and photography into calendar-worthy pin-up photos. (This is on my bucket list, btw.) I also love checking out sites like The Rebel Pin-Up Page  for artistic inspiration.

I’ve always secretly wanted to try my hand at pin-up art, and when a recent client asked if I would stray from my typical car-tshirt  and design a logo for his hard cider company, I was more than happy to oblige, as I mentioned in this previous post.

Recently I was contacted by another client, looking for some pin-up art for his newly formed business that caters to the traditional hot rodder, Nine-0-Nine Speed Shop. After our initial consultation and the resulting sketch and color comps, he decided on this beauty:

A busty red-head, riding a bomb! What’s more retro and sexy than that? My guy friends freaked out and clamored to get their orders in for shirts, work shirts, and hoodies. (funny thing is that a lot of my guys drive compact hatchbacks – but they’re still diehard Car Guys! <3 )

So today I get home, and what’s on my doorstep? A package  from Louisiana! I admit that I squealed and did a happy dance. Inside were my new hoodie and Dickies work shirt. I also got some extra lovin’ in the form of stickers, a cool screen printed mirror panel, and a shop rag. If you want them for yourself you can order here. Better than Christmas!

A closeup of the print (done by the awesome folks at YourLogoWear.com)

Since then I’ve been contacted about another pin-up job, which I can’t wait to get started on! Drawing sexy, powerful women is a great change from my typical stuff, and seems to go over just as well.

Thanks for looking!

- Kristina

This time of year it’s the mainstay of the car guy’s weekend wardrobe (or daily, if everyday is Casual Friday). I enjoy the challenge of creating these designs, from the initial layout to the final separations. However, sometimes the show promoters or clients don’t have the budget for a super-fancy 8-10 color design. This is when it gets really challenging! When I’m limited to 3 or 4 colors, I have to rethink my entire layout and how I’ll integrate those colors in the logos, cars, and background.

This shirt was four colors. Black, gray, red, and blue.

I got lucky on the next one, as they ok’d an extra screen: Black, gray, blue, red, and orange. The orange really helps this shirt pop!

And couple other examples, not car show t-shirts, but ‘car t-shirts’ nonetheless:

This one uses black, gray, red, and blue. A great combo for this fundraiser t-shirt for the Morro Bay Police Department. (see my previous post about it here)

And here’s a simple shirt that used photography plus artwork. Black, gray, yellow, and green.

In the next week I’ve got a few designs to post that will show the limited palette combined with vector art (Illustrator art). Stay tuned & thanks for looking!

- Kristina

I was once again asked by Justin at BearDesignz.com to come up with some artwork for this year’s show. After a rough start with a couple of comps that just didn’t feel right, I shook off my slump, and had an evening of inspiration where I couldn’t get this idea out of my head fast enough.

Here’s the design for the upcoming show:

They also wanted a more ‘retro’ shirt which could be sold at every event. Something that was more hot-roddy and simple to print, and that would be going on black shirts. I was happy to oblige. This design is all vector art, with a knockout ‘distress’ layer placed over the top.

If any of you SoCalianos are going to the show, please support them buy purchasing one of the shirts! Or both!

Thanks for lookin’

- Kristina

PS: For those of you who missed the show, you can contact the promoters regarding purchasing a t-shirt – click here

Have you ever seen one of these on the road? I don’t know about you, but I think they’re pretty bad-ass. A big rig that has to hook up and tow another big rig – that’s a serious piece of machinery right there. The ones I’ve seen around here are always freshly detailed too; chrome everywhere, paint shining, and ready to go rescue their next hapless victim!

(and btw yes, I do have a thing for big rigs, and the latest craze of customized trucks is delightful to me… a lowered, hot-rodded rig? heck  yea!)

On this project I was sent a photo of the vehicle to render – this lovely beast:

I cropped it out of it’s background in Photoshop so I could focus more on it’s overall shape and the miscellaneous details like the mirrors, antennas, etc. I had to source another online image for the boom, which is shown in my pencil sketch here:

This was scanned, sent off for approval, and then I placed it into Illustrator as a template layer and start ‘inking’ it in. In this case the color was to be added in Photoshop (as spot color channels for screenprinting) so I only focused on the black line art. I use the bezier tool for most of this process, aside from the wheels and other bits that I’ll use the ellipse tool for.

Here is the finished line art, ready for export to Photoshop. I’ll use the areas of white to make my selections and add color.

Here it is in Photoshop, and I’ve started to add color. In this case it’s 5 spot colors, as I’m limited to whatever number of colors the printer has print-heads for. So I’m using red, yellow, blue, gray, and black. I’ll add a highlight white layer as well, which I’ll knock out of the color layers when it’s finished.

And here is the finished product, with highlights (bling!). The client took this art and laid it out as he saw fit with the customer’s logos and verbiage and such, so this was the ‘final’ art.  A fun job and I think it came out great. I enjoy ‘tooning’ vehicles a lot, and really need to do it more often! It’s great art therapy for a Car Chick!

Check out my new portfolio page: Pin Up Art! 

I realize that I’ve been slow to update this website, I got sucked into the ease of throwing stuff up on Facebook on my art page.  Which is fine, but I’ve got to get things back up here for some future projects I have in store!

Here’s a sample of what you’ll see in this new section: Tthis was a logo done for the guys at Hot Roddin’ Cider (pun intended).

You can buy a shirt here if you like what you see!

I’ll be posting more of these lovely ladies soon, as I’ve been sketching up some of my own designs which will be for sale as t-shirts and posters.

Thanks for lookin’!

- Kristina

Unless you’re in Southern California, where you can always hit up Donut Derelicts or Cars & Coffee to get your fix in the ‘winter’ months. And by winter I mean 65 degrees and sunny!

A couple months ago I was contacted by Justin at BearDesignz.com in Temecula, California. They were looking for an artist to create the new 2011 Temecula Rod Run shirts. Well wouldn’t ya know it, I just so happen to do car t-shirts! And lucky me, Justin’s got a 14 color press, so I could get really creative with my design. The only request was to include a certain car, which the Rod Run organizers supplied a scan of.

I did a few thumbnails to get my idea sorted out, and then fired up Photoshop and did a tighter comp using my trusty Wacom tablet. This time I tried something new by sketching out the main title as well – something I usually don’t do, or accomplish using modified fonts in Illustrator. Here is my initial comp.

You might be thinking now – what’s up with the grape vines? Well Temecula is Southern California’s ‘wine country’. (although there are some very old Zin vines in Rancho Cucamonga that still produce great wines). While Temecula isn’t as large as Paso Robles Wine Country, it still does quite a bit of traffic due to it’s proximity to SoCal, and thanks to the increased popularity of wine tasting. Being appreciative of both good wine and hot rods, the first idea that culminated in this blonde brain of mine was ‘wine grapes and flames’! Makes a perfect pairing, in my opinion.

Ok, onto the line art. My next step is to bring my comp and the photo of the supplied vehicle into Illustrator for some vector-lovin’. Here’s where I tweak the layout, play with line weights, and get things arranged in layers for the selection process when I do the spot color separations in Photoshop. The original comp was approved, with the exception of the ‘Rod Run’ font, which I changed.

This design ended up being 10 colors total, which is a refreshing change of pace for me. Usually I have to figure out how to make 6 or 8 colors work, so when Justin said ‘oh you can do 10, 12 colors’ I almost fainted. This meant I could use two greens. Not one, but TWO! Heck sometimes I even have to make a sort of ‘green’ with yellow and process blue. Being able to use two greens really made the grape vines pop the way I wanted to. I don’t have any ‘work in progress’ images, but here’s a closeup of some grapes (yes, you wine snobs, I know that these are way too large to be wine grapes, but don’t go ruinin’ it for me).

Nothing sets off a lush landscape like a bright purple roadster with flames on it, don’t you think? Well I think so!

There you have it, the 2011 Temecula Rod Run t-shirt. For those of you who make it to the show, be sure to pick one up! You can never have enough car t-shirts!

I’m going to go pour myself a glass of wine!
- Kristina

One such show is the Paso Robles Classic Car Weekend, held over the Labor Day holiday, in downtown Paso. It’s hosted by the Golden State Classics Car Club. I’ve been lucky to be their artist for the last few years, and this design is always a treat, since I get to ‘toon the car for the shirt. This year is no different, as they chose a super clean 40s Chevy pickup for the shirt. My boys over at 3INK Screenprinting in Morro Bay are printing the shirts once again, and from what I got a peek at the other day, they came out great!

Here are the designs from the past few years for your viewing enjoyment.

I don’t have a classic ride, but it’s always fun to hit up these shows for inspiration and to take photos to add to my reference library. Maybe one day if I get another 73 El Camino I’ll hit up a couple local shows. For now I’ll have to live vicariously through the internet and car shows like this one! Thanks for looking, and hope summer is treating you well. — Kristina

To that I say: “Fine with me! I’ll take them in!” (kind of like a stray cat, that’s skitterish at first but then warms up to you with a little love and a bowl of food). Unfortunately my budget doesn’t permit me to ‘rescue’ as many vehicles or cats as I’d like to, so I make up for it by drawing them. Well the cars, not the cats. (I think I’d really have a problem if all I did was draw cats… my husband often mumbles too often about me speaking in gibberish and throwing cats at people, but I digress….)

In this month’s Popular Hot Rodding you’ll find such a stray creature – the lowly 1978 Caprice Classic 2-door. What started out as an older couples’ daily driver to the country club for golf and highballs and the occasional trip to visit the in-laws is completely transformed into something a bit more bad ass.

Look: I was nice and scanned the article for you! It’s on page 81 of the June 2011 issue, in case you were wondering. Turns out I was incorrect about the dropped spindles, but that’s nothing a custom set of tubular front A-arms and KW Variant 3 coilovers couldn’t fix right up.

Here are a few past geek sessions that I’ve had as well, just to prove this is truly a sickness, and not just a passing phase. These two were in Truckin’ Magazine a few years back.

While on a tour of Europe a lonely Ford Courier meets a sexy WRC Duratec Focus, they fall in love, and create this little monster:

A 1960s Dodge Motorhome meets a new Ram Dually with a Cummins Turbodiesel at The Roadrunner in Parker, Arizona. Sparks fly, that night they go up to Laughlin and get hitched, and we get this about 9 months later:

There will be more geekery to come, I guarantee it. If you’d like to see your baby in all it’s glory, feel free to drop me a line and I’ll make your oddball into a much more bad-ass version!

Thanks for looking!
- Kristina