Pinstripe Chris

Chris Dunlop - Artist for Art of Chris Dunlop

Chris Dunlop (aka Pinstripe Chris) is an automotive design and render artist based out of Southern California. He started out as an automotive painter that specialized in custom paint and high end restoration work on Classics & Exotics in Rockville, Maryland. From there he began airbrushing, doing sharpie art, and pinstriping. Soon after he was doing his artwork nearly full time, he was dubbed "Pinstripe Chris".

Contact: Chris Dunlop at Visit Online!

            

• We absolutely love the fact that you’re originally from the DMV, as Marylanders ourselves we’re immediately proud of your accomplishments. So let’s take a trip back in time, and talk about how you got into the automotive world. Why Paint & Body? Did you go to art school? If so, where? Or are you self-taught?
• … After several years of mixing full time artwork with painting cars full time, Chris and his wife Caitlin opened up their own paint & body shop where they specialized in classic and exotic cars. Why the Sharpie Mustang and Sharpie Camaro – let’s explore the inspiration behind this. And “the why?”
• What is “Robot #3” 
• The big move … leaving the DMV for Southern California. Car Culture on the East Coast is strong, what led to the shift west? 
• If you had to give advice to other (starving) aspiring artists, what would that be? Maybe some lessons learned?
• You typically work in Traditional or “Analogue” media – but you’ve also made a shift into Digital Renders, why? Examples? 
• How long does it take to create a “photorealistic” painting of a sports car?
• How does one go about getting some Pinstripe Chris artwork?
• What are you working on now? Any big projects you can share/reveal to our audience?

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports.

Passion for vehicles comes in many different shades and colors, custom cars, hot rods, and exotics. There’s always a variety of artwork to keep things fresh and never limited to one genre. Chris Dunlop is an automotive design and render artist based out of Southern California. He started out as an automotive painter that specialized in custom paint and high-end restoration work on classics and exotics in Rockville, Maryland.

From there, he began airbrushing doing Sharpie art and Pinstriping. Soon after he was doing his artwork nearly full-time, and some of you might have heard of him, he’s been dubbed Pin Stripe Chris, and he joins Brad and I tonight on Break Fix to share his journey from paint and body work to full-time artist.

So welcome to Break Fix Chris, and thank you for having me. You know, like all good break [00:01:00] fix episodes, there’s always an origin story and we absolutely love the fact that you are originally from the D M V. From the DC, Maryland, Virginia area and as Maryland there’s ourselves, we are immediately proud of you and your accomplishments.

Yes, . So let’s take a trip back in time and talk about, all right, how you, how you got into the AMO automotive world and why paint and body. Always nice to be talking to some fellow Marylanders. I feel like people from the northeast coast, we have a way that we can understand each other when we talk that maybe isn’t, is a language that we have that doesn’t exist everywhere.

Appreciate me being able to talk with fellow Marylanders. You guys are gonna get it. We gotta ask a proper Maryland question, which is great. All right. Which question is that? Eric? What high school did you go to? . Oh, well, what’s true? I went to Richard Montgomery. Hey, there you go. Oh yeah, right down in Ville.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. That’s where I grew up. Of course, I love cars. I think everybody that really likes cars, As a kid, you always start out liking cars anyways and you wanna figure out how to do that as a work thing. And [00:02:00] when I was doing the job right before Paint and Body was like I was a server at ihop, it was just a normal, crappy job.

But I always worked on my own cars, just sort of tinkering. So I gotta ask. Since you loved cars as a kid, what was on your bedroom wall? What was that poster? I was always kinda like, uh, . The magazine that I tend to grab most when I was kid was a DuPont registry. I always liked looking at either exotics or like really nicely restored classics as opposed to like the beaters that I drove.

My first vehicle outta high school was a 69 C 10 that I replaced with a 72 C 10. None of which were in great shape, but they were good fun, but they weren’t like nice. But I enjoyed classics and wrenching on them. But anything that I had that was on my wall was pulled out of a magazine and it would’ve been DuPont Registry, something really, really fancy.

So it would’ve been like an F 50 or an act. Jaguar XJ two 20 supercars of that era. McLaren f1, Hennessy, venom Viper, stuff like that. Shortly after high school, really, really close family friend. They owned and operated a collision shop in Frederick Merri. They [00:03:00] happened to have a spot available as a painter’s helper.

What got you excited to do that? Why paint and body? Was there a draw there? Nothing. No, absolutely nothing. Paint and body was just sort of far outta my mind, but. Give that a try. It’s not something that I had thought of, but it sounded interesting. It sort of worked out and it worked as a helper for about a year there before I moved to St.

Louis. And then, uh, I was in St. Louis for a couple of years and that’s where I started doing more full-time as a painter. I was a helper in Maryland, but the owner of the shop there were super cool about letting me use crash fenders and crashed hoods to practice like airbrushing on. They’re pretty casual about letting me burn lots of paint materials at nighttime just to play and have some fun.

So you went from Maryland to St. Louis and somewhere in this, somewhere in this mix, you met your wife, Caitlin, and she’s also in this industry as well, right? Did you guys meet at work? Not exactly in the industry. She does help me as, uh, just stay sane in general, which is immensely helpful. But I met her when I lived in Frederick and then we sort of went our separate way is when I moved to St.

I ended up moving [00:04:00] back to Maryland after a couple years in St. Louis cuz we reconnected on MySpace of all things. So we moved back to Maryland and we moved in together and then we moved here together a couple years after that here to California. And you opened up your own paint and body shop at some point in this journey?

Like Yeah, that’s the Cliff notes version. I couldn’t have done it without a partner. Somebody who already had a space and was in Montgomery County in uh, in the Air Park. Thank goodness I had help with that. And he was already kind of established a little bit more in the Ferrari world, so he kind of had like the ideal job guy’s name was Robbie.

By the time I met him, he was already a really old guy, so he was just like sort of angry and direct. Really enjoyed working with somebody that was a little bit more to the point. We had our space it whole journey and just jack knives all over the place. We moved back from St. Louis to Maryland. I worked at a bunch of shops before we worked on our own shop, but it was all, I was like, painter helper in a hot rod.

and made some good friends there until I connected with this guy Robbie, and we were working together on Ferrari and classics there, which was great. And it was just also a great opportunity to learn that the cost of running a [00:05:00] shop is so enormously expensive that the hopes of being able to make a lot at it, you had to scale so much or be really, really efficient.

It was a really good lesson to learn in , in what’s possible and what’s not possible, no matter how much you care about what you do. So somewhere in this, Did you end up going to art school or if not, no, never. Are you self-taught? I’m entirely self-taught. In fact, when I lived in Frederick the first time and I was at at that collision shop, I had applied to go to an art school out here in California.

It was my first trip to California and I got accepted, but it was too expensive for me to go. I never actually went. So I never went to college. I never went to art school. Every, everything is self-taught, but I really have the years of being in a spray booth thank for the way that I think about colors and lighting.

I thought it was the fact that you’re from Maryland and like the rest of us, you were probably drawing those Stussy SS in class instead of paying attention. You know what I’m talking about? I figured that was everybody. To be honest, seems like no matter where you go in the country, people did it everywhere.

It doesn’t matter. So where did you draw your early [00:06:00] inspiration from? It was like this jackknife journey along the entire way in there. By the time that I got back to Maryland from living in St. Louis and I was working in our own shop space, Each time somebody would come along and say, Hey, you should give airbrushing a try.

You should give pin, strapping a try. So just try stuff, just kind of muscle through learning it, which basically means screwing up a thousand times until you can sort of kind of get it right. All that is just trial and error and practice. I got a lot more practice to that when I lived in Maryland, but there wasn’t a huge ask for stuff like that.

The demand for stuff like that seems to really, really exist strongly out here. But by the time I got out here, I wasn’t doing as much of that anymore. And then how did Chip Fuss and Steve Stanford’s work influence you? Ah, huge way. Well, I grew up watching Overhauling, so my favorite part of that show, and even still, I’ll pull it up on YouTube just to watch the clips of where Fuss is drawing you.

Some of my greatest memories of watching the show is just watching the artwork part, and then Steve Stanford, I’ve seen his artwork so many times in magazines and I’ve been lucky to call Steve a friend. Steve and Chip are local here to where I’m at. [00:07:00] So I worked with Fus on a build pretty early on when I moved here at a shop that I was working at.

I try to visit Stanford every couple of months and see how he’s doing both huge inspirations. Chris, did you happen to catch recently when Chip sat down? I believe it was on Haggerty’s YouTube channel and he did a at his desk redesign of the ca Corvette? Yes. Oh yeah. I’ve watched a bunch of the Haggerty uh, stuff there.

So what did you think of that? Do you think that was a good interpretation, a good take on the, on the CA eight. And what do you think of the CA’s design right now is one of the newest sports cars to come out in the last couple years? , oh man. I don’t know where your audience leans. So what I’m gonna say is probably gonna be a little bit controversial.

My wife and I were thinking about getting one last year, so we borrowed one off of Turro to give it a really honest try and we couldn’t wait to get outta that car. Really? . Yeah. We rented it for the day and an hour later we called the guy back and asked if we could bring it back to him. Didn’t care about giving him his money back.

No hard feelings. We just wanna to get the hell outta his car. [00:08:00] Is it because it’s uncomfortable or is it just, it’s a step away from what we’re used to with Corvets. So here’s where it gets really, really tricky as a car. Everything that you can measure, it is amazing. Cars, it’s fast, it sounds good. You could daily drive it.

So those things are amazing. It looks okay. It’s not my favorite looking car. It looks worse I think in Orange County than most other places cuz it looks like a fake Ferrari, right? It’s true to feel a little bit goofy when you’re next to people in McLarens and Maseratis and they’re like, eh, I think I’ll put the top back up.

But I think the look of the car is growing on yellow the better. And I think over time the look is gonna get better. It’s not a bad car. It definitely did not suit us. The thing that we did to really test the car is we did the thing that nobody really does when we go and they buy a sports car or any type of car like this, as we just drove down the street down PCH, a couple beaches down to go get coffee.

Just do something routine and see what the car is like. It was the dumbest car to try to park you’ve ever [00:09:00] seen in your life because you can’t see out of it. Right. The visibility you really, really can’t see out of it. And I’m not a tall person. Maybe a taller person would have better luck, but the way that the doors come up over your shoulders and we were in a stingray, it was convertible.

So the way the pillars are, I like the look of it, sort of, but just I parked and then my wife couldn’t get out cuz the doors are freaking huge. So I had to unpack, let her out, put the car back in, and by the time we walk back to the car grabbing coffee, we’re like, we’re over this. So if you could redesign one aspect of the.

Other than the pillars and the visibility, what would it be? From an artistic standpoint, interior, 100%. Really, really stupid interior. I don’t know who crafted that thing. If you sat in one, you’re in the driver’s seat, the console wraps around you, which is kind of cool, but all your AC controls are on the outer edge facing away from you.

Your passenger can hit all that stuff pretty easy. I’m sure once you own one, you get used to it, it’s fine. But the interior also has this really bizarre like layered stacked look of shapes. You think, wow, how much dirt and stuff is gonna get stuck in there in [00:10:00] no man’s land in some amount of time. . I don’t think it’s gonna age that well, but I think the interior would really, really help because most cars you don’t, you enjoy from the inside, not really from the outside, but if it had just a better just sitting being in it, it looks good-ish, but it was ergonomically just all over the map.

And the steering wheel, I think is square. Square. I think that’s square ish. Yes. Yeah. That’s just the way with Corvets in general though, I think anything after the C2 does not age well. Especially the C4 and the c5. They look like trash as soon as the next one comes out. And I, I, it’s true. I feel that way about all corvets.

Like a lot of cars just give it some time and they’ll kind of cycle through. That’s kind of what we’re seeing a little bit more. C4 and C5 as nineties and early two thousands stuff are starting to become a little bit more flavorful. I’m not really a big Corvette person to begin with. It’s really hard to sell me on a co.

The idea of the C eight is like this huge bang for buck proposition. I think at the time we were just getting out of a brand new Cayman GTS and they were considered comparable. They’re not comparable. from an [00:11:00] artist point of view and and a car guy through and through. What’s the sexiest car of all time?

Of all time? Whew man. I have a really tricky, naturally, I always lean towards Ferrari stuff. Something like anything in the two 50 series Ferrari, ma Rosa, a short wheel base, those to me are just some of the best looking cars ever. Nice. So speaking of Ferrari and for our listeners that aren’t watching this on our behind the scenes Patreon episode, you have behind you a 3 48 convertible.

So let’s talk about that for just a second. The Ferrari that doesn’t know what it wants to be , right? It’s got the baby one day. It’ll figure it out. Yeah. The baby F 40 layout, the five 12 tr nose and the sort of test rosa rear end. Why a 3 48? I’ve heard people say that you buy a 3 48 cuz you can’t afford to buy a 3 55 , which is sort of a funny thing to say.

I actually really, really love 3 55 s. I’ve done a lot of mechanical work in the past on Ferrari Ha having worked on them as part of paint and body. So I wanted something that I could work [00:12:00] on a little bit more myself. By the time that I really got to looking for, it said last year I sold two, I had a nine 11 and then I had the Cayman gts and I sold both of them because the car prices for stuff like that had just gone through the roof.

And I just thought, I’m done paying Ferrari money for portions, so I’m just gonna go get the car that I want. And of course I always looked at 3 55 s as well. I actually really, really like 4 56 s if you can find them in a six speed. But once I really kind of got down to a little bit more nuts and bolts research, I like that the 3 48 was kind of the oddball.

I never like what everyone else is gonna like, I like to show up with something different and unusual. And the 3 48 is definitely that to begin with as somebody like to go on really hard canyon drives. At least once a week up in la. So the car is no power steering, no assisted brakes, no driver aids, nothing.

Leaving the top is manual. It’s the last flat tap it V8 that they made. It’s a really unique layout system and it is awesome. It’s also the last dog leg transmission, so it’s five speed with a dog leg. So it’s a really, really interesting driving experience and I don’t love it. We’ve kind of [00:13:00] diverged a little bit.

We should probably get back to your timeline and talk about some of the things you’re noted for. And if our listeners are checking out your website while we’re chit-chatting here, they’ll notice that as we mentioned, you did some sharpie art and you’re, you’re famous for both the Sharpie Mustang and the Sharpie Camaro.

So why don’t we explore the inspiration behind this. Why Sharpie? Why choose that medium? Kind of around the time that I was experimenting a bit more with airbrushing and Pinstriping, one of the guys that I worked with at a hot rod shop, I was just a, a prepper guy there. This was one of the times that I moved back to Maryland and he had showed me this article of the Sharpie Lamborghini.

And this would’ve been like 2010 ish. I thought that was really, really cool given it to me as an idea like, Hey, think about stuff like this. What’s the future hold for how we do artwork on cars and stuff like that. And I just kind of went for it. I got really, really lucky in that the first Sharpie car that I got to do, a guy flew me out here to California in Northern California to do his car and it was like a 94 El Dorado.

Nothing really, really elaborate, but it was really cool just to [00:14:00] have the opportunity to do, and that seems like a million years ago, but since I’ve done uh, 23 sharpen vehicles all over the world, it’s one of my absolute favorite things to do. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold, hold on a second. Tw that El Dorado is a huge car.

That’s a lot of surface area. And then you did 23 cars. Obviously the Mustang and the Camaro are the ones that are most, the most notable on, on social and stuff. Yeah, but I gotta ask this question cuz I’m sure a lot of people are thinking it. How many sharp. Does it take to cover an entire car? Not as many as it would seem like.

That’s of course one of the more popular questions. It really doesn’t take as many. If you’re efficient and you’re kind to the materials, so at least these days, especially if you use something like paint markers, you could get around a car and probably five or 10 markers. That’s the way cheaper than I thought it was gonna be.

Yeah. You’ll destroy the name of the marker long before you run outta ink. Interesting. Yeah. What do you do to make the Sharpie’s ink stay on the vehicle? Cause I mean, if you’ve ever used a Sharpie, yes, it’s permanent marker, but yeah, it doesn’t [00:15:00] always bond to the surface that you put it on. So do you have to prep the car a certain way?

Yeah, I guess I was lucky in that line before life knew already, that if you’re gonna treat this type of thing as part of the paint job prep first do the. Then clear. So treat it like you would if you were doing a full paint job anyways. And that really gave me a lake up cuz there was a lot of people in the early times where that idea was kind of blowing up, but none of them were automotive painters.

So it was a different game of whose stuff was actually gonna last. Of course, the earlier stuff that they did, it was actually Sharpie, like ink markers. They were industrial markers. But as time went on, I changed over to using the paint markers, which has a pigment and a binder. So it actually, it won’t fade as time goes on and you can clear it pretty easily.

It becomes more of a paint process. It’s a lot more robust than just using ink markers. So how long does it take to Sharpie a car? Not as long as it seems and just certainly depends on the project. But these days I can get around a whole car on a weekend. Wow. Oh my God. Yeah. That’s craziness. Uh, I’ll let my daughters go [00:16:00] at mine, I guess.

Quick , see how that turns out. Let ’em go in your black car with a black sharpie. You’ll, you’ll be . It’s called Touch a Paint . Exactly. It’ll be just fine. Well, I got a question for you. What is robot number three? It’s kind of a spinoff series of artwork that I do every now and then when the mood sort of strikes.

It’s one of the few things that I do that actually has a character in it. My wife and I were big like comic book cartoon fans. So it’s the, the only way to sort of bridge some of the interest together. Get to put a little bit more of a story or a mood into a scene with a car, something else happening.

What kind of comics? Are you a Marvel or DC fan? Not deep enough to really be one or the other. I just enjoy the aesthetic. Yeah. See he looks at the pretty pictures, right? ? Yes. Yeah. I’m an artist. That’s all I’m doing. I know there were words in him anyway. Graphic novel doesn’t mean it has words in I’m just saying.

No, it’s just, just graphics point, . So is there a robot number three liberated car out there? Have you done a full car? No. No I haven’t. It would be cool to do that. The appropriate task hasn’t really come [00:17:00] along for that. Oftentimes like the Sharpie cars, a lot of them more in the last handful of years or usually for like, uh, corporate clients.

So they have sort of a specific thing that they’re going for. So I can’t exactly shove exactly what I would like to do. And onto app, is there a bucket list car to either be a Sharpie car or maybe a robot? Three livery car? I’d have to think about wood car and make a good robot. Number three car, but no bucket list car.

I think anytime you get to turn the surface of a car into a piece of artwork, it almost doesn’t matter. I’ve done some pretty obscure noname cars as art cars before and it was just as fun. I think a Volkswagen Ruan is the robot. Three car very specific choice. He’s, I know where he is going with that . So what do you think about art cars, since you’re from Maryland, you know, there’s a big art car festival in Baltimore every year downtown.

Were there any that got your attention over the years and you’re like, oh my God, what is that? Or maybe when you were younger, they inspired you in any sort of way. You know, honestly, I didn’t know that there was an art car thing there. [00:18:00] Darn. But you missed out. Yeah. . I did. Honestly. But it’s funny you say that cuz it reminded me when I was doing, the only Sharpie car that I had for myself was an 85 fier.

This was right after the, uh, the Cadillac. This is a long time ago, so don’t, don’t laugh too hard. Brad’s favorite car? . . It was a gt. Okay, I’ll show gt, but I would only do the artwork at Jimmy Cone at the car meet there. If you guys have ever gone to that Jimmy Cone Cone. The one in Mount Airy. Not uh, exactly not.

Yeah. Okay. That car meet still exists. Uh, our partners have heard, yeah. Our partners over at Collector Car Guide list all of their events on their websites. That’s pretty cool that you mentioned Jimmy Cone. Cause we see it listed there all the time. The Baltimore Arc cars. I mean, you see them, some people drive ’em to work.

They’re nuts. I mean, they’re done in all sorts of different styles and either painted on or glued on stuff. I mean, some are covered in bottle caps and some look like sculptures. They’re just absolutely crazy. I mean, I used to pass a couple going to work every day. I’m like, you’re driving that thing.

There was even one that was reminiscent of the dog mobile from like Dumb and Dumber. [00:19:00] I mean, there’s just some crazy, crazy stuff, but I don’t think you want to go off that deep end doing your art cars. Right. It’s more liveries. It’s more adapting the style to the, the body lines and all that kind of stuff.

yeah. What they’re doing is a little bit more abstract, more maybe less abstract, I’m not sure. But yeah, we’re definitely coming at it from different points of view. So if you ever done deliveries like race car deliveries or anything like that, Yeah, actually I did a huge art installation with a guy last year where we did 20 something Porsche parts and each of them we painted to match whichever delivery and whichever car was on the list.

So every livery you can think of from Porsche discography, actually we just painted tons of parts last year for car collection here locally. Have you ever done anything like a mural in a garage or anything like that? Oh yeah. Yeah. I used to do more of that when we first got to California. It’s not like a super common request.

There’s people that that specialize in that type of stuff, but actually I love large scale artwork. Graffiti stuff is some of my favorite. You have to have the wall for it. Here’s really what it comes down. Funny you mentioned that I have this half wall in my garage that I’ve been saying [00:20:00] for years. I keep telling my wife it’s Battleship Gray and I said, this thing is ready for some motor sports graffiti art.

Yes. I just need to find somebody to do it for me. Right. Yeah, it’s perfect. So let’s uh, talk about the big move and you’re leaving the DMV area for Southern California. The car culture on the East coast is strong, but what led you to shift West and tell us a little bit about the differences in the car culture from the two sides.

It is massively different. I knew, or at least I thought I knew when we were done with our shop in Maryland and we’re coming over here, I had this feeling like if we’re gonna do something substantive at all in the car culture, you might as well go where it was bigger. There is a big car culture on the East coast, but it has a different type of thing going on.

And the part that sort of bugs me is how seasonal. If I can be so picky, so routinely, we have people on the motorcycle, in the car world there that, you know, you have from fall till spring to do all the necessary work that you need to, to be ready for spring and summer. Yet everybody will wait until, [00:21:00] until the first nice day of spring before they’re like, oh my God, I gotta get my motorcycle or car ready.

I better go get it at the paint shop. And it’s just like we, all of us sat in our hands for three months waiting for work, and all of a sudden everybody wants to come outta the woodwork and get everything ready for car show season. And that’s obnoxious as a lifestyle. And if you’re trying to run a business around stuff like that here, it never ends.

There’s a car show every weekend, at least one. The biggest cars in coffee in the United States is South Orange County down the street, and it’s every single Saturday. It’s sort of never ending, but it gives you a lot of possibilities and a lot of opportunities. I wouldn’t say like better or worse, even the Midwest has its own car culture.

What was out here, or what I thought would be out here seemed like it would suit at least what my interests were a little bit better, and it did not disappoint. So I think if we balance those scales a little bit, having traveled almost every state in the country now, experiencing different car culture all over the country, the left and right coast obviously have the highest concentration of people.

You’re right. California car culture is, I hate to say it’s more showy, right? It’s all about the car show. It’s about polishing up [00:22:00] your ride, having something unique. How can you make it more bespoke than the next guy? I think in the East coast though, we have our car shows too, right? We have our vag fairs and our Honda meets and you know, going behind the Dairy Queen and talking about our cars.

Yeah. But I think the mortar sport culture is much larger on the east coast because we have a higher density of tracks than that makes sense than the West coast. So it’s sort of like, Same but different because if you tilt the scale the other way, California has Laguna Seka and, and Willow Springs and other fantastic tracks, but the density is totally different.

Like you guys have to go a lot further. So I think, oh, for sure. There’s less race cars and more Canyon bombers and then I’m gonna go get coffee and hopefully Jerry Seinfeld shows up. Right. That kind of thing. , it’s not that unlikely. What I really like about, especially Coastal California, is the kind of stuff that you see in magazines is what people daily drive.

It’s awesome. Yeah, that’s very true. You don’t see that a whole lot on the East coast. I mean, obviously New York, Northern Virginia, Atlanta stuff with the bigger cities. Yeah, [00:23:00] absolutely. You’re like, wow, check out that Bentley. But when you’re in Malibu all over the place. Yeah, but when you’re in Malibu, it’s like Bentley’s, like pedestrian.

You’re like there 12 of them. Like whatever. Yeah. , to be honest, that’s why I ended up selling, uh, the last Porsche nine 11 that I had last year. It seems like when you move to Orange County, they just give you a nine 11. I just thought there’s nothing, it no longer feels individualistic. It doesn’t suit me to have the same type of cars.

Everybody else, the com complex that were in is Porsche collectors. PORs Jeweler. Yeah. Another collection cross the way, like everything is air cooled. Porsche in here. That’s actually how we, how we met. So there’s a huge community for air cooled here, which is awesome. But, but the possibility of what you can daily drive here, my regular normal vehicles, I’m a motorcycle and have a Roadster as my everyday cars.

So you could take the boy out of the east coast. Is there anything that stays with you that you’ve tried to incorporate into the West Coast car culture? Uh, no. There’s no reason for that. I don’t think , , I mean we’ve been here a little while, so I think it was [00:24:00] more of me trying to adapt and learn what happens here.

But the type of shops that I’ve gotten to do work with, I work with shops all over the country, so I think that’s a better to get a little bit of taste of everything cuz I don’t have like a California sensibility about what cars should look like or how they should be built. California for me is just where I live and I love being by the beach.

That’s all. That’s all as far as cars styles and builds. There’s so much variety across the country and that’s what I like with working with different people is there’s different interests and different ways to approach everything. I don’t think that you need to add a sensibility from where you’re from to make something look good.

So Chris, being an artist has gotta be tough and an automotive. Probably even more so in some respects. Right. , many people say, and this is true of racing as well, is failures breed successes. Sure. Are there still some projects that you look back on and go, man, the juice really wasn’t worth the squeeze? Or maybe there’s still something out there that you want to get around to or hashtag around to it?

Right. . , that’s a good question. I think there’s [00:25:00] such a long journey. Kind of get to this point. Right now, what I’m doing is exactly what I want to do, so I don’t really think much past just enjoying the moment where I’m finally getting to do the stuff that I’m really enjoying, you know, sharing the paintings and the videos on social media.

But if it took all the stakes and the failures and the weird job opportunities to get here, I can’t be anything but grateful for all that weirdness. I haven’t worked in the custom car industry for like 10 years before I switched over to artwork is a pretty volatile place, and I don’t think most people from the outside realize what a mess the industry really, really is.

Being a full-time artist is challenging whether you draw cars or portraits or anything. What made the change really, really easy is working in the custom car world. I never knew if I was gonna get paid from week to week anyways. So switching over to artwork was no change right off the cuff, you know, at least your income is totally in your control at that point.

You do what you can’t, you know, you provide the work and you put it out to the world. Whereas working for other people in shops, it was, you’re gonna do the work and cross your fingers that the check is gonna clear at the end of the week. That actually sounds like a great [00:26:00] segue into our next question, which is, uh, if you had to give advice to other starving, I mean, uh, aspiring artists , what would that be?

Maybe some lessons you’ve learned. You’ve already given us a few examples, so what are the lessons? Would, would you give. I think true for anybody, no matter whatever type of creative thing that you’re in, even if you’re like starting out as a shop owner, realize that you can’t pay your rent with exposure.

So don’t take it as a form of payment. It’s not a real currency. But don’t say no to opportunities that you think you can grow from. You gotta know what to say yes to and what to say no to. Learning to say no to things is really, really, really hard when you start out with anything. Cuz you want every opportunity to prove to yourself and and to everybody else what you can do.

So you need to say yes to stuff, but you need to not get trapped in that loop of whatever that can turn into. So learning to say no is really, really, really important. But no, that you can’t work for free forever. So if you start out working for free, it’s very hard to grow from that point. You typically work in what people would call traditional or analog media, you know, like you’re talking about.[00:27:00]

Paintings and, and all that. But you’ve also made the shift into digital rendering. Why? Yeah. What are some of those examples of some of the renders you’ve done? I mean, I like a little bit of everything. So here I’ve got like a small art supply store worth of stuff. So if I wanna paint an acrylics or oils or color pencil or marker or ink or airbrush or digital, I’ve got everything that I need depending on whatever that task is I think that I need to accomplish to change over to digital.

There’s still so much in the digital world that I haven’t messed with, cuz I’m not like a 3D model or anything. Everything that I do digital, I’ll still do the same way, just hand drawn. I just use slightly better tools for, and that really came out of the need for practicality. As time went on, builders became more interested in seeing color variations, wheel variations, and design change ideas.

So the need to do a set of renderings as opposed to here’s a concept meant that redrawing from scratch on paper was. Totally impractical. It would be worth the expense and the time to learn how to work digitally just so you weren’t burning paper an hour. So it’s a much more efficient way to work. I don’t love working digitally cuz it [00:28:00] doesn’t feel real and tactile to me.

But I use it for what it is. Wanna create art and paintings. I use paint design work for a builder. I’ll use whatever tools are gonna get them the result that they’re looking for as quickly as possible. So one of the better things about digital is I can just send them a preview shot of the file right away and they can tell me yes no on what to change and we can work really, really quickly.

As opposed if I did a marker airbrush rendering and they said let’s move these things around, that starts to make that process, uh, a little bit more difficult. So it’s really more the sense of practicality and make my life easier and to give the builders that I work with something efficient and practical.

So we’ve seen in the past, like you mentioned, 3D modeling where people will render cars in motion and stuff like that and they look, yeah. So real one in particular we talked about in our drive-through episode. You remember Brad, the Volkswagen s SP two wide body R W B inspired thing. We’re like, oh my god, this.

Somebody’s building. This is unreal. And you’re like, bro, this is super Photoshop’s a. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Are you going in that direction as well? Is that something you wanna No. Zero chance, absolutely not. , [00:29:00] is that like the the highest end computing you need to, it’s not that for me, that’s just not where my interest lies.

One, there’s people that specialize in it, so why reinvent the wheel if you want that work? Hire artists that specialize in that type of work. I’ve got enough stuff to do so I don’t need to sit and learn something else additionally to make things better in that way. To me, there’s also a practicality element that sort of misses the Mark A.

Little bit with 3D model digital rendering stuff and, and there’s artists that I think accomplish this better than others. Once we’ve wide bodied everything and chopped the roof off it and put Toyo triple ars on everything, what else can you do? Like that to me seems like this formula for 3D renderings that is put on everything and you go, wow, that’s really, really cool.

As a 3D model execution, there is zero fricking chance someone’s gonna build that. Not a chance that someone’s gonna cut up a kuta and turn it into this zero chance. It just, it’s like, what is the purpose of this arc? What are we doing? If it’s to sell posters, I’m cool with that, but as like a form of, are we gonna make good concepts out of this?

You can make some really cool over the top stuff, but in the [00:30:00] real practical build world, if you can’t turn it into something real. But on the same token, I think some of us would argue that chopping up the real thing and trying to do it is worse. Right? Taking a kuta that there are very limited numbers of to begin with and bastardizing it, for lack of a better term, I’d rather see it done digitally.

There’s minuses to that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can’t be all, all one way or another. You’re totally, totally right. If there’s a way to look at these concepts, you’d rather look at ’em in this way. I just think right now there’s a style to all of. This is actually sort of my problem with realism and art in general when they all look the same.

It no longer has that artist’s identity to it. It just has a look. You’re right. And the other thing that I think would be cool as a side effect of this, obviously what you’re doing with rendering is mockups towards building the real thing, you know, setting that stage. Working with your client, all that, but with these digital 3D renders, I go back to the days and now I’m gonna date myself of like need for speed underground.

Yeah. Where you had this almost [00:31:00] limitless customization and you could build these, you know, stance for cars and all this kind of stuff, and then you could go out, race your buddies. Yeah. That’s for me is the cool part when you put it in a sim, but it’s like, how do you. The rendering that these guys built into those platforms where you could actually enjoy it because it’s your point, you’re just looking at a picture, right?

And I don’t mean to discount the amount of work that goes into doing these things. I follow a number of these artists as well and it is absolutely amazing work more the marketing side of me. Are we AF entertainment here or are we trying to inspire, build ideas? I just wanna understand what the purpose is.

If someone says, Hey, this is just for entertainment, I can just clear the rest of the stuff outta my head and not worry about it. And I like that there’s in the same boat. There’s plenty I do that’s just meant for entertainment that doesn’t land in the practical. So it’s certainly not up to me to preach it to people and say, ah, this, we need to figure a way to be practical.

That’s sort of misses the mark. I like the idea of this type of stuff as an art form. I just hope that it evolves past this formulaic look that it has. Right? You mentioned some competitors. Who are the competitors you have in, in your [00:32:00] space? Competitors. , I guess. What do you mean by competitors? Well, I guess we’re always thinking about it in Motorsports.

Everybody’s a competitor. Everybody’s r right? There’s, we’ve all got a competitive nature. We’ve all got people that we want to Yeah. Be better than I see what you’re saying. I really don’t look at anything as competitors. Not from the point of view of I’m better than anybody else. I look to a lot of other people for inspiration.

There’s a lot of stuff that I really, really like seeing a very, uh, east coast thing. I think to think things more competitively, it’s taken me years to, to remove that part outta my personality. Yeah. Perfectly. So I try not to be, uh, competitive about, Like this, I’ll be up all night working on paintings.

We’ll ask it in a proper West coast way then, which is who are the artists that you look up to and that you are inspired by ? Well, that, yeah, it’s definitely a better way to put it. Way more Copa said it. I don’t, uh, I’m happy to do what I’m doing and I hope that I get better at it. A lot of the artists that I follow that I really, really like aren’t even automotive artists.

They’re more like portrait artists or landscape artists or oil painters. And [00:33:00] a lot of these people I just know they’re like Instagram handles, so I actually don’t even know their real name. But for anybody curious, the type of stuff that I’d be interested in, that’s a lot of what I look at is like portrait art and landscape art.

I don’t look at a lot of other automotive artists. I love seeing other people’s artwork. I can’t not look at something and not like, be sort of inspired by it. So I try to limit my intake of stuff like that so that I can kind of keep myself in my own lane, if that makes any sense. After all this time that you’ve been doing, Are you still self-taught or have you gone back and gotten training or worked with other artists?

Oh, I’m still very much self-taught. Never got a chance to take any classes. I’ve started teaching classes actually, and they’re kind of, the cool thing about social media is that artists can kind of share information together. So, you know, like I said, other portrait artists or cartoon artists that I follow might mention the materials that they’re using.

Or even Steve Stanford, when I’ve gotten time to talk with him, they might point out some materials that he tried just so I can go and point me in the right direction for some materials to try. So that’s kind of the blessing of social media is a lot more [00:34:00] information you’ve shared openly amongst artists, which is really, really cool.

But I, I still haven’t gotten any formal training maybe one day. Are there any of those artists that you would love to collaborate with that you haven’t collaborated with already? Like, not necessarily in the. You know, sector, but more the, I guess the cartoon comic graphic novels sector that you would like to collaborate with in some form or fashion.

I think that would be a really, really fun idea. Uh, I always like the idea of artwork that’s gonna kind of take me out of what I’m doing now and go to the next thing. I kind of go in and out of phases of artwork pretty quickly. Mm-hmm. . So I like the idea of whatever is coming next to be a big sort of change in the normal.

Something like that would be really, really cool. I actually haven’t done a lot of artistic collaborations. That would be a lot, a lot of fun. But I like to go through artwork really, really quickly. so other people can complicate the process. Do you do a lot of projects for other people? A lot of work like that, but are there some projects that you’re doing just for you?

Most of what you see on social media I’m doing just for me. , which we’re gonna get into here in a second, . And, uh, so that would be, yeah, that would be like, uh, paintings, most of the stuff [00:35:00] that I’m sharing more commonly, to be perfectly honest, to build, rendering the design work, that’s stuff that I rarely post or share on social media.

So yeah, some of that stuff’s top secret, right? It’s for clients, some of it’s secret, but the real truth to it is I don’t need more to do than I already have. So I don’t want to advertise. I don’t want people to ask me to do something that I’m just gonna say no to. Yeah. I have some great people that I work with already.

There’s always space to say yes to. Some really interesting projects. From practice, the stuff that you put out there is what people are gonna ask you for. So I put less of it out there and put more artwork out there. There’s kind of this expression in Italian that I know, and in English it translates to the artist’s hand.

There’s a certain just patience that you guys have this tendency, there’s these strokes, you know, of the pen or the, or the brush or whatever, that a lot of people cannot mimic, they cannot imitate. Right? And that’s what makes, you know, people, artists, and makes them masters and whatever. So I’ve watched you and your videos on social media and they’re captivating.

Oh, thank you. But they’re the new form of art that’s come up, [00:36:00] especially in the automotive sector of artistry. That’s this photorealistic art. And I know it’s been around for a while. People did it, you know, in dots way back when, or you know, all this kind of stuff and whatever. But nowadays, it’s just gotten to the point where you can.

Not tell the difference between the canvas and the photo and the real car. And so I wonder, and I’ve seen the technique you use and I’ve seen the technique that like Mano uses and some other people and whatnot. Yeah. Boil it down for us. How long does it take? It seems super involved, lots of layering, all this kind of stuff.

Why photorealistic art? That’s actually a really great and funny question. To be perfectly honest, I’m not a huge fan of photorealistic art because I’m somebody that really likes comic books and cartoons and animation. I like a stylized existence. I already live in the real world. So the idea of creating art that just replicates it is pretty boring to me.

So the only way that I could create pieces that were , this is like a few part answer, but when I do stylize pieces now, a lot of the feedback that I get comes down to [00:37:00] the way that I’ve stylized. If you make a wheel out around, you’ve ruined the whole. So Stylizing becomes this really delicate balance with cars.

What can you get away with, what can you not? And I enjoy doing that push and pull and I keep trying and just kind of seeing where it goes at the end of the day, some basis of realism gives you a core strength to what the viewer is looking at. The only way that I found to kind of do my own thing within realism, I don’t really don’t consider what I do realism compared to a whole lot of other artists.

It might be like, uh, legible and believable, but I don’t think it has like this really high level in that way. But I do all my own lighting and color contour in all my art. So I don’t use photo references for any of the lighting that I do. I make it all up. So that for me is the way that I can create an individual style or look in all of the pieces that I do cuz there’s no photo of any of the paintings I’ve ever.

but you are starting from a base drawing the way, at least I’ve seen it. You’re doing that in like pen and ink and then it’s kind of cool actually you take a [00:38:00] solid color, like I, the Camaro video is an example. You did like a early seventies Camaro, right? Like the uh, Buble Bumblebee. Exactly. And you just.

Layered on this thick looking tempura paint on top of it, it looked like from the video. And then, yeah, started to peel the car out of this thick paint and then from there, begin to add layer after layer after layer, and then suddenly I’m like, holy smokes. You know, obviously that’s all you know, fast forward and in time.

Right. Cool. Yeah, to some degree. Yeah. So how long does it take to put something like that together and, and how do you see the vision? Why do you choose the cars that you choose when you do it? So it’s a practicality aspect. There’s a lot of things that actually I’m kind of thankful that I took away from working in the automotive industry, both the collision and the custom car industry.

And that’s efficiency to me. Being able to work really, really. Is everything. So most of the paintings that you see, I’ll do ala Prima. It’s just one sitting. So an afternoon, an evening. So figure four to eight hours, something like that, depending on the size and complexity of the piece. [00:39:00] So I jammed through stuff pretty quick cuz I have an idea of where I want to go with each piece.

And if you’re familiar with your own process, there’s less guesswork. And also because I’m not relying on a photo reference, I’m not comparing against anything else. It saves an enormous amount of time to go, this is the direction that I’m gonna go and I’m gonna stick with it. Versus compare, compare, compare, compare.

That’s incredibly slow. So the way that I work just allows me to be pretty direct. There’s still a lot of guesswork and there’s a lot of back and forth. And then the way that I like to layer a lot of this stuff you’ll see is acrylic. I’ll paint an oil as well, and that’s way more direct. But if you think about acrylic paint, same effect as if you were spraying a car.

If you were gonna blend a yellow panel and you’re going over primer, you’d either wanna seal it a lighter gray or a white, and you wouldn’t wanna seal it some other color. And if you were gonna shoot a three stage in orange, you’re either gonna shoot that over a white or a tinted yellow. Your under colors will affect every other color afterwards, just like it.

On a car. So if you think about what color has maximum opacity, so that yellow car, for [00:40:00] example, that bum would be Camaro, half of it ended up being black at the end of the painting. If I’d have based it black, that yellow would’ve never popped because it would take an inch of yellow over black to get that opacity.

Instead, start with a white ground, put some yellow over it. That’s gonna give you the most vibrancy. There’s a GTO that I painted recently where I did something similar based, uh, yellow over white and yellow was. Red over the yellow, and a lot of people asked why? Because there was no yellow left in the painting.

Yellow is the under color for the red, so the red could have more vibrancy in one coat. So there’s huge practicality element to al this . But then there’s all those other little details too, that when you look at it. Yeah, I mean, just like the headlights alone, it’s like, oh, it has this little reflection. I mean, where does that come from?

Is that just imagination or, yep, yep. The only thing I’ll use a reference for is linework. I don’t wanna be stuck to anything because I’m gonna move around the lighting the way that I want. And after having done a billion paintings and drawings, you kind of go, well, this is what a headlight looks like.

This is what a taillight looks like. This is what lighting looks like over top of this curve when it’s red or [00:41:00] blue or green, there’s a lot that you can learn to do intuitively. There’s certain types of headlight and taillight styles where you go, yep, I better look at a photo to make sure that I’m getting the bulb where the light blow in the right place, or the h i v projector is the right shape in, in the right place.

You know, as long as you’ve got a good basis for line work, the way that you fill that in. Should this be based on how you’re casting light? And because I’m not using a reference for that, I’m just chewing it all one time. I’m not thinking that many steps ahead. I’m just kind of going, I’m gonna shoot all the colors on this whole thing.

And then as I get towards the end, I’ll tighten up the headlights, I’ll tighten up the taillights. So the phrase is loose to tight. Do all the big areas, do all the messy stuff, and then as it comes together, work on the details because there’s no sense in working on details. Until you know that you’ve got all this big stuff, right?

If something goes wrong in the details and you have to start over, you’ve wasted all the time. So I always save all the details stuff for the end. You know, even in let’s say grade school and high school art classes, they teach you right up front about perspective and things like that. Yeah. But it’s always in reference to, oh, I’m drawing a house on like a farmhouse or, or something like that.

And it’s always [00:42:00] something like simple. I’ve always found cars to be the most difficult things to draw properly because it’s a 3D object on a 2D surface. Right. And I get it. Houses are 3D objects too, but they’re square. There’s so many curves. Yeah, there’s, there’s so many curves and angles and just all these things to a car sometimes are even more complicated than drawing the human right.

The human face. You can lay out the ovals and all the circles and kind of get it going and you build around that. But car is so multifaceted. What do you do to get started? To get it right, to build that Camaro in the pen and ink part so it doesn’t come out the front looks right and the back end is, you know, squeeze like the Oscar Myron Wiener or something.

Yeah. Fundamentals to being able to draw is really, really important. And not every drawing is gonna happen on the first try. This is good for any artist to know. It might. Half a dozen sketches or overlays before you kind of go, all right, I’m finally starting to, to make it make sense. But I start out with a pretty rudimentary way.

You know, I’ll just draw a box in an angle that I think that I want a, the vehicle or the section to be [00:43:00] in just a box. Just something really, really simple and just start to break the box in the pieces. You know, this is the windshield line, this is the fender R, and these are all guess lines. I don’t know if I’m gonna get ’em right, but I need reference points.

I need to guess. So whether the guess is right or wrong, I can decide, you know, should I move that line? Should I, should I keep scooting it around? Just the art of drawing is something all in its own and I certainly still make plenty of mistakes. Drawing and obscure perspectives is difficult enough. I don’t like drawing normal angles of things.

It’s pretty boring, so I always want to have a, an extra flavor, but having a unique take on perspective can add something so much extra to what you’re looking at. You know, to be able to look at something from a view that people don’t see where there’s no photo of is kind of a cool opportunity. Just set the bar kind of high.

You kind of go, man, I really need to get these details in the right place, so I might have to look at three different pictures of angles to compare details against, to place things before I get it right. Then it becomes inception where we take a picture of your photorealistic picture that has no picture and then it has a picture.

Right? Yeah. . [00:44:00] Yeah. It’s a journey. It’s a journey. What was the hardest project you worked on? What was the toughest thing to draw or to put it all together finally and you went, all right. I’m glad that’s over with. I mean, there’s always stuff that comes along that’s pretty challenging. To be honest, I don’t do a lot of commissions and a lot of request stuff.

Most of what I do is just kind of from the hip, you know, whatever I’m inspired to that day or, or however that works out. Just cuz I don’t like the limitations of what other people’s ideas and perspectives are. I just kind of wanna do my own thing and hope that people enjoy that. But I do do a request on occasion.

It’s rare to agree to something that I think is gonna work me to death. from experience. Just try to say, no better. and kinder. Chris, since you’re an artist, we would be remiss if we didn’t ask you some of our very specific pit stop questions. We’ve already asked two of them, the poster on the wall and then the sexiest car of all time.

What would you have in your three car garage? Three cars. That’s all you get. money is no object. Money is no object. I probably still play pretty sick, man. Well, I definitely have to have a [00:45:00] Ferrari two 50 short wheel base. Probably Ferrari 50, and I had to pick some kind of Porsche to have in there. , maybe like an early seventies Rs.

Ooh, something there. Cool. For sure. Yeah, I’m pretty easy. I don’t need to spend a bazillion dollars on cars. So let’s take the inverse of that, the ugliest car of all time. And is there such a thing to an artist? Oh yeah. Because I’m not classically trained, I don’t have to pretend to be poetic about every single thing that’s made.

I don’t have to come up with these lies about, oh, these, these key lines are from. Everything they make right now. Freaking awful. Every single thing. . Oh, that’s awesome. . Is it because they’ve exaggerated the kidney grills, it’s just gotten out of control, or is it something else I couldn’t place? One thing that would be like, I don’t know.

The whole thing is just a how. How do we arrive here? A company that makes such good cars, even aesthetically, they’re very German, they’re very utilitarian, but they’ve started to lean. Let’s try to be a little bit Lamborghini and it [00:46:00] just misses the mark. It’s so dumb. It doesn’t mean the cars don’t perform great in most of these cars, you know?

Well, I just say maybe like the M two definitely is a good looking car, but the M four, I don’t know, there’s something about the way that they’re going with their design. You’re just like, I don’t know where you guys are going. I actually, I think that there’s a lot of contemporary stuff that’s pretty hard on the eyes.

You know, the electric ev Hummer, I’m not really sure where that’s coming from. If we’re all just gonna like draw ideas with rulers. And stuff, then people don’t need my help. And a lot of these new cars are rendered. They’re not drawn by hand anywhere. I mean, I’m, I’m assuming here, but I mean a lot of it is done in cad.

Tires are designed in cad. A lot of things are done in cad. Yeah. 3d. 3D printed and otherwise. But it’s true. That’s where a company like BMW is really, really confusing. They have a really, really artistic take on why they do the things they still Clay model. So does, uh, so does Porsche. But you get a very different sense of how Ferrari, Porsche, and B M W handle their audience and their target cars and, and who they’re trying to sell to.

Same with Lamborghini. I mean, how many lines and slats and vents can you put [00:47:00] on the same car over and over and over again? Enough? No idea. Never enough . Yeah. You know, maybe it’s just cuz I see him all the time. It seems like if you’re a full-time YouTuber, you own a mc. . And to me, they’re really not that interesting to look at.

That’s true. And they all kind of look the same. They’re hard to tell apart. But you brought up something interesting about bmw. I think there’s certain brands that are iconic for certain features, like the kidney grills, BMWs associated with that. BMWs, I think we all look back to the era of square bodies and round headlights.

Much like there’s a big craze of the pop-up headlights. Just like your 3 48 Ferrari there. Yeah. Yeah. Is there something in your take that is that iconic thing that you love about a car? Maybe it’s the pop-up headlight. Maybe it’s the Porsche whale tail or something. Is there something that just. It’s that one facet that sticks out to you that maybe every car should have.

That’s something that you really love. Maybe not on the nose in that way. I think each manufacturer or uh, at least in some of the higher end models, have done a really good job of keeping the heritage with where they’re headed. The one thing that I can say [00:48:00] about designs that I think are just a little bit sideways, like some of this BMW stuff, the silver lining is you can only go up from here, you can only bring back the classic look and people will be stoked.

Kind of like when Porsche went from the 9 96 to the 9 97, a return back to round headlights as opposed to the FRI kind of giving the people what they want. It’s sort of misled. 9 96 is a great car, but if you go too far, you can return to Koch Classic and people will be stoked. We’re in an era right now where all cars are starting to look the same and it’s in the technologically and for the best aerodynamics, for the most fuel efficient vehicles or whatever.

But in your opinion, what is the best decade for the best looking cars before the accountants and the bean counters got in? ruined the industry. It’s the Bangal BMWs. That’s what he likes. . . That’s a good question. I think most people are gonna probably think about cars the same way they think about music.

Whatever influence them most as the kid is probably where they would go. Mm-hmm. and I would’ve never really guessed [00:49:00] that. Mid to late nineties would be where I find a happy spot with design. Mm-hmm. , because we’re still like O B D. Tipping into OB D two cars. Regulations are changing a little bit. There’s still some freedom and design.

They might not be the best cars overall, but that’s how you end up with something like the E 36 BMWs M three s that are just become like this kind of great timeless classic, you know, the 3 55 Ferrari, uh, Porsche going from 9 93 to 9 96 to 9 97. The early 2000 stuff is really, really cool too. But I think there’s so much design in there that also went too far.

Like for Taurus, you know, once they turn all the headlights into these weird round shapes, things went a little bit strange. So there’s good moments, I think in every decade. Lately, something about the nineties feels pretty comfortable because we’ll never get flip up headlights again. We’ll never get non airbag steering wheels again.

Cars at least have some shape to them, but they also don’t have to be purposeful. But it doesn’t have to be a reason other than it looked good. And I. I mean, if we wanna go even further back, everything just about from the late [00:50:00] fifties and early sixties, ugh. You just couldn’t ask for a better era of just, let’s just make it look cool.

You know, that brings up a really good point, which is a couple years ago we did a suber of articles called Retro Relativity, and it was all about the resurgence of the retro cars, right? Bringing back the mini, the Fiat 500, the Beatle, the Challenger, right? Yeah. And so I have to ask you the question, who wore it best?

Which one of the retro reintroductions is your favorite ? I guess favorite’s gonna be kind of a tricky one. I know. Know which one is absolutely my least favorite. Favorite? Well, let’s, let’s go with that. Anything that Dodge does as a rebrand is awful. The Dart, the Challenger Charger, whatever, whenever you use your old badge to sell a new trick, you know, even Ford, their machi with their Mustang right now could have happily been called a machi.

It didn’t really need to be called a Mustang, that, hey, I’m not the marketing department, so what do you know? But yeah, not really a fan of how Dodge does their new classics. They’re not my favorite, I should say. Um, especially something like The [00:51:00] Dark, you just kind of go, you you used a really cool like identity and you just stuck it on the little car, you know?

Yeah. Just sort of misses the mark for, uh, because they didn’t wanna call it a neon, but you know, hey, whatever. Honestly, it would’ve been cooler if they called it a neon. It would’ve been a little bit more honest. But a do gotta give it to Chrysler. They’re like the last American brand that really knows what Americans want as far as like a minivan with 700 horsepower, because that’s, Yeah,

That’s just what they do. I was actually gonna say Stranges. It might seem the new beetle, like that design actually, I think really worked well as far as like the new classic look to bring in something back. Strangely enough, you still kind of see ’em on the road and you go, yeah, it looks like a beetle.

The retro hasn’t stopped. Right. That’s true. I’m, I’m sure you’re aware of the most recent rere. Let’s talk about the Alpha five by DeLorean. Oh, that’s not where I thought you were going. Oh. Where did you think I was going? Where did you think I was going? Oh, I thought exactly. I thought you were doing Kuta.

Oh, we can do Kuta. We can do Kush. I think we can all agree both of those [00:52:00] examples are pretty awful. Oh, no. I’m in love with the new Kush. Yeah, I don’t think so. No, I’d love it. . I’m with you, Chris. It feels like an upgraded evented door. It’s, it’s just too, it, ugh, it’s a little too body kitty for me, it’s just a little bit like we put this body on an existing platform and it’s, you know, it’s easy for me to be cynical.

You guys know I’m a Maryland guy. That’s just the flavor of conversation. It’s not the worst thing that I’ve ever seen. Um, it especially compared to, let’s say, the DeLorean, the Kuta thing is just kind of like Lamborghini has this habit of doing these kind of special models that you have no idea who they’re for.

Like, who’s buying these? Where are these going? Who’s signing up to get one of these? I mean, have some really strange allocation. I mean, Bugatti does the same thing. Look at the Divo. They made like 40 of ’em. You’re like for Yeah. . Yeah, there, there’s definitely some weird stuff in there, but I think Bugatti, you can say they have way more years of heritage to back them up.

But Bugatti and then some higher tier McLarens, and then P Zandi and Coning se. These are just like way higher tier cars. [00:53:00] Yeah. All the way up on the spectrum. Lamborghini in that world still feels very mid spectrum, feels very sub Ferrari to me. But so, so you partnered the Kuta and the DeLorean together.

What is it that turned you off about the new DeLoreans reveal? I’m just curious. Man, people are just gonna hate me cuz I’m so cynical about aesthetics and the way cars look. And it’s not like my opinion is worth anything, it’s just an opinion. But if you ever follow me on social media, you’ll know I never share opinions about this stuff cuz I’m just sparing myself a headache.

But, uh, , uh, welcome to Break Fix, Chris. Yes, yes, I know. Yeah. I don’t, it’s all fair game here. , or make an awful automotive journalist. I’m the owner of 3 48 spiders, so I’ve It’s fair game, you know, so I get it from my point of view, it takes something like the DeLorean that already doesn’t look good.

Different time period that I, uh, was born and raised. I have no nostalgia for the delore to begin with, so I have no want to see a reborn version, let alone the fact that you’re gonna revamp something that seems like a pretty far departure [00:54:00] from what the original idea, DeLorean is only one thing. There’s only one DeLorean ever.

So if you’re gonna rebrand and make something new, you really only have one vehicle to reference. How can you mess that up so bad? I’m with you there and my sister said the same thing when we reviewed it on the drive-through episode twice. my departure from it because I was super excited about it. I’m like, some of the angles and the teaser, I’m like, oh my God.

There’s other perspectives that it does look really good. That front end is actually very details. Yeah, there’s that front end has some really cool features to it. Brad says It looks kind of like a lucid air. I’m like, I get that. I see that what killed me were those doors. Yes, I get that. The gull wing is iconic, but it’s a four seater gull wing, which means if you look at the doors, they go from fender arch to fender arch and they’re just enormous and it drives me nuts.

It drives me nuts. I think we got some other questions to ask you, right? Brad . Yeah. So what is the best color combination for a vehicle? Black and red. 10 black? Yeah. Reds and [00:55:00] blacks. Are there some, yeah, for a car, red or yellow? To me that that’s it. But I, I like loud colors. . Are there some cars that only look good in one color, like red Ferrari or yellow Corvette’s?

Well, nobody likes Corvette’s, so . Actually, a yellow Corvette makes a way better argument to me. I’m like one of the three people that actually likes yellow cars. Once it’s yellow, I’m like, all right, let me hear you out. Cause the car listing says yellow. I better check this out cuz you never know. Color is a personality.

For a vehicle, if they can say a lot, whether it’s over the top or not enough or in such a boring time for colors. Right now there’s only a couple of manufacturers that are still sort of eccentric with color ideas and that that’s really the personality behind the way a car looks. You can really kill something by painting it the wrong color.

Same with a custom build. You really do have to be picky about it and you should be cuz color in wheels and stance, these are just basic identity traits of, of any car. So to do it wrong can throw the whole formula off. You’re right about that, Chris. But there’s one car that has been said over and over again that looks good [00:56:00] in every color and that’s the nine 11, especially a classic eighties nine 11 wide body.

You know that nine 30 turbo look. Is there a wrong color for a nine 11? Maybe not. I’ve had a few and I’ve enjoyed them in a few different colors and I see them every day. I think I’ve ever seen one where. Why did they choose that color? There’s better yellows than not, and there’s better silvers than not.

But it is kind of this timeless shape that the light looks, you know, rolls over it almost the same way with any color. So they do look good in pretty much any color. That is true. Probably shoot any color on and be pretty happy about that. Wagon, sedan, convertible, recoup. I think we know which way you’re leaning because of what’s behind you, but we’re gonna ask the question anyway.

We got a motorcycle, a roadster, and a convertible. So I like as much sunshine and air as possible, but it depends so much on the car. Even something like the 3 48 or the 3 55, the difference between the Berlin Netta, the gts and spider is actually really big aesthetically. So it depends on how the manufacturer approach to each design.

Cuz there’s aspects like I thought, I feel like the 3 48 spider looks better than the Burr [00:57:00] Netta or, I feel like the 3 55 burly Netta looks better than the 3 55 spider. It’s just the way that they handle the lines for each car. Different enough these days when I’m in a car with, with a roof, I feel very claustrophobic.

All right, Chris, this is one of my favorites. It tells me a lot about who you are as a petrolhead. You’re the last one in the design room. Your vote is what swings this. It settles the debate between the Porsche 9 59 and the Ferrari F 40. Which do you choose? Oh wow, man, that’s really interesting. Yeah, I think naturally I’m gonna go F 40, but note that I did have to pause and think about it.

You know, it wasn’t instant cuz the F 40 is not my favorite flagship car of Ferrari, but I do quite like the 9 59. But you just, it’s hard to beat something as timeless as an F 40 I think. I think you said the F 50 in your three car garage? Yeah. Are you taking notes? Yes, exactly. Thank you. Thank you.

Someone who finally agrees with me, it’s just you and me. Nobody else likes them. No. The F 50. If that was the truth, then the prices would come [00:58:00] down, but Oh yeah, I was about to say they aren’t getting any cheaper, actually. So maybe I’m wrong. , , Chris, kind of switching gears, how does one go about getting some of your artwork?

I post new stuff every week on, uh, Instagram and usually the new stuff has been also listed on the website at the same time. Uh, art of christoff.com. Stripe underscore Chris on Instagram, showing new videos as regularly as possible new artwork. And that’s usually the best way to get a hold of me either contacting me through the website or straight through Instagram.

I’m still one of those weird people that tries to respond to every message in every comment that I can. Thank you for responding to, to us. Yeah. . I think that’s how we got connected. Yeah. Sometimes you do commissions, it’s very rare things do that. But pe you will entertain ideas, but you start with, I’ll always hear somebody out.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I, I, it’s just simpler that way. There’s not enough time in the day to say yes to everybody. I would like to, but for the time and the expense, I wanna make sure that artwork is going in the hands of people that are like, I realize they’re just paintings of cars. But for some people this [00:59:00] is like, is it part of their family or it’s a really, an important part of them, or it’s an aspiration car and it’s not always easy to find those type of people that are interested in artwork.

But to me, there’s not one type of car person. I think there’s a lot of like passive people that enjoy cars, but there’s some really diehard car people. And I just really wanted to make sure that I’m putting the effort in. It’s, it’s for the people that are really serious about it. I guess my request then is out the window.

Cause I was thinking, you know, you make this photo realistic art, why don’t we make a car look like it’s canvas and go the other way and texturize it, right? Mm-hmm. , uh, that kind of thing become very interesting idea. Yes. . Interesting idea. What are you working on now? Any big projects or anything you can share or reveal for our audience, things that they should be looking forward to?

Yeah, anything that I’m working on design wise was either all completely related to sema, so I didn’t even get to really share much about that stuff. That’s really up to the builders to do the unveil on those things. But the way that I work through, uh, the paintings and artwork here, I’m always working on something new.

So I don’t even think that many steps ahead. I [01:00:00] just, you know, wake up tomorrow and I paint that day and, and that’s what I’m working on. So it’s hard for me to look down the road beyond that really tomorrow’s painting, whatever that is. So, in closing, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover thus far?

Not a single one. . No, I’m just kidding. I don’t have any sponsors. So, uh, except Rage, shadow Legends. They’re the greatest, at least I’ve heard from YouTube. Really, really wanna get into rage, shadow legends. Maybe one day they’ll sponsor me, but we’ll see. GTM will sponsor you for 50 bucks.

Chris’s automobile was conceived like all true art to share a passion. His art includes exclusive works, including Prince and originals themed in the automotive and motorsports world. And he offers pieces that will fit virtually any home, office, dorm, garage, or museum. And to learn more about Chris and his artwork, be sure to log on to www.artofchrisdunlop.com or follow Chris on social add pinstripe, underscore Chris on Instagram and add pinstripe Chris on Facebook.

That’s right, Brad and Chris, we can’t thank [01:01:00] you enough for coming on Break Fix and exposing our audience to yet another corner of the vehicle enthusiast in Motorsport World. I mean an artist, right? I mean, who to thunk it. We talk about all sorts of stuff on this show, so we really do appreciate you a fellow former Marylander coming on here and talking to us about cars and about art.

Oh, thank you guys so much for having me and, and weathering all my cynical responses towards car design. I, I appreciate that. You’re a good company, Chris

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