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Description
I have submitted a tutorial of how this was painted. It is freehand airbrush ink on paper.
There are several things about this that intrigued me. The is a story element if you just look at an engine. All the components work together and if you have done any mechanical work it's natural to identify the parts. So naming the order of things and how they work is one story, but there was always something else going on here. The center of the engine block was torn out. Most of the engine was covered in paint and was somewhat protected by the elements, but the earth brown parts are purely rusted metal.
It took me a long time to figure out what was going on. As this tractor had a front loader I thought that something got jammed in the engine along with the loader and did the damage. That didn't quite add up so I thought maybe this engine was partially scavenged. But, because most of it is still intact that didn't hold up either. That and the fact that someone would have used tools and not rip the engine apart to take a valuable piece off. I spent weeks painting this and figuring out what went on before I figured it out.
This tractor has not moved in my lifetime, but most of it is in solid shape. With the amount and type of weather we get in Montana this is likely to be mostly intact a thousand years from now. What I think happened was rain and snow got into the engine and collected. When it finally froze one year, the ice exploded out of one side of the engine.
This is one of my favorite paintings just because it is complex in many ways. The composition and coloring stand out for me. I took many images of old engines just for the purpose of painting, but this is the only one that was really compelling. I also tried to capture the differences in faded paint verses protected paint, the scratches, and encroaching rust on the paint.

Description
I have submitted a tutorial of how this was painted. It is freehand airbrush ink on paper.
There are several things about this that intrigued me. The is a story element if you just look at an engine. All the components work together and if you have done any mechanical work it's natural to identify the parts. So naming the order of things and how they work is one story, but there was always something else going on here. The center of the engine block was torn out. Most of the engine was covered in paint and was somewhat protected by the elements, but the earth brown parts are purely rusted metal.
It took me a long time to figure out what was going on. As this tractor had a front loader I thought that something got jammed in the engine along with the loader and did the damage. That didn't quite add up so I thought maybe this engine was partially scavenged. But, because most of it is still intact that didn't hold up either. That and the fact that someone would have used tools and not rip the engine apart to take a valuable piece off. I spent weeks painting this and figuring out what went on before I figured it out.
This tractor has not moved in my lifetime, but most of it is in solid shape. With the amount and type of weather we get in Montana this is likely to be mostly intact a thousand years from now. What I think happened was rain and snow got into the engine and collected. When it finally froze one year, the ice exploded out of one side of the engine.
This is one of my favorite paintings just because it is complex in many ways. The composition and coloring stand out for me. I took many images of old engines just for the purpose of painting, but this is the only one that was really compelling. I also tried to capture the differences in faded paint verses protected paint, the scratches, and encroaching rust on the paint.