Kevin McNicholas

I have been able to gain access to the highly technical but extremely secretive world of Formula 1 motor racing by painting pictures of the cars for leading luminaries of the sport, including Frank Dernie, Nigel Mansell, Ron Dennis and Sir Frank Williams. This is despite me having no formal art training. In my first year at Grammar school my art teacher was very supportive and encouraged my work, however my second year art teacher told me I had no talent and drew ‘woolly lines’. I therefore gave up any ambitions of having a career in art and began an apprenticeship in watchmaking. This is probably where my micro engineering background helped develop my steady hand, which now helps me create highly detailed artwork. I paint on canvas panels in a photo-realistic style using acrylic paint with traditional brushes. I don’t use an airbrush and wouldn’t know where to start with one. I don’t like to lose the texture of the canvas, so am extremely careful with the consistency of the paint. I draw the image first with a graphite pencil and then ink it in, using a grid to ensure the perspective is correct. I then build the painting up gradually with multiple layers of thinned paint. Very fine brushes are needed, the smallest size I use is 0000, which is a single hair thick. This tends to take quite a long time, which means on average each painting takes around 1,200 - 1,500 hours to complete. Although I enjoy painting the cars my current specialism is painting racing driver portraits.