Artist uses toy cars to paint Hamilton portrait

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 3:10 am

A giant portrait of racing driver Lewis Hamilton is currently being created in London – using remote controlled cars instead of paint brushes. Contemporary British artist Ian Cook has been commissioned to created the work to celebrate Hamilton’s fantastic racing season.

Cook’s unique style of ‘Auto Drawings’ involves dipping remote controlled cars in paint, and driving them across a canvas. The method came to him one holiday season.

“Well it all started when I was given a Christmas present and I was told not to take it down the studio, and not to get paint on it, and I thought, that’s a genius idea, and that’s exactly how it started” smiles Cook.

The artist began work on the Lewis Hamilton painting Monday (20OCT08) at a makeshift studio on Regents Street, and has until Tuesday (28OCT08) to complete the portrait.

Cook creates brush strokes by driving the cars in short bursts over the canvas, laid out on the floor.

“It’s a really simple process and that’s just by scooping the paint out of the pot onto the canvas and then running the car through the paint to spread it, I’ve just got a variety of cars that do different things at different speeds,” Cook explained.

He will be using up to 50 different toy cars for the project. ” I’ve got a few cars at the moment, like big powerful ones that spread the paint very well, just trying to get a broad colour down, and then the 4 by 4, that will just kind of go over the paint and spread it a bit better so I can really kind of experiment with different ones and then you’ve got the little tiny cars that do a lot of the detail.”

Members of the public are able to watch Cook as he creates the portrait. The final painting will measure 8 x 12 meters in size, covering 96 square metres. The finished portrait will be unveiled by Reebok, who commissioned the work, in the shadow of London’s Tower Bridge on Wednesday 29th October. It will remain on display over the final weekend of Hamilton’s season.

(Agencies)

( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)

Artist uses toy cars to paint Hamilton portrait

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