Car, Train and Aviation Oil Paintings

Machines are painted well when the painter understands what they are for. A muscle car at a drag strip at night is about noise and light. An outrigger canoe on open Pacific water is about balance. A roundhouse full of locomotives at dusk is about the end of a working day.

What is in this collection

Around a hundred and forty paintings across four kinds of machine. Cars run from a classic parked outside a Paris cafe at night to a muscle car drag race under lights. Rail covers steam locomotives, roundhouses at dusk and track running into weather. Aviation takes in four-engine propliners over the Alps and a seaplane lifting off a Mediterranean bay. Water holds working boats and a Polynesian outrigger far from any shore.

Most of these are painted at night, at dusk or in low sun, because that is when metal and paintwork are worth looking at.

How each painting is made

Nothing here is printed. Each canvas is painted in oils after you order it, by an artist working from the reference on the page. The lead time runs in weeks, and no two canvases are identical.

You set the dimensions rather than choosing from a fixed list. Three finishes are available: Simple for a clean, even surface, Texture for visible brushwork, and Museum for the heaviest impasto.

Choosing one for a room

Vehicles want width. A car, a locomotive or an aircraft needs road, track or air around it, so a canvas wider than it is tall almost always reads better. These suit a study, a garage office, a bar or a hallway, anywhere someone will stand close enough to look at the detail.

Night scenes carry their own light and work in a room that has little. Tell us the wall and we will suggest a proportion.

Your own car, bike or boat

A specific vehicle can be painted from your photographs, which is one of the most common requests we get. Send a few angles and an artist will look at them before anything is agreed. Shipping is free worldwide.