Thank you for these outstanding works, Mr Matthews! They are very much appreciated.

NPP

Thank you NPP, but where are the other illustrators? not dead, I hope. Does anyone know where Bill Bennet is? When I 'liberated' my artwork from Standard House I took a load of his artwork too, as I knew that it faced a fate worse than death at the hands of the cleaners - all my big Motoring News litho-negs were put in a skip.

It deserves a better home than my plan-chest.

Tony: Welcome to the forum.
We are honored to be able to enjoy your fantastic works. Thank you so much for Posting them.

You will be glad to know that I am going on holiday soon, and when I get back I will be well enough to work full-time....

Sometimes the work in progress is as interesting as the final result. I went to a Turner exhibition whilst at college and was more interested in his rough sketches of churches than the stuff he was famous for. The construction of a piece is sometimes better than the final result!

I see you add a bit of weight to the pencil lines to give some shape and add bits of shading here and there. I used to get a rollicking for doing it when I worked at Huntings, as the bosses thought it a waste of time. I always said it was giving me ideas for the final piece but they thought it a waste of time. The were morons though - oh the battles we had:)

Tony, when you were on day release at Luton, did you come across a part time lecturer called Jack Crawley. A fascinating artist in a similar style to Bob Freeman. He never understood Rotring pens and Ellipse templates. It was all paintbrushes and ruling pens. A rubbish teacher but watching him sketch with a brush and watercolour was just magic. He was an ex WW2 fighter pilot, had a selection of big, old motor bikes and was very much old school and a real character. People like that just don't exist anymore.

Keep posting the cutaways. I think I've seen most of them before but one never gets fed up with pure class

Have you not thought about marketing these on a website. I'm sure there would be a lot of interest.

Beautiful artistry! - I know my brother has been searching in vain for, what I believe, is one of your pieces. That being the 84C March IndyCar that was based upon the black, silver, red trim Galles/Coors Light/ Al Unser Jr. chassis from the 1984 season. His first IndyCar victory at Portland was that year in like colors. Please continue with the show.

Tony, we have semi-regular TNF Get-Togethers not that far from Hitchin - just up the A1 between Baldock and Biggleswade (just a bit north of the A505 at the Tudor Oaks to be exact). We used to meet in Woburn, but worked out that most of us were actually east of there...live and learn.

I guess we'll probably be meeting up again some time in October. Please feel to join us - to say that you would be welcome would be an understatement. You would certainly be amongst friends.

Actually that art was done by David Kimble. I work with him. Next time I chat with him I can ask if he has any of those prints left.

Cheers, Tom

I have a Dell mouse. There are two small micro-switches where my thumb sits. I have lost 20 minutes typing by gently picking up the mouse. Then, after a deep breath and 30 minutes typing the same thing has happened. Quite frankly I've had enough, but I will start again tomorrow. Make that later today as midnight has just struck and my glass coach has turned into a turnip. It's put me right off my cocoa.

I'm going to submit this before I lose it agai

[URL=http://imageshack.us][/UR]

And good night.

Tom - thank you for setting me straight on the artist (with apologies to Mr. Matthews). I very much appreciate you checking on print availability. I think it would be fun to surprise my brother. Gets harder to do as the years pass.

New subject: Does anyone know if Japanese illustrator Y. Inomoto is still active in the cutaway field. I haven't seen anything of his published for a long time and was just curious.

Tom Out

Yoshihiro Inomoto was still with us as of last year. I have admired his work for many, many years.

Tony - Thanks for the ongoing show. It's like Christmas every morning. Speaking of which, since I've been a good boy all year, could Santa post a Tony Matthews Cutaway of the Maserati 250F?

TJ

At the risk of appearing churlish for asking agan.............
Roger Lund.

You are very kind Tom, your work and mine are very different in style and execution - which is as it should be - but you are so neat and meticulous...! Words fail me.

I had a look at the Inomoto site earlier - obviously I am familiar with his work_ and I much prefer yours. To my surprise he has little regard for accuracy, the complete opposite to my approach, and, I'm sure, yours too.

The only trannie I have of the 250F is very pale and thin, and -at the moment - no Photoshop to improve it. However I'll do my best.

Re: Bugatti T251, I can't help, Roger, but I would think that Il Presidente Senior Nye must have some archive material that would help. Good luck.

Or this?

Thank's Tony. Brilliant!!!

Come on Tom! I've let you see mine....

And Mr Kimble, or do you think he would not be interested?

I'd like to see Tom's stuff as well. From what you've said it's pretty good

Hello Tony. The stuff you have posted would amaze me if I had not already seen some of it. Your remark "I've let you see mine" reminds me of the first time I met Bob Freeman. It was Bologna/Milan/Monza. It was the 25th anniversary of Lamborghini. It was the year that Derek Warwick did a barrel roll out of the Parabolica at the end of the first lap. 1988, I think, but I haven't checked.

Anyway, we were there with a small party consisting of a few journalists and wealthy Lamborghini owners, an eclectic bunch. The best of them was a chap from the West Country, a retired scrap dealer who owned a Countach. On a coach from the circuit to the airport, he showed us (Bob and me) some photos of his driveway. First photo was of the impressive gates, second a bend with bushes on either side, and in the third, as you exited the corner, there was this nicely-mounted Lightning jet aimed up into the sky. Well, where did he get that? He bought it from the Ministry of Defence and took it home on his lorry. But of course the wings were too wide to travel on public roads, so he cut them off and then welded them back on (invisible mending, it seemed, though one would not wish to fly in the machine after that; probably not before, either).

But there were some other Lambo owners, mostly Americans with trophy wives. One of these painted ladies started banging on about an advertising campaign, up on big posters throughout Monza and Milan for some clothing company, probably the dreadful Benetton. She suggested that it showed how degenerate Europe was, as it was, she thought, virtually an invitation to paedophilia. The posters portrayed a little boy and a little girl, both aged two or three, pulling each other's underpants, and evidently the message was "You show me yours..." I could sense that Bob was getting cross, and eventually he could not restrain himself. He launched into a brief history of European Art, and followed this with an interesting discourse on how crap the USA was in general, with a few exceptions which he graciously acknowledged, and how the artistic portrayal of sex and nudity in Europe had not caused any harm, and how the puritanism of the USA was much more harmful overall.

Well, I didn't feel qualified to pass judgment on much of that, but I thought, what a terrific chap. "Do you feel better for that?" I asked quietly when he had finished. He said nothing but smiled.

Hi Tony,

Great work, of course. I've seen your name around for years, it's nice to have you around here...

I have a couple of questions:

What size do you do these pieces?

The perspective seems to vary- on some the front and rear axle are drawn at almost the same angle (like the Valvoline Ford Indy car), while other show quite a bit more difference from perspective of the front and rear axle (Williams Renault F1 car). What decides the perspective? You the artist, the client, the photograph reference?

I love the rear view of the Ford indy car with the driver- very rare to see in cutaways and technical drawings!

Wow! This thread has really gained momentum again, not least due to the appearance of Tony Matthews as himself!

I thought some of you might be interested in this article (in German) about Giulio Betti, the elder of the Italian Betti brothers.

Speaking of brothers in automotive technical artistry, there are also the French Bellu brothers (I presume), Serge and René.

!

Hello Jones Foyer, I posted this PC26 as it has a different view-point to most of my cutaways. The perspective varies as does the viewpoint, as much for variety as for relevance to the subject matter. So, while it could be said that every front-engined car should be drawn from the front and rear-engined from the rear, this would not give many options, as most competition cars are, at a very basic level, much the same. I always tried, especially when I was into a 'series', to do the next model at a different angle to the one before and the one to follow. I recently came across a notebook with simple indications of viewpoint for about a dozen Lotus', as I was hoping to do a 'Big Book Of...' - I only did a couple, but the notebook showed how the would have looked as a series. Let's face it, you've really only got :-

Top left to bottom right >
Top right to bottom left>
< Bottom left to top right, and, wait for it!...

< or > being the front of the car, Tl, Br etc being the corners of the board.


What is left? Not much, but Marlboro wanted a change and this is what they got. However, there is little info. shown of any thing transversing the vehicle, such as bulkheads. Similarly, a car drawn from head on will show very little longitudinal detail. That is why plans and elevations have to be shown together, on their own they convey very little. The technical illustrator has to try to convey as much information in one hit.You choose an angle that allows as many facets as possible to show. For instance, it's quite easy to finish up with an engine cutaway that has several major components all on top of each other, i.e., camshaft on the same centre as the crankshaft, or if the viewpoint is taken from the side of the leading cylinder (V layout). the pairs of con-rods will be on top of each other.

So, if I was doing an engine from scratch - rather than starting from the exterior and tunneling in - I would make a little 'architecture' layout in perspective (if I can find one I'll post it), like a sculpters armature. If working fom the outside in I would spend some time taking an overall photograph, moving slightly here, slightly there, trying to visualize through the viewfinder, where all the major components were. I'm going, very gingerly, to post this now, as if I lose this lot to an over-excited mouse, my howl of anguish will have petrol heads around the globe sit up and say "I didn't know anyone in the neighbourhood had a BRM V16!"

Hope this makes sense!

This is the layout for the cutaway of the terrific Ford Cosworth GAA V6 engine, with the cross-over inlet trumpets.

One more point about the perspective - a lot depends on the size the piece is reproduced. the smaller the print the more gentle the perspective on the original and vice-versa. Mostly you never know, it might only be used as a pointless little thumb-nail, and/or blown up to 20 feet long. I always tried to find a happy medium, but sometimes I just did what I felt looked good on the board!

Talking of which - board, that is - 20"x30" invariably, sometimes a bit bigger, but that was the standard size of CS2 Water Colour Board.

----------------X---------------

Come on Tony, time for bed.

Oh, mum!

No, I mean it, just because your friends live in a different time zone doesn't mean you can stay up all night tapping away, and I don't want you falling off a ladder through lack of sleep!

I'm not up a ladder tomorrow!

Don't answer back!

I need to get schooled up again on how to post images. The only race car I've done is the Maserati 8CTF Indy car driven by Wilbur Shaw. Two other illustrations are of the 1932 Gee Bee R-2 racing plane and the fabulous Pitts Model 12 bi-plane. Posting the planes on a site dedicated to Car racing may be bit out of bounds plus I'd hate to be penalised laps if such action is deemed verboten. If enough people are interested I'd be willing to do it and ask forgiveness later.

All of the other work I've done to date is under another illustrator's name and that area is also out-of-bounds.

Tom Out

This is really interesting Tony. I haven't seen it before. Of all the great technical illustrators, the way you work with color and value is in a league of its own. Thank's for sharing.

Here's the Maserati 8CTF.

[img]http://img185.imageshack.us/my.php?image=8...icutawayio6.jpg][IMG]http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/5487/8ctfmaseraticutawayio6.th.jpg[/img][/URL]

I haven't looked at this thread in quite some time...

As KB just suggested I did, I have to say he's correct. There's some staggeringly good stuff here. Keep it coming!

I've been absolutely fascinated and full of admiration!
Apart from the obviously amazing artistic skills required, I can't quite get my head around how the artist is able to "see" inside in order to reproduce them. I would have thought that a fairly comprehensive mechanical/engineering knowledge would also be required, as well access to blue-prints / under-construction-photos etc.
I tips me hat....

I have more to say to Mr J F about perspective, which is why I have posted this Ilmor V10 pic., but now I have to hang around all day at a clients house waiting for a new oven and hob to be delivered.

Lovely, Tom, I've still got the print you sent me in another life, I particularly like the exhaust coloured by heat. Do you know, I have NEVER done a vehicle with polished or chrome pipes. Doh!, just remembered the Vincent Black Shadow!

On more than one occasion I have been asked if (for polished wishbones, etc.,) I had a tube of 'chrome' paint. Geniune inquiries, strange but true...

Tom; Feel free to post 'planes. We have had photos and features on them in the past. BBSearch Dambusters etc.

Tony; A Vincent cutaway would look good,- he says hopefully

Excellent stuff, many thanks

Roger Lund.

Tony great to see you here. Still have my old perspective grids from college days and the packs of Leitz Ellipse guides. Lovely to be reminded of your work. In the old days working in Germany I had to airbrush an illustration of a car component in gold. As you know, Germany has very few competent illustrators, they didn't have schools to teach it, hence the Brits coming in to help out. Off they went to get some supplies and came back with the correct board, frisk masking film, brushes etc etc, and lots of tubes of...gold paint! A job to explain you don't actually use highly reflective actual gold, but make it look like it mixing conventional colours and painting in reflections. All we are doing is creating an illusion.

I loved doing the pencil stage, working it all out from the three elevation blueprints. Such a pity 'progress' and using CAD-data has taken all of that out of our hands.

Hi all,

I've been following this thread with absolute delight. When I was starting out in engineering, I used to devour issues of Racecar Engineering (when it was about racecar engineering and not a series of advertisements) and without doubt my favourite bit of each issue (we're talking '92 here) was the Tony Matthews cutaway. Absolutely amazing blend of techical drawing and artistry. I dislike the 'airbrush' type of cutaway (most commonly seen nowadays and neither do I like the type that's too 'flat' (excuse the description - I'm no artist) but a Matthews piece was bang-on, every time. My favourites were the pushrod Ilmor, the BTCC Accord and the Valvoline indycars.

I was very disappointed to read that Tony had stopped doing the work as it was no longer viable. With designer salaries being so great nowadays, you'd think there would be enough of them willing to commission works of their 'babies'. Like I said, a Matthews cutaway is something special.

Being an aircraft guy, I have also come to appreciate the Flight drawings but I feel that they have become increasingly computerised and not so special. The last really great one I saw was of the F-22 Raptor. I urge any of you guys to find a copy of the 'Under The Skin' book - it's a treat.

Does anyone remember, too, when the calendar included in 'Flight' every January was a series of cutaways? I think they did 2 or 3 years.

Other artists work I like are Brian Hatton and of course Bob Freeman - Special mention to the latter's Subaru semi-auto gearbox that was featured in CCC magazine once and Freeman's little notes around the drawing were a nice touch.

BTW, Tom Johnston - Your Pitts Special drawing is top notch.

IF anyone wants to see lots of nice aircraft drawings, there are a number of modeller's books that are good. In particular, for WWII aircraft:
http://www.amazon.com/Scale-Aircraft-Drawi...21639546&sr=8-2


Finally - and I apologise for contributing nothing other than text to the discussion - I was wondering Mr. Matthews if you'd ever investigated the feasability of offering prints for sale. I would think that the modern techology would provide acceptable quality without the large set-up costs and minimum print runs of old. So long as you had good scanned files to print from?

At college when I was trained as a technical illustrator, the technical graphics course consisted of several parts. Freehand pencil drawing (from life or memory sketching - for example the tutor would give us a blank sheet of paper and say 'now draw me a typewriter'. Think about doing that without one in sight for reference!), perspective, lettering, continuous tone and photo re-touching (airbrush) and technical illustration. We also had a couple of hours per week messing around in the motor mechanics department, taking engines and gearboxes apart. IIRC, for entry to the course you had to have art 'O' level and also technical drawing from school, so we already had a bit of an idea how to read blueprints.

Using general assembly blueprints as the basis and delving into further plans of components, the illustration could be built up and pieced together. Photographs, if available could also help. But when I was in Germany, most of the stuff we were drawing were concepts, no models or prototypes were available therefore our '3D' illustrations were used to show what their ideas would look like. Sometimes a part was not designed yet, or had been changed a hundred times, frustrating to try and finish the illustration waiting on information.

As you can see from Tony's excellent work, one of the skills we had to learn was which angle would be best to try and show everything clearly and secondly how much of the bodywork ( or e.g engine block or head ) should be cut-away to still show the outside shape but also show the internals.

Here's one I did in Germany. I did the pencil drawing of this KKK truck turbocharger from blueprints, but at the time we were moving over to computer graphics, so my pencil drawing was scanned, then used as a template on the PC screen to render and colour the illustration using the adobe illustrator and photoshop programmes on an Apple Macintosh.

I spent many an hour in R&D at VW's in Wolfsburg sketching various bits someone had design by making it and fitting it to a car. If it worked it went into production. In the meantime the sketches we made were used as info to create the parts and production line drawings. Quite often parts hadn't been designed but we still had to get our illustrations out, so we often drew anything that looked right. For example on the 2nd generation golf there are 2 little speakers on top of the dash at the A pillars. The speaker covers also included some small air vents. We were told that we had to finish all the dashboard work so I just drew something that fitted the space. VW obviously liked it as they made the speaker covers look almost exactly the same as the ones I'd drawn!



Same with me. I sometimes took more car with pencil drawings than the final artwork. I tended to have various sections drawn on separate sheets of tracing paper and put the whole thing together at the end. I wish I'd kept them.

Tired of waiting for the delivery, have come home for a coffee -

Andrew, I have rarely asked other illustrators to help, but on the odd occasion when I've been really up against it I have sought aid. One such time was when I needed a Williams side view and I thought I knew the man for the job. Unfortunately, not only where the wheels not round, he had - you're ahead of me! - used GOLD paint to represent the gold on the car.

He was lucky, I paid him, I was unlucky, I had to bin it and do it myself!

By the way, I also have my elipse guides, but I've never seen a perspective grid, let alone used one. I can only guess what they must look like.

IrishMariner, spare my blushes. Racer was the one magazine that printed my work the way I wanted, solid, sharp, a white background and a reasonable size. A great magazine, but I've not seen it for a considerable time. John Zimmerman was always very good to deal with.

You are right about the aircraft work - one of my all-time favoutites is a Chance-Vought Crusader by Frank Munger (?) done in pencil - beautiful.


As to prints, once bitten twice shy. Terrific Stuff sold a few, but were mainly disappointed. Four years ago I burnt 450 20"x30" prints of the Long-nose 'D' Type Jaguar because the local recycling centre wouldn't take them. "Nah, mate, that's commercial waste, that is, you can't dump it 'ere!" When I tried again using individual ink-jet prints I approaced Williams GP as I had finished a cutaway of the FW 22. "Be prepared to be inundated!" said Patrick Head's secretary Heather, after she'd kindly stuck some A4 posters at strategic places in the factory. On offer were 20"x30" or 20"x16" prints at, I think, £50 and £30. I sold one of each, and was £180 out of pocket.So now you know why....

Alan, I'm a squirrel! Ive kept all my working drawings, and the Ferrari 049 engine (2000) was done on one full sheet and several smaller sheets when it all got too confusing and I had to work out the crankshaft, con. rods and valves. It's a good system, or it worked for me.

Roger, Vincent coming soon. Hitchin is four miles from Stevenage, home of HRG, and Vincent sprinter George Brown used to have his shop and workshop in the old town centre.

Seldo sir, I work mainly from photographs that - I keep writing in the present tense, Freudian or what? - that I took myself, usually 2 or 3 35mm films, B&W, and had my own darkroom so I could tell any paranoid designer - that's not criticsm - that no-one would see them but me. If it was not a top secret or embargo'd subject then I'd use a roll of colour too. It difficult but not impossible to do an engine without works 'blue-prints', at least a couple, but if, as in the case of the first Ilmor engine, the 265A, no engine exists, it's a struggle. but, hey, what's life without the occaisional struggle? Less exhausting but ultimately less satisfying.
That's today's philosophying over and done with.

I know what you mean Tony. Some prints you think will sell like hot cakes can sit around, others that you think should break even (at most) sell out. I did a pen and ink Vincent back in 1983, for Allen Randall of Ensign Publications. Alansart knows him from Germany days. Pencil drawing first about A2 size then inked on draughting film using rotring pens.
http://www.andrewkitson.com/pages/vincent.htm

wow...super!

Thanks for clearing all that up.

Racecar Engineering is still going but went downhill after Ian Bamsey left. Lately it's been nothing but thinly-veiled adverts for the companies involved. Racetech was good but I have cancelled my sub as motorsport in general ceases to impress me much. My era was that of the '88 March, '91 Jordan, '95 Ferrari 402 T2 and suchlike - Cars that were both beautiful to look at and technically interesting. I still get Piola's book, though - as he's brilliant.

As for the prints, the unfortunate experiences you've had thus far are what I would consider 'push' marketing - Make then sell. I was thinking more along the lines of a 'pull' situation where people order prints and, every 6 weeks or so you'd compile the orders and go to your local Kwik-Print and get, say, 12 Williams FW13s', 6 Ilmor 5001's, etc. Wonder if that business model would work? I understand that's why your DFS suite takes 8 weeks - they wait until they've enough orders for a particular design to warrent firing up the sweatshop.

BTW, loved the prep sketches that you've uploaded (Nissan GTP & Accord) - highlights your inherent artistry.