Kevin McNicholas

Kevin McNicholas has 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 having no formal art training. In his first year at Grammar school his art teacher was very supportive and encouraged his work, however his second-year teacher said he had no talent and drew ‘woolly lines’. He therefore gave up any ambitions of having a career in art and began an apprenticeship in watchmaking. This is probably where his micro engineering background helped develop his steady hand, which now enables such incredibly detailed artwork. He paints on canvas panels in a photo-realistic style using acrylic paint with traditional brushes. He doesn’t use an airbrush and wouldn’t know where to start with one. He doesn’t like to lose the texture of the canvas, so is extremely careful with the consistency of the paint. The image is drawn in with graphite pencil and then ink, using a grid to ensure the perspective is correct. The image is then built up gradually with multiple layers of thinned paint. Very fine brushes are needed, the smallest size 0000, 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.