Pin-Up with a 1956 Chevrolet Car

Today I want to show you another custom pin-up portrait created by me. This time the drawing features a vintage 1956 Chevrolet car along with a pin-up girl.

Custom 1956 Chevrolet Pin-Up

Custom artwork featuring a pin-up girl and a 1956 Chevrolet car

As you might have noticed pin-up girls often go with hot rods or classic cars on photographs and drawings. I believe there are at least two reasons why pin-up girls and retro cars seem to be inseparable.

First, pin-up artists, while creating a product of pop art mostly targeting men, are prone to combine two most exiting objects of men’s dreams – a hot girl and a great car. No doubt, this detonating mixture drives men crazy as there is nothing else which can elevate man’s self-esteem higher than conquering a woman's heart and owing a cool-looking automobile. Having both a woman and a car makes men feel good and happy.

Women and cars have always been men's most passionate desires

Cars became a popular subject of pin-up artworks due to the fact that classic pin-up pictures are, in fact, products made in the USA and later popularized all over the world by means of the dream factory called Hollywood. I believe in 1950s more people could afford a car in the USA than anywhere in the world. An affordable car of decent quality and appealing design became a symbol of the strong economy of the United States. Mass production of automobiles and comparatively high purchasing power of Americans made it easier for even average US citizens to buy a car. And that is why cars were added to the list of any self-respecting man’s desires along with attractive women. This resulted in introducing cars into the art of pin-up which the main purpose is to stimulate men’s most basic desires.

Secondly, there is nothing as good as a classic car from 1950-s to help preserve the atmosphere of the golden age of pin-up. The woman’s beauty has being a subject of many kinds of arts throughout the human history. So drawing a pretty woman alone is not always enough. However there are a few ways to impart the “feeling of the epoch” to a drawing or a painting. These ways include imitating famous pin-up painters’ style and adding some clothing and objects easily attributed to the targeted period of history. The appearance of cars has been ever-changing just like fashion and many car models are associated with the years of their production. Therefore vintage cars like a 1956 Chevrolet can be perfect objects for modern pin-up artworks if a pin-up artist or his/her customer wishes to leave a mark of those years when pin-up art was at the top of its popularity.

Work Progress Video

I offer you to check out the video below if you think it might be interested to watch how I draw my custom pin-up portraits. I hope you will enjoy the video and its background music which creates the atmosphere of 50s. By the way, among other art supplies I used Pentel brush pens again to create this artwork.

Watch this video on Youtube

Click here to see all my custom pin-ups on this blog
All my pin-up videos

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Johnny Cash Portrait

The portrait of Johnny Cash is the first artwork created for Buffalo & Company and their American Music Legend T-shirt Series. I’ve been working with Buffalo & Company for around a year creating artworks reflecting the essence of the company’s business and their mission of creating clothing for real men to oppose themselves to today’s men’s fashion which seems to have lost the idea of classic masculinity.

Portrait of Johnny Cash

I love working with Buffalo & Company because they honor a lot of great men whose deeds have made history of the USA and, in a certain extent, influenced the history of the entire world. With Buffalo and Company I’ve been extending my knowledge about American presidents along with other brave, smart and wise men such as John Muir, Ernest Shackleton and others. Now it seems that I will learn more about some famous American singers and composers whose art and philosophy perfectly fits to the image of real men honoring and taking proud of their manhood.

Watch this video on Youtube

Johnny Cash entered both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In fact, rock and roll and country music have common roots stretching almost 300 years back to the times when men were fulfilling their main mission of exploring new lands, hunting, fighting and protecting their families on the daily basis. Those men were strengthened by constant danger and challenges they faced while confronting nature and foes. Their physical labor and the role of providers and protectors made those men accustomed to pain, blood, sweat and dirt. Such way of life was reflected both in songs and men’s fashion. Men’s clothing used to be as practical as possible. The clothing was robust, comfortable and purposed to withstand harsh conditions of travel, hunting, fighting and hard labor. Today, when there is hardly any unexplored spot on the Earth and a lot of people have to spend more time staying in cities than in the open country, therefore quite a number of men feel a natural need and even urge to escape from crowded urban areas and indulge themselves in the most ancient activities of the mankind – fishing, hunting, exploring unknown territories. I believe that every man has a kind of a call of the wild in his heard that makes him long for the thrill of adventures. This is exactly for such men that Buffalo and Company produces its clothing.

Country music has absorbed the energy of generations of men who lived and worked closer to nature and had to be strong and brave to be able to take the best of the ever-challenging wilderness. Johnny Cash is one of a few genius artists who not only played the strong men’s music but also developed his peculiar charisma and philosophy which made him worth being called the idol by many of his fans. And I am also proud to contribute to honoring this man by my portrait of Johnny Cash.

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