A gathering of Atkis

When I was a kid I was fascinated by heavy commercial vehicles, and in particular the mighty Atkinson. There was a haulage yard at the end of our street with a fleet of Atkinsons, and all day long they’d be pounding past our house. To me they were awesome, impressively noisy and powerful (and often surrounded by clouds of exhaust smoke). Where were they going? What were they hauling?

Of course the Big A logo on the radiator grille appealed to me as well, being the initial of our family name. To this day the Atki is one of my favourite vintage vehicles and – like the Hillman Imp – one I keep returning to when making designs. Here’s a selection of my Atkinson artworks, all available on various products in my shops on Amazon, Teepublic and Redbubble šŸ™‚

When I saw on Facebook the “Second Annual Atkinson gathering” being held at the Sandtoft Trolleybus Museum in Lincolnshire, it was an event I didn’t want to miss. I made the 154 mile round trip on July 1, setting off in pouring rain which fortunately cleared to blue skies over the museum.

Unfortunately, there were only four Atkis present – two Borderers, a Venturer and a Searcher (which was at least a type I hadn’t seen before) – as well as a couple of Seddon Atkinson Stratos and a random ERF EC11. I suppose 7 lorries counts as a “gathering” and maybe my expectations were too high, but I’ve seen many more Atkis on display at Gaydon and the British Commercial Vehicle Museum Spring Show.

Someone told me quite a few lorries had “gone out on a run” before I arrived, and should be “back in half an hour”. 90 minutes later, 3 more Seddon Atkinsons had turned up but no sign of any more older Atkis, so I went home disappointed. The Trolleybus museum itself was interesting enough for a one-off visit but I won’t be bothering with the “Third Annual Atkinson gathering” if there is one next year.

Evolutions

I enjoy experimenting with new styles of artwork and some time ago, having drawn various iterations of the classic IH Scout 4×4 range I played around at combining them into one design, eventually reducing down to just the front grilles – each quite distinctive and telling an interesting story of how the vehicle had evolved over time. I liked the way it turned out and evidently it wasn’t just me, this is now – after my original 1979 IH Scout II – my second best selling work!

Suitably encouraged I’ve since added more Evolutions as soon as I’ve drawn enough of the individual iterations to tell the story of a particular model, and these have proven very popular as well, including the Triumph TR range (stopping at the TR6 because the wedge shaped TR7 wasn’t so much an evolution as a radical departure from the previous models) and the Hillman Imp.

Others Iā€™ve completed so far:

  • AMC Rambler American
  • AMC Rambler Classic
  • ERF lorries
  • Foden lorries
  • Morris Minor
  • Reliant Scimitar
  • Rover P series (P3 to P5)
  • Saab
  • Sunbeam Alpine
  • Sunbeam Tiger
  • Triumph Spitfire

All available on the usual variety of products from Amazon, Teepublic and Redbubble šŸ™‚

Neon lights

When I was looking for camo (camouflage) backgrounds to try out I found some free for commercial use examples at Spoon Graphics, and I also signed up to the site newsletter which has had some interesting subjects. One that caught my eye was the Neon Light Effect Photoshop Tutorial – although I use GIMP rather than Photoshop the techniques were readily transferable and I had fun making some neon sign designs from my artworks

The effect really lends itself to logos, although I will have a go at car outlines at some point. Stag, Imp and TR6 logos all available on the usual variety of products in my Amazon, Teepublic and Redbubble shops šŸ™‚

Camo

The other day I noticed that camo – camouflage – designs are very popular in clothes shops at the moment, so thought I’d have a go at customising some of my artworks.

I found some urban, woodland and desert camo backgrounds at Spoon Graphics, very generously provided free for commercial use and perfect when combined with my existing “monoblock” style. One of the first I had a go at was my IH Scout II, and I’m happy with the way they turned out.

The urban camo version of the Scout has a couple of sales already and so far I’ve added an ERF E14, Bedford TM, Leyland P76, Triumph TR7 and Hillman Imp. Hopefully they’ll do well and I’ll add more if the style turns out to be popular.

The mighty Imp

Our mighty Imp ā€œBerthaā€ in 1975, before a 200 mile round trip to the Lake District carrying 2 adults and 3 kids, sailing dinghy (including mast and sail) on the roof and towing a trailer with a family size frame tent and provisions for a week. Easy. And a year later with a shiny new coat, hand painted with brushes ā€“ this was the 70s after all šŸ˜ƒ

Anonymous Bubblemail

Redbubble has a system called “Bubblemail” which allows artists to be messaged by customers and other artists without revealing email addresses (Redbubble itself uses regular email to communicate), either by messaging an artist directly or taking up the invitation to leave a note for the artist after ordering an artwork

I receive messages which mainly fall into one of three broad categories:

  • Comments – ā€œI have/had one of theseā€ and compliments (always welcome, thank you!)
  • Requests – usually for new designs or variants of existing artworks
  • Queries –  whereā€™s my order, can I change my order, etc

For queries I thank the sender for ordering one of my artworks and explain that I have no access to order details; as the artist I upload my artwork and Redbubble does the rest, including taking orders, production and shipping. I then direct them to the links for Redbubble Customer Service. Sometimes people let me know how they get on, and it seems to work well in most cases

That’s fine if the sender is logged in when they message me, as the system shows me their username and location and I can reply to their message. However, the system also allows senders to send messages and leave notes without being logged in, and I then receive an anonymous message, that I canā€™t reply to

Not a problem for comments like this – thank you, whoever you are! – but pretty frustrating when someone has a request or a query, and I have no means of respondingā€¦

If you end up here equally frustrated after failing to get a response to your query or request on Bubblemail please feel free to use my Contact form and you will get a reply!