Auto Racing Montage

As I have mentioned before, throughout the 1970's, 80's and into the 1990's, I worked full-time in Advertising Illustration. Many of my clients were in the automotive field, such as Goodyear Tire. I produced a number of illustrations for Goodyear during that time period and this is one example of the work I did for them. What could be more fun to paint than a montage of racing machines diverging at dramatic angles?

I tried to create an interesting and exciting composition that sweeps from back to front in a dynamic and dramatic curve. The rakish angle of the Goodyear Racer in the foreground seems to suggest thrust and speed. A montage must be carefully designed to work as an interesting unit without confusing the viewer. Often it is done as a vignette, so positive and negative shapes must be considered as well. The colour scheme must work as a unit and the design should carry the viewer's eye into the picture and keep it there. A variety of shapes and sizes of the elements within a montage are required to create visual interest. The whole thing can be a lot more difficult than you might think, at first glance.

I painted this illustration on a very fine woven primed canvas, using acrylic paint. Before I began to paint much detail over the finished drawing, I loosely painted a thin wash of colour over the general area of each individual scene, using the local colour of each one. After I painted the various elements in detail, I back-painted around the illustration with white gesso to softly define the shapes.