52 http://www.popularmechanics.co.za _ AUGUST 2017
paint in the water has bled out. Which I
think is pretty cool and, although maybe
not as crisp, it’s got its own painterly quality.
That’s why I was drawn to doing something
like the paintings of rust buckets, which
is the series that I’m working on. It just
fits nicely with watercolour, that romantic
kind of look.”
He works mostly off photographs, some
of them quite dodgy. “A lot of the time,
it’s actually splicing images with others.”
Prices start at R250 for numbered, signed
prints and at R1 500 for small originals.
Typical turnaround time on originals is
two to three weeks. “I do a mock-up and
then I go ahead and do my thing. It starts
with a black and white image. I put acetate
over it and cut where I want my stencil.
Then I put my stencil over the paper or
canvas, airbrush that, and once I get that
done, I use the fine brush for the detail
work. The brushwork is either in water-
colour or acrylic depending on the medi-
um I’ve discussed.” On the computer side,
he uses Photo Paint and Corel Draw.
Using stencils is a technique he had to
teach himself. “In the 1980s and 1990s,
before computers, people were airbrushing,
but that got phased out by computers. So
a lot of the materials that were available
then are not available now. Masking film,
for instance. A lot of things in that era,
like album covers, were done using mask-
ing film, which has an adhesive so it sticks
to the base paper. You cut out the image
outline in the same way as a stencil, but
you can peel pieces off and stick them
back again. I use a flat stencil that goes
on once and comes off again and work it
in with a brush.”
As always, beauty is in the eye of the
beholder. “I’m not going the usual artist
route of exhibiting at galleries and selling
to the art crowd. I’m targeting the car
crowd and selling to car enthusiasts. But
my ‘diamonds in the rust’ are a kind of
crossover into what can be considered
fine art. There’s more concept to them.
Taking something old and decrepit and
turning it back into something beautiful.”
To find out more, visit stencilworks.
wordpress.com PM
Patina
Increasingly, Erwin has been drawn to tackle
a project in patina, to stray away from the
sleek and smooth finishes typical of beautiful
classic cars towards something rough and
rusty. “My reasons were to capture some-
thing beautiful in something that would oth-
erwise be seen as old and discarded, as well
as to paint something that really lends itself
to the fluid and random effects achievable
with watercolours.
The project found him in two ways; a
commission from a client and a stumble
across a perfect candidate on a weekend
away. The 1963 Land Rover Series 2A he
painted was in response to a request for a
picture that would capture a late father-in-
law’s Land Rover, in all its weathered and
embattled glory, as a gift for her husband. I
was provided with a few basic pictures but
had to improvise to get its proud-looking
stance and the settling dust around the car,
which is used to emphasise the vehicle’s
beaten-track life. The front fenders on this
one had been cut shorter in order to deal
with a sand issue.Motorcyles a trois
Three bikes in airbrush and watercolour were
a surprise birthday gift. Although the bikes were
owned at different times, the request was to
have all three in one painting, with priority being
given to the best bike. “Rather than have the
three bikes randomly floating around the page
I decided to overlap them in a perspective as
if they were all parked together in one scene,”
he says. This required a variety of different ref-
erences, most importantly a few photographs of
the CB400 and the ZX9R supplied by the
client, pictures off the Internet and whatever
information we could gather from an inside
source (obviously we could not ruin the surprise
and ask the owner of the bikes).”Beach Beetle
A recently sold VW
Beetle, thought to
be a 1966 model,
provided the inspira-
tion for a birthday
present. To add a
personal touch, it
had to be painted in
a scene depicting
the coastal town
where the birthday
boy had grown up.Nostalgia’s top
of the Pops
From 1953 to 1962 Ford UK
produced a small, cheap
and economical car called
the Popular. So why then
would someone choose to
commission a painting of this
cheap fairly common car?
His client bought his Pop
from his mother for 40
Rhodesian pounds when
she upgraded to a Ford
Anglia in 1967 and kept it
for about two years at his
hometown, Umtali (now
Mutare) and Salisbury (now
Harare), where he was at
university. One particularly
vivid memory: on a holiday
trip to Beira for a bit of
Mozambican vino, in the
little Ford with four varsity
friends, on their last even-
ing in the campsite he got
himself arrested in the mid-
dle of a tropical downpour,
falsely accused of theft,
and was ordered to leave
the country the next day.a Stencilworx commission! Fancy immortalising your beloved
wheels, Steve Erwin style? To find out how, visit our website at
WIN http://www.popularmechanics.co.za/win/uuuu