In my own photos, this low contrast and saturation is a mistake, and it looks it. In Peter’s photography, the low saturation lends a mood to his shots that suits the subject marvelously. When a piece of art’s methods or palette or construction accentuates the subject it always feels more whole to me. Peter Olschinsky’s studies from the Ventilspiel 1000km definitely fit that description. Click on over to Atelier Olschinsky for the complete collection.

Stefan wrote in to tell me about his latest wonderful automotive art project. Each day leading up to December 24th, he’s releasing a different postcard-sized pencil and watercolor sketch. If I know Stefan’s stuff, they’re bound to all be fantastic. But then he does us all one better—he’s selling the original piece each day through his new Etsy store for a paltry £24. The images above are the releases for December 1 and 2—each with their respective racing number. Fun!

Hey Stefan, if you do one, set aside the Porsche 550 one for me, eh?

Check Stefan Marjoram’s sketch blog for the fresh calendar item daily, and try to be the first to that Etsy shop each day.

In case you didn’t already have a tremendous level of respect for home machinists. Just watching him turn that crankshaft is crazy, but then when he shows the valves… my brain melted.

Two cubic centimeters of displacement. 11.3mm cylinder bore. 10mm stroke. Stainless steel, aluminum, and bronze construction. Powered by compressed air.

Ready to drop in to Barbie’s Ferrari.

I have a poster hanging my house for the 1999 running of the Meadowbrook Historics at the Waterford Hills Road Races. Like the brilliant imagery presented here, it’s beautifully illustrated with bold colors and finely executed imagery of racing cars. Bugatti was the featured marque for the race and the poster features a gorgeously realized Bugatti-blue Type 35.

The color and composition are quite lovely, but then the sponsoring corporation’s logo is slapped across the bottom. “Tech-Sight”, it says, in anachronistically severe quasi-contemporary logotype. It tarnishes the poster with its poor design and placement and late-90′s generically futuristic branding.

I had to look up what the company was to write this post: It’s a subsidiary of defense contractor General Dynamics. Yeah, that’s the kind of thing people want hanging in their automotive art gallery: graphically dated defense contractor logos.

Thankfully, we can always look back at these marvelous American Road Race of Champions program covers to give us the essentials: evocative illustration, uncluttered typography, and the sanctioning body’s logo – if necessary. That’s it. Follow that equation, poster designers.

Flickr user Biczzz has created this astoundingly nuanced sculpture of Ginther’s 1965 Honda RA272 from simple Lego. The level of detail Biczzz has managed to achieve here is really incredible. Sure, I’ve made my share of blocky Lego cars, but these gentle curves, the suspension bits, the windscreen! I’ve seen die-cast models with less detail.

Maybe with some practice, I could make a generic 60s F1 car from Lego. But this isn’t a generic 60s F1 car. You can plainly recognize it as the car that took Honda’s first victory in Mexico. Overcoming the constraints inherent in sculpting from Lego and still managing such a finely crafted result is absolutely fantastic!

Previously: Flying Bricks

I've been searching high and low for the artist of this piece. Anyone know who did it?

Motor racing of every flavor has a rich tradition of inspiring artists but there seems to be something in particular about cycle racing that leads artists towards beautiful narratives.

Perhaps it’s simply because a motorcyclist’s body is exposed: Think of a cycle racer aggressively leaning into a turn, shoulders set, head leading the body, the tension between action and balance. It immediately evokes a mood, an attitude; the form just lends itself to storytelling. Even if we’re not trying to tell a story, the orientation conjures one in our minds.

Automotive artists may feel compelled to exaggerate the driving position of the pilot to help convey that mood. But with the cycle racer, the motorcyclist is so much a part of the form of the racing machine that the artist can naturally, or even unintentionally, combine them.

Either way, there’s so much absolute brilliance in these comic-like ligne claire illustrations that it both makes me want to hit the track and pick up the brush.

See the enormous collection of art pieces, advertising, and illustration in BullitMcQueen’s Flickr set.

Click on over to Christopher’s DeviantArt gallery for more.

Hard to imagine something better than this for your garage automotive studio wall.

Coys is offering this Jay Burridge sculpture as part of their upcoming Nurburgring auction on 13th August 2011. Look closer though, this isn’t just a sculpture inspired by Ayrton Senna’s MP4/6. It’s made OF one of Ayrton’s MP4/6s.

McLaren Formula cars are not in collectors’ hands—like the early Ferrari formula cars, each is dismantled for post-race analysis and reused or destroyed. This bodywork, though was given to Jay by Ron Dennis as the source material for the sculpture and even shows signs of wear from race use. There are peeling sponsor stickers, there are nicks and scratches from a weekend’s race.

The unfortunate timing of the completion of the sculpture, however, forced it into storage. Props to Burridge and Ron Dennis for not selling the sculpture in the wake of Senna’s death. Instead the sculpture seems to have been displayed at a corporate event, then hidden away—reemerging in ’04 for a Senna tribute at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Coys estimates it will bring €35,000 – €45,000. More at their lot details page.

This is our third look at Stefan’s work, we’ve previously looked at his work here and here. What can I say? I love his stuff.

Like a book, Paul’s project, is lovingly researched and written. The design has been carefully measured, the illustrations (oh the illustrations!) are magnificent. But here is where the similarities to a mere book end. This is an art piece. There’s really no other way to think of it. It has all the hallmarks of a hand-crafted, meticulously assembled gallery item. The fact that you can turn from page to page and admire the beautifully reproduced illustrations and pore over the charming summaries of the races and events of the 1934 Grand Prix season is just added benefit. My photos here don’t do it justice at all.

This gives me a dilemma. Ordinarily, I would read through a text like this a handful of times, perhaps study a favorite illustration and then shut it away between automotive volumes. Silver Clouds, though, begs to be displayed.

Paul’s illustration style matches the era so very well. His flowing, lightly-held hand style feels very much in the spirit of the 1934 season. If they were in black and white, they could easily pass for the woodcut illustrations that accompanied newspaper accounts of the early grand prix seasons. They live in a very sweet spot between realism and the ligne claire, almost cartoony, style that so typifies European illustration of the mid-century. The woodcut comparison is even more apt in the biography section, where each entry is accompanied by a small illustration of the subject in something close to the illustration style the Wall Street Journal is famous for.

Brilliantly, those same illustrations accompany the book as a deck of trading cards that evoke the era’s cigarette cards. You can almost imagine them as coveted souvenir purchased trackside at AVUS or the Circuito di Modena. Absolutely marvelous!

In short, I love it. It’s a remarkably beautiful art piece, a passionately written and magnificently crafted primer to the Grand Prix season of 1934. I don’t know how many copies of Silver Clouds Paul has created, but everything about it screams “limited edition”, find out more on his Automobiliart.