OK so I finally have the planets lined up right: blog software I can deal with (WordPress) installed on the domain I actually care about (squishypanda.com) using a theme that isn’t loaded with a bunch of crap and I have some content to put in the first post with plans (hazy plans, anyway) for more content. Let’s see how long I can keep it up this time.

A thousand times (a figurative thousand, like the biblical “forty”) I’ve resolved to start drawing again, and half a thousand times I’ve halfheartedly doodled something and given up. The other half thousand times I didn’t even get that far. Recently, though, I discovered an appreciation for the 2nd- and 3rd-generation Chevy C10 pickups. Maybe because I saw a bunch of them in various conditions and levels of customization on my last trip through the South. I’ve also been poking my head into the pro touring scene, which is a bit like the hot rod and muscle car scenes, except with a welcome emphasis on handling. The drawing that resulted is far from an original concept. The C10 trucks have always been popular and the pro touring enthusiasts find a perverse joy in chucking full-size trucks and station wagons around autocross cones like Miatas, so there were plenty of images of performance-oriented C10’s to use as source material. Ultimately, I settled on a 2nd-generation truck because I prefer the round wheel arches over the 3rd-generation truck’s squared arches. In my opinion the only alloy wheels that look halfway decent on older American cars is the Cragar SS/American Racing Torque Thrust-type wheels, and I’m pretty tired of seeing those, so I went with cop car steelies minus the chrome center caps.

I’ve also been wanting to try this colorization style for a while, haphazardly splashing the main color on but painstakingly rendering the other details. This is the first of a series of illustrations using a similar style, but fairly diverse cars.

Chevy C10 (click for full-size)