The Chicane

It’s that time of year again, friends. While I’m sure you’ll have no problem finding a special gift for the vintage racing enthusiast in your life, it seemed like a good time to collect some of our, and probably someone on your list’s, favorites. Perfect for anyone snuggled in bed, while visions of racing cars dance in their heads.

Racing Books

It seems that gearheads never have too many bookshelves. Every year another hundred or so racing books are published; these are a few of our favorites.

Movies

I would hope that the racer on your shopping list would have these films in their collection already. If they don’t, they’re mandatory.

For The Walls

I’m sure there’s still some small piece of bare wall somewhere. No? Not even in the garage? Maybe the master bathroom.

Video Gaming

It’s winter. Chances are, the racer on your list can’t take their car to the local track until spring. These should tide them over until then.

Welsh painter, Rob Ijbema, maintains an remarkably prolific blog of his automotive paintings at his Car-A-Day site. His work is quite varied, from watercolors to pen sketches and everything in between. Rob’s subject matter is pretty evenly split between historic racers and modern Formula 1, with a bit of road cars and rally thrown in for good measure. I particularly like his watercolors of early racers of the likes of Fangio and Moss. There’s so much abstraction in some areas of the work that it’s almost an optical illusion when you take in the wider piece and see the level of detail hinted at by seemingly random dashes of color and line—Virtually impressionistic in execution. The best thing about Rob’s blog is that you can wade through two years of near daily work and revel in the shear breadth of work. Many of the works are marked “sold”, but I don’t readily see a link to his representing gallery, but perhaps you can buy one for yourself if you drop him an email. This is definitely a site to keep tabs on.

Be sure to check out his “Demo’s” section for a bit of insight into his process as he works through a painting. Excellent stuff.

Paul Chenard dropped me a message the other day pointing me to his wonderful sites. Paul’s illustrations and paintings are marvelous; and I love the variety in his work. Some are remarkably photographic and realistic, but what really struck me are the charming pencil sketches and lively suggestive drawings. The limited edition quartet of Phil Hill in race winning Ferrari’s are absolutely fantastic (one of which is pictured here). All four, and much more, are available at his online shop.

Paul also maintains a blog at automobiliart.blogspot.com where he posts about racing news and showcases his latest work. Check it out.

At the very least, download and build his papercraft Maserati 250F.