I recently had a fun change of pace in my mix of projects when the AACA Museum (an Automotive Museum in Hershey, PA) reached out to have me do some illustrations of antique vehicles for them!
The museum is launching a new Automotive Heritage Award that will be presented at a ceremony coming up in October. As the AACA team was designing the award, they settled on an approach that incorporated line drawings of 5 vehicles that would be etched into the award. With pictures of the vehicles and a trophy vendor chosen, they just needed someone to turn the pictures into illustrations – and I’m thrilled they called me!
The first step was to collaborate on the final images to be used – pairing down a number of options to the final 5 images based on which would work best in the layout and would translate well into line drawings. I then worked with the AACA team on the layout. The plan was to place each image in a 2” circle and arrange than in a horseshoe pattern. Based on this, I suggested we place images that showed a ¾ view facing right on the left side of the horseshoe so they point in toward the middle, and do the opposite on the right side. For the top-most image, I suggested a head-on view to keep everything balanced. Below is my (very) rough layout “sketch” to illustrate this
With this idea approved, I then needed to design the circle border that would be used around each vehicle illustration. Rather than do just a circle or a decorative pattern, I decided to run with the automotive theme and use a steering wheel rim! I looked online at different options, and landed on the steering wheel of the Austin 7 since on this car you can clearly see the ridges from the front of the wheel. Below is the drawing that was approved to be used as the border around the vehicles:
With this done, it was on to doing the final drawings! The images we chose were a 1929 Cord, a 1921 Duesenberg race car, a 1948 Tucker, a Gump Bus and a vintage police motorcycle. The final images will measure about 1.5” in the largest dimension (to fit inside a 2” circle), but I drew them at 3” to capture more detail and then reduced the scans of my drawings to the final 1.5” size.
Following are the final drawings:
I was happy to hear that the AACA team was pleased with the results – and we all look forward to seeing them on the final trophy!
In the meantime, they sent me this proof of how it is shaping up!
Enjoy,
Jason