The year in Art Cars, it is fair to say, mostly happens around the middle months, so it is time again that some of the more venerable events of the art car take place. For many people who love art cars, Burning Man is like Christmas, and yet again this year was a full-on extravaganza [...]

Although the Art Car movement has, for the most part, been confined to a few cities and mostly to the US, the art car concept itself has been freely available to anyone who wishes to get interested or get involved. Looking at pictures, however, can only really give a partial impression of how funky and [...]

Creating an art car is something that must cross the mind of anyone who looks at the works created by others – if not immediately, then certainly after a while. It can be difficult to get the perfect idea, though – after all, it is not as though you can throw the first draft away [...]

If you are creating an art car, then you have probably already considered and decided to take photos documenting what it looks like before and after the work – but have you considered blogging the whole experience? Back when the movement started, art cars stood alone, with only their creators and their fans even really [...]

The art car movement is spreading, slowly but surely. Houston and San Francisco were already nailed down, and other cities around the country are following bit by bit. Before we know it, the art car could become the next big movement around the world. Yes? Well, maybe we should not run before we can walk, [...]

There was a time when people made paintings of things they found remarkable and beautiful because that was really the only way to capture such things. Before the camera came along as a freely available method of depicting scenes, before video recording, all we had were a bunch of people who could use oils and [...]

Although it is hard to imagine, there are some people who look upon the joy expressed at an Art Car parade or any other event and still somehow do not “get it”. Some people will wonder why a seemingly perfectly good car should be defiled with additional paint, ornaments and other cosmetic additions, and what [...]

Flickr is a photo-sharing website which, although it may not get as much publicity as YouTube, has done for the still image what the latter has done for video-sharing. While there are numerous photo hosting sites out there – a goodly number of which are free just like Flickr – it has become the sharing [...]

Parking outside a supermarket can lead to panic on the way back to your vehicle as you try to work out where you actually parked the thing. Imagine, then, how much of a funk you would get into if you had painted your car to look as though it was invisible. That’s what Sara Watson, [...]

One of the recurring themes of the Art Car movement is the painstaking artistic process involved and the amount of time people will devote to creating their perfect Art Car. Once created, they will also devote an inordinate amount of time and work to its upkeep and will take it to parades, shows and festivals [...]

There is a very strong swell of opinion that says the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi is the greatest architect the world ever saw. Certainly his works adorn the beautiful city of Barcelona and make it one of the most popular tourist destinations in all of Europe. His unfinished masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, is seen by [...]

It is widely accepted that Harrod Blank is the father of the Art Car movement, and this is borne out by a number of facts. He has created some of the most prominent examples of the medium, with his Camera Van being among the first and finest features of the modern Art Car movement. He [...]

There are certain works of art which, within their field, can easily be referred to by their name without any reference to their creator. For example, hardly anyone bothers to say “Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa” because pretty much everyone knows who painted that portrait. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band can be mentioned without [...]

How many times have you thought about how cool it would be if somebody brought out an art car that combined the symbols of Hex magic and the style and class of Mexico? Probably none … However, Kathleen Pearson thought about it, so you can look at it and love it. And Pearson has just [...]

Looking at art cars is something that can bestow a great deal of joy – the incredible imagination of a human being can go to lengths that make just about anything seem possible. However, there is only so much you can gain from a photograph. The full, 3D art car experience makes all the difference, [...]

There are some people who view the role of Japan in the art world as being the place where ideas are taken and made more extreme. Bold statements are not a rare thing at all in Japan, and the Japanese take on the art car is decorated trucks – or Dekotora, to give them the [...]

What would you say constitutes a “bling car”? Would you say it needs to be large, kitted out with a powerful system, and a lot of designer modification that makes you look like you’ve been on “Pimp My Ride”? Or would you say that a “bling car” is one that glints in the sunlight, just [...]

The art cars that we know and love today are an example of a wholly modern-day art thrill. Until the last century, motor cars were so rare that the idea of taking one and decorating it to make an artistic statement would have been ludicrous. Yet in the 1920s, the flapper era, free-thinking individuals would [...]

One thing that seems to unite art car communities is a tendency to think about things from an angle that regular artists do not. Okay, so it would be fair to say that the average artist comes from a certain kind of liberal standpoint (within reason). Art cars, however, seem to have a bit of [...]

There is a consensus around art cars which attributes to the medium a kind of hippy, outsider art image. This is perhaps given a little bit of a shake by the fact that Houston is one of many cities to have an officially sanctioned art car parade – cities are never likely to give the [...]

The winner of the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Houston Art Car Parade was a car with a real story behind it. Jeffrey’s Oceanic Peace Extravaganza was commissioned by the parents of Jeffrey H. Morris, who died tragically last year from colon cancer. A real Renaissance man, Jeffrey Morris was an accomplished singer and [...]

We all enjoy looking at art cars and seeing the incredible results of the imagination of a unique individual. Whether the art car is an effort by Harrod Blank, or the brainchild of an unknown individual with a clever idea and the enthusiasm to put it into practice, the result can be startling and will [...]

The popularity of the art car movement has gone skyward since the advent of the Internet. Back in 1987 when Houston was host to the first ever Art Car Parade, things were a lot different and it would have been easy for the movement to disappear for lack of interest. But people kept at it [...]

The Art Car may be something of a niche market in the big, wide world of art, but to its adherents it really means something. You may not see an art car in the Louvre, nor are you likely to see many of them on display in the Met, but art is not something that [...]

The social networking – or “social notworking” as it’s called if you surf it in the office – phenomenon has pretty much seemed to achieve world domination in recent years. If you have a business, a party planned, or if you just want to get your face out there it is pretty much obligatory to [...]

Often an art car happens without the permission or even the prior knowledge of the company who initially made the car. It makes sense, after all, because once you drive the car off the forecourt it belongs to you and you can do whatever you like with it. So the art car has not become [...]

The thing that leaves a lot of people cold when it comes to car art is the fact that, when all is said and done, they will not be getting into that car at the end of the day and driving home in it. “The car in the picture looks charming, and whoever owns it [...]

Over the years, art has been at the centre of humanity’s desire to make itself heard. If you have a message to get across, then having an artistic hand and a creative mind is something that will always be to your advantage. It simply means that people will be more likely to listen because – [...]

If you know someone who is obsessed with cars, the vast range of car art-related sites on the Internet provide an excellent chance to find them a gift that they will really enjoy. The variety in the field makes it a rich seam of ideas for something that you can make a present of, a [...]

The Art Car Agency is something from which just about all genres of art would benefit – This is a dedicated organisations that has devoted themselves to raising awareness of art cars. Their intention is to make car art accessible to more people within in the community. It is unsurprising that the organisations is equipped [...]

An art car is something separate from but related to the genre of car art. Where car art is a term used to refer to any art that depicts a car, on paper or canvas (or another surface), the art car is a law unto itself. With this development in the world of art, the [...]

The art car is a genre all to itself, that takes in some rather conservative displays featuring just a little bit of paint and an idea added to some works that are so far out in left field that they simply astound the viewer. The great works of Art Car brilliance obey no rules but [...]

The art car is a chameleonic entity. We can define the term “art car” up to a point, but any quick, simple definition will give only the most basic idea of what to expect when you clap eyes on one. The most simple is the car that has simply been painted onto. The only limitation [...]

There is no form of visual, graphical representation that has not yet been touched by the hands of branding. We have all seen people in branded clothing – you could throw a tennis ball into a relatively busy bar and it would hit three such people before even touching the ground. Others have had corporate [...]