The 1966 Pontiac Parisienne

Jan 17, 2019

Those of you who followed my blog on painting the 1951 Chevy will recollect that the owner had another antique car that he commissioned me to paint. He wanted me to paint his 1966 Pontiac Parisienne.

As previously, I took several photographs decided that the size had to be the same as he was planning to hang them together. I chose a similar format & composition with the 3/4 view of the car facing the other way.

The Photograph Of The Pontiac Parisienne

Since the two paintings were going to hang together, I decided on similar palette and background.

Here are the series of pictures during the painting.

Basic Skeleton Of The Car

The Chrome Trim

Rest Of The Car And The Sky

The Background Mountain Range

Here I thought I was almost done and was prepared to get the painting framed and delivered, but noticing the car on the collectors driveway I realized that the colour of the car in my painting was not correct. Even though, I had slavishly matched the colour from the photograph, the colour was off. I became aware that at the time of the photograph, due to the massive forest fires in the neighbouring province of British Columbia, the smoke had drifted eastwards and was responsible for altering the true colours.

As the smoke had now cleared, I took some additional photographs of the car and with my painting supplies at hand, standing next to the car, matched the exact colours on some swatches.

The True Colour Of The Car

As we can see, photographs are notoriously unreliable when it comes to depicting colours. Thus I prefer to paint on location (plein air) whenever possible.

Anyway I had to repaint the car all over again and this is the result. All varnished, signed, framed, delivered and ready to hang.

The Painting All Framed & Ready To Hang

The owner was thrilled with the results!! So much so that he showed me his prized possession. A 1932 Ford Model A in absolutely pristine condition. He now wanted me to paint that as well for a triptych.

Mohamed Hirji