Weber Kettle Club Forums

 I grew up drawing 1970's Hot Rod styled car cartoons as a kid. As a teenager, I began drawing comic book charactors so I have thousands upon thousands of hours making black/white ink line drawings. Due to a carrier change, I've put my pencil & ink down for years now. My youngest child's recent interest in drawing has made me pick it up again. So I'd like to start this thread and share my new Weber Grill art.
This photo I included is a pencil sketch rendering in progress. As I play with the Weber performer cartoon idea, it'll go though changes.
I'm Wondering if anyone here other than myself is making any Weber Grill artwork on paper, canvas, wood or metal? 
I've done screen printing, sign painting, illustrations, portraits and custom airbrush work. I've designed tattoo artwork and car club t-shirt designs.
Since the numbers are increasing at these WKC gatherings, it Would be nice to start laying out some cool WKC annual gathering t-shirt designs. Not in a hot rod art style but more of a vintage weber kettle flavor. Chris

That's cool!!!!


Vinny

Big Daddy!
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4820/45342100904_1a77d4cacb_c.jpg)

These are great! I'll take a t-shirt of each one!

56MPG, is that your Rat Fink illustration? That's a cool monster T-Bone steak.

Not by a long shot! Just thought it was a very cool drawing - one that I had never seen before. I'm sure it's copyrighted.

Oh okay.. yeah can't print copyright designs on t-shirts. Wouldn't be a smart thing.

  BTW, I'm not looking to start producing t-shirts again anytime soon. Just mentioned I had experience coming up with the artwork layouts for shirts. I've been out of the shirt biz for a long time now and have sold all my equipment. I have nothing to gain from starting this thread. Like the rules say, if you have something to gain by posting, then don't post it.

Like you (most of you), I'm happy being on the consumer side of the fence. So If anyone produces any Weber Grill artwork on t-shirts, I'd gladly pay $18.95 and buy one too. Just make sure you're printing original art and have permission to use the WEBER grill logo, oh and I'm a size XL.
  IMHO, it takes more than a couple of hand drawings to convince a corporate company to give you permission to use their logo. They might ask for hundreds of dollars Up front for a 1-2 year contract plus a royalty fee per item sold. But then again like this thread I started, over 135 views and only  1 person interested in buying, not a great percentage rate but we're not selling anything here anyway so it's all good.
If selling,,, Think shark tank.... If there really was a huge market for such creative t-shirts, said company would have already produced them. That's why I'm thinking small scale here as in non-profit and just draw cartoons cause it's I want to do. So if you're reading, start posting up some ideas for Weber Grill artwork. It doesn't have to be a finished full color illustration.
 

 

Great work Chris!

Yeah, and I'm with Marty, my first thought was Rat Fink! Must be my age.

Like you, it's been a while since I've airbrushed and done screen printing.

Looks like a good time to start playing again.

-Rick

I remember buying the Car-toons magazine back in the '70's. I loved that look.

 ::)

Quote from: Darko on November 27, 2018, 10:32:53 AM
I remember buying the Car-toons magazine back in the '70's. I loved that look.

you had to remind us of how vintage we are didn't you

Quote from: dazzo on November 27, 2018, 08:07:40 AM



Like you, it's been a while since I've airbrushed and done screen printing.

Looks like a good time to start playing again.

-Rick

  Rick, what media did you airbrush on?
I airbrushed on almost everything....  I started on t-shirts & denim jackets in the late 1980's and by the mid 90's I had painted on fabric, illustration board, canvas, plastic, glass, wood and metal. Everything From toilet seats, mailboxes, Harley Davidsons, guitars, Hot Rods, leather jackets, racing helmets...
   My specialty was setting up at car shows and painting car art on t-shirts. I was pretty fast and could paint a car in about 25-35 minutes.  I also had less detailed car cartoons that I sprayed in 5-10 minutes.

I love this stuff!  I wish I had my pile of CarToons still.


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Beautiful work Chris!

The long answer, mIne was mostly for fun when I was given the "opportunity to volunteer"

Airbrush work was mostly on textiles - cheer shorts, tee shirts, megaphones (that was mostly brush work).

Little League banners, Scout banner, bowling team t-shirts (SJ Sharks logo w/ pin instead of stick), random tees

Dance costumes (Bel Biv Devoe, Muppet Babies) on denim

Winter Guard (California Color Guard Circuit) backdrops on full size bed sheets

Denim jackets, jeans

Kids kept us busy

Used a combo of silk screening and airbrush to make custom sweatshirts for myself and my seven year old son when the first TMNT movie came out. And a custom of my nephew's Harley.

And I like to use the airbrush for shadows on my murals (dazzo.com)

Not much fine art, but I do have a Paasche AB Turbo   

Sorry to bore everyone

I've never used a Paasche turbo or a VL.  I started with the thinner barrel  Badger 150 dual action hobby airbrush and just got used to the way it handled. I then stepped up to the Thayer & Chandler Vega 2000 airbrush around 1994. That old company was awesome and loved anyone who used their brushes to earn a living. Pat was the owner and would give me a bro price on anything he sold. At one time I had 64 airbrushes, all T&C Vega 2000. My speedy t-shirt set up involved using a 27 airbrush color wheel plus 1 airbrush for matte clear coat. I had 4 spare airbrushes to swap in if one gave me clogging paint issues when painting.  I had one set up at my shop and one at home.  It was the ultimate shirt set up and cleaning them was a pain in the ass due to having so many.
  Around 2001, I switched over to Iwata's workhorse, the Eclipse BSA for my work brushes. I closed shop in 2002 and stopped being a freelance hired airbrush artist in 2004. 

That's good work Rick. I've done many baby nursery rooms for friends and family. I used to just paint right on the wall but that took me a few days to complete. Then I started painted just the backgrounds on the wall used sign board for the characters to speed up my time. I would jig saw each character out and hand paint/airbrush them ahead of time, then just mount them to the wall after my background was painted.
I haven't done a room in a long time but I'm looking forward to painting my sons room this winter. He is a Brewers baseball fan and I'll be laying out some artwork soon for wife's approval.  Maybe a huge portrait of his favorite player and team logo angled from wall to celling.

That's an awesome setup! Guess it helps to know a guy too   

And thanks.

My workhorses are a few VLs. Haven't used my Iwata much, and the AB is just fun to listen to.

Single action hobby brushes work OK for mask and blast, and a HVLP helps for large areas, like ceilings.

Have fun with your son's room. If you do a portrait, just make sure he doesn't get traded, or that your son doesn't grow up (just try and stop that)

Has anyone painted a kettle to look like the moon? Maybe start with a black kettle and do a lit side with craters etc., then let that fade into black for the dark side.

I changed my custom performer drawing to a stock Generation 2 version. This type of drawing would appeal to a much larger crowd. Chris

Love it!

I was showing this drawing to some of my co workers. None of them are into collecting grills. All of them thought my drawing was of a tractor at first glance. The larger than scale cartoon Weber wheels do make it appear tractor like. It's this type of critiquing that makes room for improvement. I'll play with my drawing and rescale the wheels down a bit.

First I'd like to explain my hand drawing process.  I like to start my sketch in a  4" wide size to begin with. It's just a small comfortable size that gives me proper hand eye cordination control. This small size doesn't leave much room for detail. I prefer drawing my final originals in an 11"x 14" size. 
  This first Gen 2 drawing i made is still in the 4" wide size so it's still a work in progress. I'll probably just include the Weber logo and color the kettle grass green for my final original drawing.  Any other input or ideas are always appreciated. Chris

I like it as is - anyone into Weber grills will never mistake it for a tractor. Anyone else can pound ash! If you really want to shake it up, go with dualies on the back.

Thanks for the encouragement  56MPG. I'll scale those rear wheels  down just a tad to allow room for more detail of the Weber 3pc. tool set.
  I'll save those dually wheels for a midget mod 18" grill cartoon drawing.
I'm really excited to finally make time for these Weber grill drawings. My plan is to draw every grill Weber has produced. Might take me a few years but it'll be fun along the way. Chris

I staged the dually Weber wheels in this photo to make my initial sketch.  This first rough sketch will need to be cleaned up, re drawn a few times till everything is lined up just right. As you can see
,that bottom triangle doesn't line up with the right side wheels in this first draft. That's the issue when sketching with ink, can't erase any mistakes. But on the flip side that's how I got better at drawing.  I just learned to plan every stroke of the pen before it touched paper. As my sketch gets closer to being completed, it gets difficult. Just builds up pressure to execute flawless work. One mistake and it's back to the drawing board. Sketching stuff over and over again makes you better. Once I'm content with the proportions on my concept sketch,( usually takes 30 minutes to 3 hours) it'll get enlarged to an 11"x 14" size where the detail work is added. ( takes anywhere from 3 hours and up to 24 hours) This is where a sketch becomes a drawing. Detail work of the Weber wheel tread pattern, white wall cutout lettering, push nuts,  ash catcher detail and spot welds on the kettle will be placed. Wood grain on handle along with counter sunken screw. This is when Color and shading is also added. 
  If you're like me and haven't picked up a pencil or prismacolor in a while, I hope you decide to join in. Chris

The midget sketch is bad ass!


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Quote from: Mr.CPHo on December 01, 2018, 12:46:11 PM
The midget sketch is bad ass!


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Thanks Mr.CPHo.... I like this sketch too so I'll take it to the next level soon.

  I found this drawing I made back in 2006 that includes a kettle grill. I remember not wanting to copy my Weber kettle so I changed to a longer lid handle and went with expanded metal for the cooking grate. Looking at it Brings back memories, I only made a hand full of drawings during this year.

Quote from: SmokinPerformer2 on December 01, 2018, 11:50:44 AM
  If you're like me and haven't picked up a pencil or prismacolor in a while, I hope you decide to join in. Chris

C'mon Chris, that's like Jim Lee asking to come draw X-Men with him. We, sorry, I'm not worthy. I might try it, but ain't no one is gonna see it. You've got a new fan.

Wish I could remember the dates...

1970 Odd Rods and Silly Cycles

You come up with a logo and I could look at the prices for both silkscreen and embroidery at the school I work at.

That's really cool!