Classic Motorsports Design Sketch Contest: the winners!

For the Classic Motorsports Design Sketch Contest we received more than 120 artworks by 90 different participants from all over the world – you can check all the entries here and here.

There were many great works which made the selection process quite laborious. Taking into consideration the original brief, the jury focused on the “emotional” side of the artworks and also took into account the description provided.

The winner in the Pro category (senior design students and professional designers/illustrators) is JeanLuc Vanuf, who submitted two artworks created using a mix of superposition of painting effect and real digital “manual” drawing, starting from reference images – a somewhat unusual choice for a “sketch” contest but nevertheless truly effective.

JeanLuc Vanuf is a 45 old manager of Anthracyt, a communication agency based in Brussels, and a part of his work deals with race car liveries, race car conception design and illustrations for various motorsports events.

He created two compelling pictures, portraying a 1954 Lancia D50 – “one of the most important car of the Formula 1 circus, just before the “birth” of Ferrari the next year with the same car” and a 1969 Alpine Renault F3 – “the first real victorious Alpine just before the big Saga of F1 and Le Mans”.

Above: the images used by JeanLuc as a starting point for his artworks

Arvind Ramkrishna from Driven Mavens comments: “Great work and description. Highly emotive – an excellent job of transforming an existing image and creating something unique and emotional.”

Brian Stupski from Studio PCK adds: “I love JeanLuc’s piece, and while it is heavily reliant on a superimposition technique, and possibly more editorial illustration-meets-fine-art, I cannot help but marvel at his use of color and broad strokes to convey the raw emotion of racing.”

Among the hobbyists / first design students, the winner is Raphaël Taormina, who rendered a 1966 Jaguar XJ 13 racing at the 24 hours of Le Mans.

He commented: “I’ve chosen this period because it was for me the golden era of motorsport, carrying wonderful racing stories. I wanted to give the viewer the feeling of night racing with all the blurry lights, shadows and reflection […]. Night endurance races have been the greatest motorsport experience of my life and I wanted to share it with the viewer.”

Raphaël’s references: the M3 Art Car by Jeff Koons (source: BMW Blog) and the Ferrari F458 Italia (source: ForzaMotorsport.fr)

Arvind Ramkrishna comments: “At age 20, his description along with the emotive execution made a terrific combination. Great sense of speed and deliberate use of lighting”, while Brian Stupski underlines “Raphael’s ability to simply ‘get it'”.

Congratulations to Raphaël and JeanLuc, who will receive a copy of the 2 DVD-set “How to Draw Cars Now” (check our detailed review) by Arvind Ramkrishna and a $50 Amazon Gift Card offered by Car Body Design.

All participants will have the chance of publishing their portfolio on Car Body Design as soon as the section is online.

Again, we’d like to say thanks to all participants, we hope you enjoyed the contest as much as we enjoyed reviewing all the artworks! Thanks also to our external judges, Arvind Ramkrishna, Brian Stupski and Michele Leonello.

There were some other entries truly worth mentioning, and we’ll possibly have a “featured” section once the portfolio platform is live.

We plan to launch new contests in the future, maintaining a spirit of fun and friendly challenge rather than a highly competitive, fighting atmosphere. If you have any suggestion or idea, please feel free to share it in the comments.

In the meantime, there is still time to participate in the Remote Explorer Vehicle Design Contest and have a chance of winning a $599 online design workshop offered by CGMA!