aht. or, "maybe i should make my nondescript truck into a well-known landmark"

[rmd]

so, these are the kind of idle thoughts i have.

i've got a pickup truck. i have great affection for this pickup truck. it's 11 years old, it's got something in excess of 120K miles on it. it's a green chevy S10 with a white cap on the back. (i need to replace the passenger side mirror, but that's a different problem)

at this point, i mostly use it for trips to home depot and costco and otherwise carrying things that won't fit in the mini. occasionally, the truck goes off and has adventures on its own, too. some more peculiar than others. but that's folzgold's story to tell.

it's cheap enough to keep that the convenience is totally worth it, so there's no real reason to get rid of it. i figure it should be good for quite a few more years of light use like this. my vague plan is to keep it till something expensive goes wrong with it. and then either sell it to someone who wants a shitbox truck or donate/junk it.

but i keep thinking "hey, i could totally make the truck into an art truck now that it's semi-retired". but i don't have a strong vision of what to do to it. at least not yet.

i don't want to do anything that will interfere with the basic truck-like functionality of the vehicle. and it needs to continue to fit under the carport in my driveway. so i can't make it into a smaller replica of la contessa or the weinermobile or something incredibly whimsical like that.


[Poll #934745]


[1] "non-representational and abstract" here is another way of saying "i don't draw well"

Comments

[fetish666.livejournal.com]

remember about a billion years ago when my car died on the way to a party you were having? we were going to tie dye that car (tie dye sheets of muslin, the epoxy the dyed sheets to the car) i still haven't seen anyone having done that...the grass seed thing has been done.

there was a car in new orleans i was fond of...it had children't toys glued all over it. it was a station wagon...really eye catching.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

there's someone in the boston area with a mini-station-wagon that has dozens of troll dolls on boards on the roof rack. i've seen it on the mass pike a couple of times.

[fetish666.livejournal.com]

that's awesome...but for you...well...you need something bigger and bolder...now HUNDREDS of trolls would be an excellent thing...

an art vehicle should express how completely larger-than-life exciting you are!

[hanseth.livejournal.com]

I really like the idea of a mural. Or flames. Flames are always in season.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i'm in a similar position with the fubaru -- it's ten years old, it's been keyed or bashed into enough times that it has several spots of plain black primer where it was in danger of rusting.

mamishka is out here now, but i'm not sure this is great weather to paint cars in, which is a shame.

personally i want to get a stencil of tolting icelandic ponies and cover mine randomly with rainbow-colored ponies. but hey, that's me. otoh they make stencils out of practically everything (remind me if you want pointers to HUGE stencil resources) and you can pick your own poison. (i also considered brains, but despite my deep fondness for brains i'm not sure they convey the right message if merely represented in rainbow colors. otoh i might do some educational brain-anatomy illustrations, if time and sketching on paper alllowed....don't think i can find stencils for the arcuate fasciculus, alas.)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

what about ponies *and* brains? paint a background of wrinkly brain folds all over it with ponies cavorting in the hills and valleys of brain folds?

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

that would rule. or a brain made of a mosaic of ponies, which would correctly anatomically describe mine. but i think that's more in mamishka's realm of skill than mine :)

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Then you just need to have her back out, don't you? :)

[tikvah.livejournal.com]

I love the idea of flames and gaping maw, but take it further - turn your truck into a real "Monster Truck." It wouldn't hurt to get a bit of artistic help in the planning and execution, but don't be quite so down on yourself. You aren't quite as artistically challenged as you think - I remember your wall mural our frosh year at RPI... (you and I broke more than a few brains, IIRC)

[solarbird]

I voted no in nr. 1 just because I don't care enough about cars to make art out of them. And it asked what I would do. But were I you, then I might, since clearly you like art cars. ^_^

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

Drive up to my house someday. I painted Keith Herring inspired pictures on the exterior basement wall of my house. I don't even have to be home for you to see them. DO that to your car! they're simple, and easy, and fun!

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

Find everybody who works in a machine room or who does desktop support, who have done large deployments, and have a folder full of CDs each for a couple hundred machines. Find every dork who has saved a shoebox full of AOL CDs in the hopes of someday doing something cool with them. Then, once you have a couple thousand CDs, get some epoxy, make scale-mail armor for the truck, and turn your Chevy into a Disc Caddy. AHAHAHAHA I AM TEH FUNNYMNA!

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

"If I were in your position" what I woudl do, honestly, is sit around and think of all kinds of cool things I could do to my truck, but never actually get around to doing any of them. That's because I'm lame. So I, personally, would go for any idea that doesn't have so large a ramp-up that it never happens. I dig the chalkboard idea because it's readily doable, and it's hyper-cool. I'd vote for anything that could actually be accomplished in a day, knowing my own limitations.

that'll be 2cents, please. ;-)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

"If I were in your position" what I woudl do, honestly, is sit around and think of all kinds of cool things I could do to my truck, but never actually get around to doing any of them.

see, i spent today making a livejournal poll about it rather than actually doing something to my truck, or even doing a fun paintjob on the mini's new hood scoop (which i still need to paint and replace).

[sensesurfer.livejournal.com]

Why go halfway? Paint the mini instead! If you are concerned about resale you could get a custom wrap that can be removed for about 1k.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

tempting, but i think an art mini lacks some of the charm of an art truck.

kind of letting it run wild in its aged dotage.

[scottro.livejournal.com]

Although I voted no for any kind of change, I think it might be cool to crazy glue hundreds and hundreds of pennies (or other spare change like nickels, dimes and quarters for accent) all over it.

That would be a hoot, and it is something you could do over time.

77

[keren-s.livejournal.com]

Theres such a thing as chalkboard paint? Cool! I learn so much reading your blog. :-)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

indeed! i'm pretty sure the big orange box has it. and there's a site with instructions on how to make your own (http://www.geocities.com/kraftproject/Instructional/chalkboardpaint.html) if that's your thing.

[sparkymonster.livejournal.com]

GLUE AWESOME CRAP TO IT!! (http://www.luckymojo.com/mojocar.html)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

hey! that's the chick who ran eclipse comics!

[lyricae.livejournal.com]

I don't know about you, but after I've had a vehicle that long I have many many stories, some big and some small that tie into my time with the car. I voted for hieroglyphics which tell a story and pictured in my head a glyph representing a car dealership, fender benders, directional signs representing the times I got lost and so forth. If I were a more adventurous person I'd love to do this to the mini van :-P

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

In the Phillipines, at least when I was there in the early 80's, they had elongated Jeeps, called, not surprisingly, Jeepneys. Many of these Jeepneys would have things stuck on them. A common thing was a big 10" high or so chrome horse. On a base that when the car moved, the horse would rock back and forth. That was quaint.

And then we saw a Jeepney with, if memory serves, TWENTY THREE silver horses rocking back and forth on its hood. A veritable HERD of rocking horses all bobbing back and forth, not at all in unison. And that, my friend, was truly a glory to behold.

I vote for rocking horses all over your truck. You could even make running boards for a few on the sides!

[rmd.livejournal.com]

i loved the decorations on trucks in india. very cool.

if you google around, you can see the absolutely freaky decorations some long-haul truckers do to their trucks in japan. they look like some kind of gundam anime thing. but, you know, big rigs.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my folks took a number of pictures of the trucks in India, too.

And, well, the Japanese are ... the Japanese.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

Send the truck off to Jacob (or Talia) and let them have fun with it.

[kjc.livejournal.com]

Someday, when I have a lot of money to spare, I want to get the bug professionally painted such that it's red in front and gradually fades through the rainbow to purple in back.

You probably don't want to do that. I voted for LEDs. But you could also get some of those scrolling LED signs and have each saying a different phrase.