Monday, September 14, 2020

Some Frank Wootton Automobile Drawings


Now for a change of pace.

Frank Wootton (1911-1998) is probably best known here in the USA for his illustrations of aircraft and automobiles.   I wrote about his aircraft paintings here and elsewhere (use the Search tool at the right).  But he was more versatile than that: I wrote about his poster art here.  A brief Wikipedia entry on him is here.

The present post presents some car drawings from his "How to Draw Cars" books.  The cover of "Volume 2" is shown above.  It was published in 1955, but contained essentially the same text as the 1949 version.  The difference was that the 1955 edition had many drawings of more recent cars along with a few from 1949.

Wootton had a very nice way of presenting highlights and reflections on dark, shiny surfaces of automobiles.  The images below are mostly from the 1949 book.

Gallery









Sketches of Rovers from the 1955 book.  Previous images are from 1949.  Alas, my knowledge of pre-1950 English cars is limited, so please comment if you can identify any of Wootton's subjects from that era.

A slightly differrnt version of this post appeared on my Art Contrarian blog.

3 comments:

Anthony Henning said...

His style is so evocative of the era, the exude an air of glamour. As for the cars; the cover image is a Sunbeam, the next three images I'm not too sure about, image 4 is a Lagonda, the next images up to the Rover are again unknown but like the Lagonda and Sunbeam have that characteristic look that was shared with Bentley, Jaguar and even Triumph in the late-40's. The illustration of the venerable "Aunty" Rover gives it a purposeful look fairly far removed from it's staid reputation.

Donald Pittenger said...

Anthony -- Thank you for your suggestions. Might a few of those cars be via Wootton's imagination?

Anthony Henning said...

I'm sure they could be, being based on the fashionable style of the time. It's lovely to see these illustrations; thanks to 3D imaging and photography, such illustrations seem to be a lost art, certainly when it comes to advertising cars.