“Pinstripe Chris” Dunlop

Chris Dunlop - Artist for Art of Chris Dunlop

Chris Dunlop (aka Pinstripe Chris) is an automotive design and render artist based out of Southern California. He started out as an automotive painter that specialized in custom paint and high end restoration work on Classics & Exotics in Rockville, Maryland. From there he began airbrushing, doing sharpie art, and pinstriping. Soon after he was doing his artwork nearly full time, he was dubbed "Pinstripe Chris".

Contact: Chris Dunlop at Visit Online!

            

• We absolutely love the fact that you’re originally from the DMV, as Marylanders ourselves we’re immediately proud of your accomplishments. So let’s take a trip back in time, and talk about how you got into the automotive world. Why Paint & Body? Did you go to art school? If so, where? Or are you self-taught?
• … After several years of mixing full time artwork with painting cars full time, Chris and his wife Caitlin opened up their own paint & body shop where they specialized in classic and exotic cars. Why the Sharpie Mustang and Sharpie Camaro – let’s explore the inspiration behind this. And “the why?”
• What is “Robot #3” 
• The big move … leaving the DMV for Southern California. Car Culture on the East Coast is strong, what led to the shift west? 
• If you had to give advice to other (starving) aspiring artists, what would that be? Maybe some lessons learned?
• You typically work in Traditional or “Analogue” media – but you’ve also made a shift into Digital Renders, why? Examples? 
• How long does it take to create a “photorealistic” painting of a sports car?
• How does one go about getting some Pinstripe Chris artwork?
• What are you working on now? Any big projects you can share/reveal to our audience?

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder How did they get that job? Or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us. Because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Passion for vehicles comes in many different shades and colors. Custom cars, hot rods, and exotics. There’s always a variety of artwork to keep things fresh and never limited to one genre. Chris Dunlop is an automotive design and render artist based out of Southern California.

He started out as an automotive painter that specialized in custom paint and high end restoration work on classics and exotics in Rockville, Maryland. From there, he began airbrushing, doing Sharpie art, and pinstriping. Soon after, he was doing his artwork [00:01:00] nearly full time, And some of you might have heard of him.

He’s been dubbed pinstripe Chris, and he joins Brad and I tonight on break fix to share his journey from paint and body work to full time artists. So welcome to break fix Chris. And

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: thank you for having

Crew Chief Eric: me, you know, like all good break fix. Episodes. There’s always an origin story. And we absolutely love the fact that you’re originally from the DMV from the DC, Maryland, Virginia area.

And as Marylanders ourselves, we are immediately proud of you and your accomplishments. So let’s take a trip back in time and talk about how you, how you got into the automotive world and why paint and body.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Always nice to be talking to some fellow Marylanders. I feel like people from the Northeast coast, we have a way that we can understand each other when we talk that maybe isn’t as a language that we have that doesn’t exist everywhere.

Appreciate me being able to talk with fellow Marylanders. You guys are going to get it.

Crew Chief Eric: We got to ask a proper Maryland question, which is all right.

Crew Chief Brad: Which question is that Eric? What high school did you go to? [00:02:00] Oh, well, it was true.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I went to Richard Montgomery. Hey, there you go. Yeah. Right down the road.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That’s where I grew up. Of course I love cars. I think everybody that really likes cars always as a kid, you always start out liking cars anyways. And you want to figure out how to do that as a work thing. And what I was doing the job right for paint and body was like, I was a server at IHOP.

It was just a normal crappy job, but I always worked on my own cars, just. So

Crew Chief Eric: I got to ask, since you loved cars as a kid, what was on your bedroom wall? What was that poster?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: The magazine that I tend to grab most when I was a kid was the DuPont registry. I always liked looking at either exotics or like really nicely restored classics.

As opposed to like the beaters that I drove my first vehicle out of high school was a 69 C 10. That I replaced with a 72 C10, none of which were in great shape, but they were good fun, but they weren’t like nice, but I enjoyed classics and wrenching on them. But anything that I had that was on my wall was pulled out of a [00:03:00] magazine and it would have been DuPont registry, something really, really fancy.

So it would have been like an F50 or an Jaguar XJ220, supercars of that era, McLaren F1, Hennessey Venom Viper. Stuff like that. Shortly after high school, a really, really close family friend, they owned and operated a collision shop in Frederick, Maryland. They happened to have a spot available as a painter’s helper.

Crew Chief Eric: What got you excited to do that? Why paint and body? Was there a draw there? Nothing.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: No, absolutely nothing. Paint and body was just sort of far out of my mind, but give that a try. It’s not something that I had thought of, but it sounded interesting. Sort of worked out and it worked as a helper for about a year there before I moved to St.

Louis. And then, uh, I was in St. Louis for a couple of years. And that’s where I started doing more full time as a painter. I was a helper in Maryland, but the owner of the shop there was super cool about letting me use crashed fenders and crashed hoods to practice like airbrushing on. They’re pretty casual about letting me burn lots of paint materials at nighttime just to play and have some fun.

Crew Chief Eric: So you went from Maryland to St. Louis and somewhere, somewhere in [00:04:00] this mix, you met your wife, Caitlin, and she’s also in this industry as well, right? Did you guys meet at work?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: It’s not exactly in the industry. She does help me as a, just stay sane in general, which is immensely helpful. When I met her, when I lived in Frederick and then we sort of went our separate way is when I moved to St.

Louis, I ended up moving back to Maryland after a couple of years in St. Louis, cause we reconnected on MySpace of all things. So we moved back to Maryland and we moved in together and then we moved here together a couple of years after that. Here in California,

Crew Chief Eric: and you opened up your own paint and body shop at some point.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yeah, that’s the cliff notes version. I couldn’t have done it without a partner, somebody who already had a space and was in Montgomery County and not in the air park. Thank goodness I had help with that. And he was already kind of established a little bit more in the Ferrari world. So he kind of had like the ideal job.

Guy’s name was Robbie. By the time I met him, he was already a really old guy. So he was just like sort of angry and direct, really enjoyed working with somebody that was a little bit more to the point. We had our space, this whole journey, just jackknifed all over the place. We [00:05:00] moved back from St. Louis to Maryland.

I worked at a bunch of shops before we worked on our own shop, but it was all, I was like a painter helper at a hot rod shop. And made some good friends there until I connected with this guy, Robbie. And we were working together on Ferraris and Classics there, which was great. And it was just also a great opportunity to learn that the cost of running a shop is so enormously expensive that the hopes of being able to make a lot at it, you have to scale so much or be really, really efficient.

It was a really good lesson to learn in, in what’s possible and what’s not possible, no matter how much you care about what you do.

Crew Chief Eric: So somewhere in this mix, Did you end up going to art school? Or if not, are you self taught?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I’m entirely self taught. In fact, when I lived in Frederick the first time and I was at that collision shop, I applied to go to an art school out here in California.

It was my first trip to California and I got accepted, but it was too expensive for me to go. I never actually went. So I never went to college. I never went to art school. Everything is self taught, but I really have the years of being in a spray booth, for the way that I think about colors and lighting.[00:06:00]

Crew Chief Eric: I thought it was the fact that you’re from Maryland and like the rest of us, you were probably drawing those Stussy S’s in class instead of paying attention. You know what I’m talking about? I

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: figured

Crew Chief Eric: that was everybody

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: to be

Crew Chief Brad: honest.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Seems like no matter where you go in the country, people did it everywhere.

It doesn’t matter.

Crew Chief Brad: So where did you draw your early inspiration from?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: It’s like this jackknife journey along the entire way in there. By the time that I got back to Maryland from living in St. Louis and when I was working in our own shop space, Each time somebody would come along and say, Hey, you should give airbrushing a try.

You should give pinstriping a try. So just try stuff. Just kind of muscle through learning it, which basically means screwing up a thousand times until you sort of kind of get it right. All that is just trial and error and practice. I got a lot more practice that when I lived in Maryland, but there wasn’t a huge aspect.

For stuff like that, the demand for stuff like that seems to really, really exist strongly out here. But by the time I got out here, I wasn’t doing as much of that anymore.

Crew Chief Brad: And then how did Chip Foose and Steve Stanford’s work influence you? A

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: huge way. Well, I grew up watching [00:07:00] overhauling. So my favorite part of that show, and even still, I’ll pull it up on YouTube just to watch the clips of where Foose is drawing some of my greatest memories of watching the show.

It’s just watching the artwork grow. And then Steve Stanford, I’ve seen his artwork so many times in magazines and I’ve been lucky to call Steve a friend. Steve and Chip are local here to where I’m at. So I worked with Foose on a build pretty early on when I moved here at a shop that I was working at. I try to visit Stanford every couple of months and see how he’s doing.

Both huge inspirations.

Crew Chief Eric: Chris, did you happen to catch recently when Chip sat down, I believe it was on Haggerty’s YouTube channel and he did a at his desk redesign of the C8 Corvette.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yes. Oh yeah. I’ve watched a bunch of the Haggerty stuff there.

Crew Chief Eric: So what did you think of that? Do you think that was a good interpretation, a good take on the, on the C8?

And what do you think of the C8’s design right now as one of the newest sports cars to come out in the last couple of years?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Oh man, I don’t know where your audience leans. So what I’m going to say is probably going to be a little bit controversial. My wife and I were thinking about getting one last [00:08:00] year.

So we borrowed one off of Truro to give it a really honest try. And we couldn’t wait to get out of that car. Really? Yeah. We rented it for the day, and an hour later, we called the guy back and asked if we could bring it back to him. Didn’t care about giving him his money back. No hard feelings. We just want to get the hell out of this car.

Crew Chief Eric: Is it because it’s uncomfortable? Or is it just It’s A step away from what we’re used to with Corvettes. So

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: here’s where it gets really, really tricky. As a car, everything that you can measure. It is an amazing car. It’s fast. It sounds good. You could daily drive it. So those things are amazing. It looks okay.

It’s not my favorite looking car. It looks worse. I think in orange County than most other places, because it looks like a fake Ferrari, right? So you feel a little bit goofy when you’re next to people in McLarens and Maseratis and they’re like, eh, I think I’ll put the top back up. But I think the look of the car is growing on me a little bit better.

And I think over time, the look is going to get better. It’s not a bad car. It definitely did not suit us. The [00:09:00] thing that we did to really test the car is we did the thing that nobody really does when we go and buy a sports car or any type of car like this. As we just drove down the street, down PCH, a couple beaches down to go get coffee.

Just do something routine and see what the car is like. It was the dumbest car to try to park you’ve ever seen in your life.

Crew Chief Eric: Cause you can’t see out of it, right?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: You really, really can’t see out of it. And I’m not a tall person, maybe a taller person would have better luck, but the way that the doors come up over your shoulders and we’re in a stingray, it’s convertible.

So the way the pillars are, I like the look of it sort of, but just, I parked and then my wife couldn’t get out cause the doors are freaking huge. So I had to unpark, let her out, put the car back in. And by the time we walked back to the car, grabbing coffee, we’re like,

Crew Chief Eric: So if you could redesign one aspect of the C8 other than the pillars and the visibility, what would it be from an artistic standpoint?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Interior, 100%. Really? Really stupid interior. I don’t know who crafted that thing. If you’ve sat in one, you’re in the driver’s seat. The console wraps around you, which is kind of [00:10:00] cool, but all your AC controls are on the outer edge facing away from you. Your passenger can hit all that stuff pretty easy.

I’m sure once you own one, you get used to it. It’s fine. But the interior also has this really bizarre, like layered stacked look of shapes. You think, wow, how much dirt and stuff is going to get stuck in there in no man’s land in some amount of time. I don’t think it’s gonna age that well, but I think the interior would really really help because most cars You don’t you enjoy from the inside not really from the outside If it had just a better just sitting being in it.

It looks good ish, but it was Ergonomically just not All over the map and the steering wheel, I think, is square. I think that’s just

Crew Chief Brad: the way with Corvettes in general, though. I think anything after the C2 does not age well, especially the C4 and the C5. They look like trash as soon as the next one comes out.

And I feel that way about all Corvettes.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Like a lot of cars, just give it some time and they’ll kind of cycle through. That’s kind of what we’re seeing a little bit more of C4 and C5 as nineties and early [00:11:00] 2000s stuff are starting to become a little bit more flavorful. I’m not really a big Corvette person to begin with.

It’s really hard to sell me on a Corvette. The idea of the C8 is like this huge bang for buck proposition. I think at the time we were just getting out of a brand new Cayman GTS and they were considered comparable. They’re not comparable.

Crew Chief Eric: From an artist’s point of view and a car guy through and through, what’s the sexiest car of all time?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Of all time? Man, that’d be really tricky. Naturally, I always lean towards Ferrari stuff, something like anything in the 250 series Ferrari, my Testarossa, my short wheelbase, those to me are just some of the best looking cars ever.

Crew Chief Eric: Nice. So speaking of Ferraris, and for our listeners that aren’t watching this on our Behind the scenes, Patrion episode, you have behind you a three 48 convertible.

So let’s talk about that just a second. If Ferrari, that doesn’t know what it wants to be, right. It’s got one day it’ll figure

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: it out.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. The baby at 40 layout, the five 12 TR nose and the sort of Testa Rosa rear end. Why a three [00:12:00] 48?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I’ve heard people say that you buy a 348 because you can’t afford to buy a 355, which is sort of a funny thing to say.

I actually really, really love 355s. I’ve done a lot of mechanical work in the past on Ferraris, having worked on them as part of paint and body. So I wanted something that I could work on a little bit more myself. By the time that I really got to looking for it, we said last year I sold two, I had a 911 and then I had the Cayman GTS and I sold both of them because the car prices were For stuff like that, I had just gone through the roof and I just thought I’m done paying Ferrari money for portions.

So I’m just going to go get the car that I want. And of course, I always look at three 55s as well. I actually really, really liked four 56s if you can find them in a six speed. But once I really kind of got down to a little bit more nuts and bolts research, I liked that the three 48 was kind of the odd ball.

I never liked what everyone else is going to like. I like to show up with something different and unusual. And the three 40 is definitely that to begin with as somebody like to go on really hard Canyon drives. At least once a week up in LA. So the car is no power [00:13:00] steering, no assisted brakes, no driver aids, nothing.

And even the top is manual. It’s the last flat tappet V8 that they made. It’s a really unique layout system and it is awesome. It’s also the last dog leg transmission. So it’s five speed with a dog leg. So it’s a really, really interesting driving experience and I love it. We’ve

Crew Chief Eric: kind of diverged a little bit.

We should probably get back to your timeline and talk about some of the things you’re noted for. And if our listeners are checking out your website, while we’re chit chatting here, they’ll notice that as we mentioned, you did some Sharpie art and you’re famous for both the Sharpie Mustang and the Sharpie Camaro.

So why don’t we explore the inspiration behind this? Why Sharpie? Why choose that medium?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Kind of around the time that I was experimenting a bit more with airbrushing and pinstriping, one of the guys that I worked with at a hot rod shop, I was just a prepper guy there, one of the times that I moved back to Maryland, and he had shown me this article of the Sharpie Lamborghini, and this would have been like 2010 ish.

I thought that was really, really cool, giving it to me as an idea like, hey, [00:14:00] think about stuff like this. What’s the future hold for how we do artwork? On cars and stuff like that. And I just kind of went for it. I got really, really lucky in that the first Sharpie car that I got to do, a guy flew me out here to California and Northern California to do his car.

And it was like a 94 Eldorado and nothing really, really elaborate, but it was really cool just to have the opportunity to do, and that seems like a million years ago, but since I’ve done a 23 Sharpie vehicles. All over the world. And it’s one of my absolute favorite things to do.

Crew Chief Eric: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Hold, hold on a second. That Eldorado is a huge car. That’s a lot of surface area. And then you did 23 cars. Obviously the Mustang and the Camaro are the ones that are most notable on, on social and stuff, but I got to ask this question. Cause I’m sure a lot of people are thinking it, how many Sharpies. Does it take to cover an entire car?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Not as many as it would seem like. That’s of course one of the more popular questions. It really doesn’t take as many if you’re efficient and you’re kind to the materials. So at least these days, especially if you use something like paint markers, you could get around a car and probably [00:15:00] five or ten markers.

That’s

Crew Chief Eric: way cheaper than I thought it was going to be.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yeah. You’ll destroy the name of the marker long before you run out of ink.

Crew Chief Eric: Interesting. What do you do to make the Sharpies ink stay on the vehicle? Cause I mean, if you’ve ever used a Sharpie, yes, it’s permanent marker, but it doesn’t always bond to the surface that you put it on.

So do you have to prep the car a certain way?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yeah. I guess I was lucky in that my before life knew already that if you’re going to treat this type of thing as part of a paint job, prep first, do the artwork. So treat it like you would if you were doing a full paint job anyways. And that really gave me a leg up because there was a lot of people in the early times where that idea was kind of blowing up, but none of them were automotive painters.

So it was a different game of whose stuff was actually going to last. Of course, the earlier stuff that I did, it was actually Sharpie, like ink markers. They were industrial markers, but as time went on, I changed over to using the paint markers, which has a pigment and a binder. So it actually, it won’t fade as time goes on and you can clear it pretty [00:16:00] easily.

It becomes more of a paint process. It’s a lot more robust than just using ink markers.

Crew Chief Eric: So how long does it take to Sharpie a car?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Not as long as it seems, and it certainly depends on the project, but these days I can get around a whole car in a weekend. Wow. Oh

Crew Chief Eric: my God. That’s craziness. Uh, I’ll let my daughters go at mine, I guess.

See

Crew Chief Brad: how that turns out. Let them go at your black car with a black Sharpie. It’s called touch up paint. Exactly. It’ll be just fine. Well, I got a question for you. What is robot number three?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: It’s kind of a spinoff series of artwork that I do every now and then. When the mood sort of strikes, it’s one of the few things that I do that actually has a character in it.

My wife and I were big, like comic book, cartoon fan. So it’s the only way to sort of bridge some of the interests together. Get to put a little bit more of a story or a mood into a scene with a car or something else happening. What kind of comics are you a Marvel or DC fan? Not deep enough to really be one or the other.

I just enjoy the aesthetic. See, he looks at the pretty pictures, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I’m an artist. That’s all [00:17:00] I’m doing.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, there were words in them anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: Graphic novel doesn’t mean it has words in it. I’m just saying. No, it’s just, just graphic. So is there a robot number three liveried car out there? Have you done a full car?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: No, I haven’t. It would be cool to do that. The appropriate task hasn’t really come along for that. Oftentimes, like the Sharpie cars, a lot of them More in the last handful of years, or usually for like a corporate clients. So they have sort of a specific thing that they’re going for. So I can’t exactly shove exactly what I would like to do on an app.

Crew Chief Eric: Is there a bucket list car to either be a Sharpie car or maybe a robot three livery car?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I’d have to think about what car would make a good robot. Number three car, but no bucket list car. I think anytime you get to turn the surface of a car into a piece of artwork, it almost doesn’t matter. I’ve done some pretty obscure, no name cars as art cars

Crew Chief Brad: before.

And it was just as fun. I think a Volkswagen Routan is the robot three car.

Crew Chief Eric: Very

Crew Chief Brad: specific choice.

Crew Chief Eric: I know where he’s going with that. [00:18:00] So what do you think about art cars? Since you’re from Maryland, you know, there’s a big art car festival in Baltimore every year, downtown. Were there any that got your attention over the years?

And you’re like, Oh my God, what is that? Or maybe when you were younger, they inspired you in any sort of way.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: You know, honestly, I didn’t know that there was an art car thing there.

Crew Chief Eric: Darn, you missed out. Yeah,

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I did, honestly. But it’s funny you say that because it reminded me when I was doing, the only Sharpie car that I had for myself was an 85 Fiero.

This was right after the, uh, Cadillac. This is a long time ago, so don’t, don’t laugh too hard.

Crew Chief Eric: Brad’s favorite car.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: It was a GT, okay. So, but I would only do the artwork at Jimmy Cone at the car meet there. If you guys have ever gone to that Jimmy Cone. The one in Mount Airy, not Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: That car meet still exists.

Our partners Yeah, I’ve heard. Yeah, our partners over at Collector Car Guide list all of their events on their websites. That’s pretty cool. Did you mention Jimmy cone? Cause we see it listed there all the time, the Baltimore art cars. I mean, you see them, some people [00:19:00] driving to work, they’re nuts. I mean, they’re done in all sorts of different styles and either painted on or glued on stuff.

I mean, some are covered in bottle caps and some look like sculptures. They’re just absolutely crazy. I mean, I used to pass a couple of going to work every day. I’m like, you’re driving. There was even one that was reminiscent of the dog mobile from like dumb and dumber. I mean, there’s just no way. crazy stuff, but I don’t think you want to go off that deep end doing your art cars, right?

It’s more liveries. It’s more adapting the style to the body lines and all that kind of stuff.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yeah. What they’re doing is a little bit more abstract, more, maybe less abstract. I’m not sure, but yeah, we’re definitely coming at it from different points of view.

Crew Chief Eric: So have you ever done liveries like race car liveries or anything like that?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yeah, actually I did a huge art installation with a guy last year where we did 20 something Porsche parts and each of them we painted to match whichever livery and whichever car was on the list. So every livery you can think of from Porsche discography, actually we just painted tons of parts last year for a car collection here locally.

Crew Chief Brad: Have you ever done anything like a mural in the garage or anything like [00:20:00] that? Yeah, I used

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: to do more of that when we first got to California. It’s not like a super common request. There’s people that, that specialize in that type of stuff. But actually I love large scale artwork. Graffiti stuff is some of my favorite.

You have to have the wall for it. Here’s really where it comes down.

Crew Chief Eric: Funny you mentioned that. I have this half wall in my garage that I’ve been saying for years. I can tell my wife it’s battleship gray. And I said, this thing is ready for some motorsports graffiti art. I just need to find somebody to do it for me.

Right?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, it’s perfect. So let’s talk about the big move and you leaving the DMV area for Southern California, the car culture on the East coast is strong, but what led you to shift West and tell us a little bit about the differences in the car culture from the two sides is massively different. I

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: knew, or at least I thought I knew when.

We were done with our shop in Maryland and we’re coming over here. I’m had this feeling like if we’re going to do something substantive at all in the car culture Might as well go where it was bigger There is a big car culture on the east coast But it has a different [00:21:00] type of thing going on and the part that sort of bugs me is how seasonal it is If I can be so picky so routinely we have people in the motorcycle in the car world there that you know you have from fall till spring to do all the necessary work that you need to to be ready for spring and summer yet everybody will wait until and so the first nice day of spring before they’re like oh my god I gotta get my motorcycle or car ready I better go get it at the paint shop it’s like we all of us sat on our hands for three months waiting for work and all of a sudden everybody wants to come out of the woodwork and get everything ready for car show season wasn’t nauseous As a lifestyle.

And if you’re trying to run a business around stuff like that, here, it never ends. There’s a car show every weekend, at least one, the biggest cars and coffee in the United States is South Orange County down the street. And it’s every single Saturday. It’s sort of never ending, but it gives you a lot of possibilities and a lot of opportunities.

I wouldn’t say like better or worse. Even the Midwest has its own car culture. What was out here or what I thought would be out here seemed like it would suit least what my interests were a little bit better. And it did not disappoint.

Crew Chief Eric: So I think if we balance those [00:22:00] scales a little bit, having traveled almost every state in the country now experiencing different car culture all over the country, the left and right coasts obviously have the highest concentration of people.

You’re right. California car culture is, I hate to say it’s more showy, right? It’s all about the car show. It’s about polishing up your ride, having something unique. How can you make it more bespoke than the next guy? I think in the East coast, though, we have our car shows too, right? We have our bag fairs and our Honda meets and, you know, going behind the dairy queen and talking about cars.

But I think the motor sport culture is much larger on the East coast because we have a higher density of tracks than the West coast. So it’s sort of like. Same, but different because if you tilt the scale the other way, California has Laguna Seca and Willow Springs and other fantastic tracks, but the density is totally different.

Like you guys have to go a lot further. So I said, there’s less race cars and more Canyon bombers, and then I’m going to go get coffee. And hopefully Jerry Seinfeld shows up, right? That kind of

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: [00:23:00] thing. It’s not that unlikely. What I really like about, especially coastal California is the kind of stuff that you see in magazines is what people daily drive here.

Yeah. It’s awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s very true. You don’t see that a whole lot on the East coast. I mean, obviously New York, Northern Virginia, Atlanta, stuff with the bigger cities. Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Check out that Bentley. But when you’re in Malibu,

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: it’s

Crew Chief Eric: like Bentley’s like pedestrian. Whatever.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: To be honest, that’s why I ended up selling the last Porsche 911 that I had last year.

It seems like when you move to Orange County, they just give you a 911. I just thought there’s nothing. It no longer feels individualistic. It doesn’t suit me to have the same type of car as everybody else. The complex that we’re in is Porsche collectors, a Porsche dealer. Yeah. Another collection across the way.

Like everything is air cooled Porsche in here. That’s actually how we met. So there’s a huge community for air cooled here, which is awesome. But what the possibility of what you can daily drive here, my regular normal vehicles, I’m a [00:24:00] motorcycle and I have roads as my everyday cars.

Crew Chief Eric: So you can take the boy out of the East coast.

Is there anything that stays with you that you’ve tried to incorporate into the West coast car culture?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Uh, no, there’s no reason for that.

I mean, we’ve been here a little while. So I think it was more of me trying to adapt and learn what happens here. But the type of shops that I’ve gotten to do work with, I work with shops all over the country. So I think that’s a better to get a little bit of taste of everything. Cause I don’t have like a California sensibility about what cars should look like or how they should be built.

California for me is just where I live. And I love being by the beach. That’s all that’s all. As far as car styles and builds, there’s so much variety across the country. And that’s what I like with working with different people is there’s different interests and different ways to approach everything. I don’t think that you need to add a sensibility from where you’re from to make something look good.

Crew Chief Eric: So Chris being an artist is gotta be tough and an automotive artist. Probably even more so in some respects, right? Many people say, and this is true of racing [00:25:00] as well, is failures breed successes. Sure. Are there still some projects that you look back on and go, man, the juice really wasn’t worth the squeeze, or maybe there’s still something out there that you want to get around to or hashtag around to it, right?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: That’s a good question. I think there’s such a long journey kind of get to this point right now. What I’m doing is exactly what I want to do. So I don’t really think much past. Just enjoying the moment where I’m finally getting to do the stuff that I really enjoy, you know, sharing the paintings and the videos on social media.

But if it took all the stakes and the failures and the weird job opportunities to get here, I can’t be anything but grateful for all that weirdness. I haven’t worked in the custom car industry for like 10 years before I switched over to artwork. It is a pretty volatile place. I don’t think most people from the outside realize what a mess the industry really, really is.

Being a full time artist is challenging, whether you draw cars or portraits or anything. What made the change really, really easy is working in a custom car world. I never knew if I was going to get paid from week to week anyways. [00:26:00] So switching over to artwork was no change right off the cuff. You know, at least your income is totally in your control.

At that point, you do what you can, you provide the work and you put it out to the world. Whereas working for other people in shops, it was, you’re going to do the work and cross your fingers that the check is going to clear at the end of the week.

Crew Chief Brad: That actually sounds like a great segue into our next question, which is, uh, if you had to give advice.

Two other starving, I mean, aspiring artists, what would that be? Maybe some lessons you’ve learned. Have you already given us a few examples? So what are the lessons would you give?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I think true for anybody, no matter whatever type of creative thing that you’re in, even if you’re like starting out as a shop owner, realize that you can’t pay your rent.

with exposure. So don’t take it as a form of payment. It’s not a real currency, but don’t say no to opportunities that you think you can grow from. You got to know what to say yes to and what to say no to learning to say no to things is really, really, really hard when you start out with anything. Cause you want every opportunity to prove to yourself and to everybody else what you can do.

So you need to say yes to stuff, but you need to not get trapped in that [00:27:00] loop of whatever that can turn into. So learning to say no is really, really hard. Really, really, really important, but know that you can’t work for free forever. So if you start out working for free, it’s very hard to grow from that point.

Crew Chief Eric: You typically work in what people would call traditional or analog media, you know, like you’re talking about paintings and all that, but you’ve also made the shift into digital rendering. Why? What are some of those examples of some of

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: the renders you’ve done? I mean, I like a little bit of everything. So here I’ve got like a small art supply store worth of stuff.

So if I want to paint in acrylics, Or oils or color pencil or marker or ink or airbrush or digital. I’ve got everything that I need, depending on whatever that task is. I think that I need to accomplish to change over to digital. There’s still so much in the digital world that I haven’t messed with because I’m not like a 3d model or anything, everything that I do digital, I’ll still do the same way, just hand drawn.

I just use slightly better tools for, and that really came out of the need for practicality. As time went on, builders became more interested in seeing color variations, wheel variations and [00:28:00] design change ideas. So the need to do a set of renderings, as opposed to here’s a concept meant that redrawing from scratch on paper was just totally impractical.

It would be worth the expense and the time to learn how to work digitally, just so you weren’t burning paper an hour. So it’s a much more efficient way to work. I don’t love working digitally because it doesn’t feel. Real and tactile to me, but I use it for what it is. Want to create art and paintings and use paint design work for a builder.

I’ll use whatever tools are going to get them the result that they’re looking for as quickly as possible. So one of the better things about digital is I can just send them a preview shot of the file right away. And they can tell me yes, no, and what to change. And we can work really, really quickly as opposed to if I did a marker airbrush rendering and they said, let’s move these things around that starts to make that process a little bit more difficult.

So it’s really more of the sense of practicality and make my life easier. And to give the builders that I work with something efficient and practical.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’ve seen in the past, like you mentioned, 3d modeling, where people will render cars in motion and stuff like that. And they look. Yeah. So real one in particular we talked about [00:29:00] in our drive thru episode.

You remember Brad, the Volkswagen SP2 wide body RWB inspired thing. We’re like, Oh my God, this is somebody’s building. This is unreal. And you’re like, bro, this is super Photoshopped. Yeah, exactly. Are you going in that direction as well? Is that something you want to do? Absolutely

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: not.

Crew Chief Eric: Is that like the highest

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: end computing you need?

It’s not that for me, that’s just not where my interest lies. One, there’s people that specialize in it. So why reinvent the wheel if you want that work, hire artists that specialize in that type of work. I’ve got enough stuff to do, so I don’t need to sit. And learn something else additionally to make things better in that way.

To me, there’s also a practicality element that sort of misses the mark a little bit with 3d model, digital rendering stuff. And, and there’s artists that I think accomplish this better than others. Once we’ve wide bodied everything and chopped the roof off it and put Toyo AAARs on everything, what else can you do?

Like that to me, it seems like this formula for 3d renderings that is put on everything. And you go, wow, that’s really, really cool as a 3d model execution. There is zero fricking [00:30:00] chance. Someone’s going to build that. Not a chance that someone’s going to cut up a kumtosh and turn it into this zero chance.

It just, it’s like, what is the purpose of this arc? What are we doing? If it’s to sell posters, I’m cool with that. But as like a form of, are we going to make good concepts out of this? You can make some really cool over the top stuff, but in the real practical build world, if you can’t turn it into something real.

Crew Chief Eric: But on the same token, I think. Some of us would argue that chopping up the real thing and trying to do it is worse, right? Taking a Kuntosh that there are very limited numbers of to begin with and bastardizing it for lack of a better term. I’d rather see it done digitally. There’s minuses to that, right?

Yeah.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yeah. Yeah. It can’t be all one way. You’re totally, totally right. If there’s a way to look at these concepts, you’d rather look at them in this way. I just think right now there’s a style to all of them. This is actually sort of my problem with realism and art in general. When they all look the same, it no longer has that artist identity to it.

It just has a look.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re right. And the other thing that I think would be cool as [00:31:00] a side effect of this, obviously what you’re doing with rendering is mock ups towards building the real thing, you know, setting that stage. Working with your client, all that, but with these digital 3d renders, I go back to the days.

And now I’m going to date myself of like need for speed underground, where you had this almost limitless customization and you can build these, you know, stance, bro cars and Kind of stuff. And then you could go out and race your buddies. Yeah. That’s for me is the cool part when you put it in a SIM, but it’s like, how do you get the rendering that these guys built into those platforms where you could actually enjoy it?

Because your point, you’re just looking at a picture, right?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: And I don’t mean to discount the amount of work that goes into doing this thing. I follow a number of these artists as well. And it is. Absolutely amazing work. More on the marketing side of me. Are we after entertainment here? Are we trying to inspire, build ideas?

I just want to understand what the purpose is. If someone says, Hey, this is just for entertainment. I can just clear the rest of the stuff out of my head and not worry about it. And I like that. There’s in the same boat. There’s plenty I do. That’s just meant for entertainment. That doesn’t land in the [00:32:00] practical.

So it’s certainly not up to me to preach it to people and say, ah, this, we need to figure a way to be practic that’s sort of misses the mark. I like the idea of this type of stuff as an art form. I just hope that it evolves past this formulaic look that it has right now.

Crew Chief Brad: You mentioned some competitors.

Who are the competitors you have in your space? Competitors?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I guess, what do you mean by competitors?

Crew Chief Brad: Well,

Crew Chief Eric: I guess we’re always thinking about it in motorsports. Everybody’s a competitor. Everybody’s a rival. Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: we’ve all got a competitive nature. We’ve all got people that we want to be better than.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I see what you’re saying.

I really don’t look at anything as competitors. Not from the point of view of I’m better than anybody else. I look to a lot of other people for inspiration. There’s a lot of stuff that I really, really like seeing. You. a very, uh, East coast thing. I think to think things more competitively, it’s taken me years to remove that part out of my personality.

So I try not to be competitive about stuff like this. Cause I’ll be up all night working on paintings.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll ask it in a proper West coast way then, which is who are the artists that [00:33:00] you look up to and that you are inspired by?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Well, no, yeah, it’s definitely a better way to put it way more copacetic. I don’t know.

I’m happy to do what I’m doing and I hope that I get better at it. A lot of the artists that I follow that I really, really like aren’t even automotive artists. They’re more like portrait artists or landscape artists or oil painters. And a lot of these people, I just know they’re like Instagram handles.

So I actually don’t even know their real name, but for anybody curious, the type of stuff that I’d be interested in, that’s a lot of what I look at. It’s like portrait art and landscape art. I don’t look at a lot of other automotive artists. I love seeing other people’s artwork. I can’t not look at something and not like be sort of inspired by it.

So I try to limit my intake of stuff like that, so that I can kind of keep myself in my own lane, if that makes any sense.

Crew Chief Eric: After all this time that you’ve been doing this, Are you still self taught or have you gone back and gotten training or worked with other artists?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Oh, I’m still very much self taught.

Never got a chance to take any classes. I’ve started teaching classes actually. And they’re kind of a cool thing about social media is [00:34:00] that artists can kind of share information together. So, you know, like I said, other portrait artists or cartoon artists that I follow might mention materials that they’re using, or even Steve Stanford when I’ve gotten time to talk with him, they might point out some materials that he tried just so I can go and point me in the right direction for some materials to try.

So that’s kind of the. Blessing of social media is a lot more information you’ve shared openly amongst artists, which is really, really cool, but I still haven’t gotten any formal training. Maybe one day.

Crew Chief Brad: Are there any of those artists that you would love to collaborate with that you haven’t collaborated with already?

Like not necessarily in the automotive. You know, sector, but more the, I guess the cartoon and comic graphic novels sector that you would like to collaborate with in some form or fashion.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I think it would be a really, really fun idea. Uh, I always like the idea of artwork. That’s going to kind of take me out of what I’m doing now and go to the next thing.

I kind of go in and out of phases of artwork pretty quickly. So I like the idea of whatever’s coming next to be a big sort of change in the normal. Something like that would be really, really cool. I actually haven’t done a lot of artistic collaborations. That’d be a lot of fun. When I like to go through our work [00:35:00] really, really quickly, so other people can complicate

Crew Chief Brad: the process.

You do a lot of projects for other people, a lot of work like that, but are there some projects that you’re doing just for you? Most of what you see on social

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: media,

Crew Chief Brad: I’m doing

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: just for me,

Crew Chief Eric: which we’re going to get into here in a second. And

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: so that would be, yeah, that would be like a paintings. Most of the stuff that I’m sharing more prominently to be perfectly honest, the build rendering, the design work, that stuff that I rarely post or share on social media.

So some of that stuff’s top

Crew Chief Eric: secret, right? It’s pretty obvious. for clients. Some

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: of it’s secret, but the real truth to it is I don’t need more to do than I already have. So I don’t want to advertise. I don’t want people to ask me to do something that I’m just going to say no to. I have some great people that I work with already.

There’s always space to say yes to some really interesting projects. From practice, the stuff that you put out there is what people are going to ask you for. So I put less of it out there and put more artwork out there.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s kind of this expression in Italian that I know and in English, it translates to the artist’s hand.

There’s a certain just patience that you guys have this tendency. There’s [00:36:00] these strokes, you know, of the pen or the, or the brush or whatever, that a lot of people cannot mimic. They cannot imitate, right? And that’s what makes, You know, people, artists and makes them masters and whatever. So I’ve watched you and your videos on social media and they’re captivating,

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: but they’re

Crew Chief Eric: the new form of art that’s come up, especially in the automotive sector of artistry, that’s this photo realistic.

Art, and I know it’s been around for a while. People did it, you know, in dots way back when, or, you know, all this kind of stuff and whatever, but nowadays it’s just gotten to the point where you can almost not tell the difference between the canvas and the photo and the real car. And so I wonder, and I’ve seen the technique you use, and I’ve seen the technique that like Mano uses and some other people and whatnot, boil it down for us.

How long does it take? It seems super involved, lots of layering, all this kind of stuff. Why photorealistic art?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: That’s actually a really great and funny question. To be perfectly honest, I’m not a huge fan of photorealistic art because I’m somebody that really likes comic books and cartoons and animation.

[00:37:00] I like a stylized existence. I already live in the real world. So the idea of creating art that just replicates it is pretty boring to me. So the only way that I could create pieces that were, this is like a few part answer, but when I do stylized pieces, a lot of the feedback that I get comes down to the way that I’ve stylized.

If you make a wheel out around, you’ve ruined the whole thing. So stylizing becomes this really delicate balance with cars. What can you get away with? What can you not? And I enjoy doing that push and pull. And I keep trying and just kind of seeing where it goes. At the end of the day, some basis of realism gives you a core strength for what the viewer is looking at.

The only way that I’ve found to kind of do my own thing within realism I don’t really don’t consider what I do realism compared to a whole lot of other artists. It might be like, uh, legible and believable, but I don’t think it has like this really high level in that way, but I do all my own lighting and color contour in all my art.

So I don’t use photo references for any of the lighting that I do. I make it all [00:38:00] up. So that for me is the way that I can create an individual style or look in all of the pieces that I do. Cause there’s no photo of any of the paintings I’ve ever done.

Crew Chief Eric: But you are starting from a base drawing the way at least I’ve seen it.

You’re doing that in like pen and ink, and then it’s kind of cool. Actually, you take a solid color. Like the Camaro video is an example. You did like a early seventies Camaro, right? Like the bumblebee exactly. And you just. Layered on this thick looking tempera paint on top of it, it looked like from the video and then started to peel the car out of this thick paint and then from there begin to add layer after layer after layer and then suddenly I’m like, holy smokes, you know, obviously that’s all, you know, fast forwarded in time, right?

Yeah, to some degree. Yeah. So how long does it take to put something like that together? And how do you see the vision? Why do you choose the cars that you choose when you do it?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: So there’s a practicality aspect. There’s a lot of things that actually I’m kind of thankful that it took away from working in the automotive [00:39:00] industry, both the collision, the custom car industry, and that’s efficiency.

To me, being able to work really, really fast. is everything. So most of the paintings that you see, I’ll do a la prima. It’s just one sitting. So an afternoon, an evening, so figure four to eight hours, something like that, depending on the size and complexity of the piece. So I jam through stuff pretty quick.

Cause I have an idea of where I want to go with each piece. And if you’re familiar with your own process, there’s less guesswork. And also because I’m not relying on a photo reference, I’m not comparing against anything else. It saves an enormous amount of time to go. This is the direction that I’m going to go.

And I’m going to stick with it versus compare, compare, compare, compare. That’s incredibly slow. So the way that I work just allows me to be. Pretty direct. There’s still a lot of guesswork and there’s a lot of back and forth. And then the way that I like to layer a lot of this stuff you’ll see is acrylic.

I’ll paint in oil as well. And that’s way more direct. But if you think about acrylic paint, same effect as if you’re spraying a car, if you were going to blend a yellow panel. And you’re going over primer, you’d either want to seal it a lighter gray or a [00:40:00] white. You wouldn’t want to seal it some other color.

And if you’re going to shoot a three stage in orange, you’re either going to shoot that over a white or a tinted yellow. Your under colors will affect every other color afterwards, just like it does on a car. So if you think about what color has Maximum opacity. So that yellow car, for example, that bumblebee Camaro, half of it ended being black at the end of the pain.

If I’d have based it black, that yellow would have never popped because it would take an inch of yellow over black to get that opacity instead. Start with a white ground, put some yellow over it. That’s going to give you the most vibrancy. There’s a GTO that I painted recently where I did something similar based, uh, yellow over white.

The yellow was dry. Red over the yellow. And a lot of people asked why because there’s no yellow left in the painting. Yellow is the undercolor for the red so the red could have more vibrancy in one coat. So there’s a huge practicality element to all this.

Crew Chief Eric: But then there’s all those other little details too that when you look at it, just like the headlights alone, it’s like, Oh, it has this little reflection.

I mean, where does that come from? Is that [00:41:00] just imagination or? Yep.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yep. The only thing I’ll use reference for is line work. I don’t want to be stuck to anything because I’m going to move around the lighting the way that I want. And after having done a billion paintings and drawings, you kind of go, well, this is what a headlight looks like.

This is what a taillight looks like. This is what lighting looks like over top of this curve when it’s red or blue or green. There’s a lot that you can learn to do intuitively. There’s certain types of headlight and taillight styles where you can go, yep, I better look at a photo to make sure. But I’m getting the ball where the light glow in the right place or the HID projectors, the right shape and in the right place, you know, as long as you’ve got a good basis for line work, the way that you fill that in should just be based on how you’re casting light.

And because I’m not using a reference for that, I’m just doing it all one time. I’m not thinking that many steps ahead. I’m just kind of going, I’m going to shoot. All the colors on this whole thing. And then as I get towards the end, I’ll tighten up the headlights. We’ll tighten up the tail light. So the phrase is loose to tight, do all the big areas, do all the messy stuff.

And then as it comes together, work on the details, because there’s no sense in working on details until you know that you’ve got all this big stuff, right? If something goes [00:42:00] wrong in the details and you have to start over, you’ve wasted all the time. So I always save all that detail stuff for the end.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, even in let’s say grade school and high school art classes, they teach you right up front about perspective and things like that, but it’s always in reference to, Oh, I’m drawing a house on like a farmhouse or something like that. And it’s always something like simple objects. I’ve always found cars to be the most difficult things to draw properly because it’s a 3d object on a 2d surface.

Right. And I get it. Houses are 3d objects too, but they’re square. There’s so many curves. Yeah, there’s, there’s so many curves and angles and just all these things to a car sometimes are even more complicated than drawing a human, right? The human face, you can lay out the ovals and all the circles and kind of get it going and you build around that.

But car is so multifaceted. What do you do to get started to get it right? To build that Camaro in the pen and ink part. So it doesn’t come out. The front looks right in the back end is, you know, squeezed like the Oscar Mayer Wiener or something.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Fundamentals to being able to draw is really, really important.

And [00:43:00] not every drawing is going to happen on the first try. This is good for any artist to know it. It might take a half a dozen sketches or overlays before you kind of go, all right, I’m finally starting to make it make sense. But I start out with a pretty rudimentary way, you know, I’ll just draw a box in an angle that I think that I want to, the vehicle or the section to be in just a box, just something really, really simple.

And just start to break the box into pieces. You know, this is the windshield line. This is the fender arc. And these are all guest lines. I don’t know if I’m going to get them right, but I need reference. points. I need to guess. So whether the guess is right or wrong, I can decide, you know, should I move that line?

Should I, should I keep scooting around? Just the art of drawing is something all in its own. And I certainly still make plenty of mistakes. Drawing an obscure perspectives is difficult enough. I don’t like drawing normal angles of things. It’s pretty boring. So I always want to have an extra flavor, but having a unique take on perspective can add something so much extra to what you’re looking at.

You know, to be able to look at something from a view that people don’t see where there’s no photo of, it’s kind of a cool opportunity to [00:44:00] set the bar kind of high. You kind of go, man, I really need to get these details in the right place. So I might have to look at three different pictures of angles to compare details against, to place things before I get it right.

Crew Chief Eric: Then it becomes inception where we take a picture of your photorealistic picture that has no picture. And then it has a picture. Yeah, it’s a journey. It’s a journey. What was the hardest project you worked on? What was the toughest thing to draw or to put it all together finally? And you went, all right, I’m glad that’s over with.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I mean, there’s always stuff that comes along. It’s pretty challenging. To be honest, I don’t do a lot of commissions and a lot of request stuff. Most of what I do is just kind of from the hip, you know, whatever I’m inspired to that day or, or however that works out, just because I don’t like the limitations of what other people’s ideas and perspectives are.

I just kind of want to do my own thing and hope that people enjoy that. I do do requests on occasion. It’s rare to agree to something that I think is going to work me to

Crew Chief Brad: death

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: from experience to try to say no better and kinder.

Crew Chief Brad: Chris, since you’re an artist, we would be remiss if we didn’t ask you [00:45:00] some of our very specific Pit Stop questions.

We’ve already asked two of them, the poster on the wall and then the sexiest car of all time. What would you have in your three car garage? Three cars. That’s all you get. Money is no

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: object. Money is no object. I probably still play pretty safe, man. Well, I definitely have to have a Ferrari 250 short wheel base.

Probably a Ferrari F50. And I have to pick some kind of Porsche to have in there. Maybe like an early 70s RS. Something air cooled for sure. Yeah, I’m pretty easy. I don’t need to spend a bazillion dollars on cars.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s take the inverse of that. The ugliest car of all time. And is there such a thing to an artist?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Oh yeah, because I’m not classically trained. I don’t have to pretend to be poetic about every single thing that’s made. I don’t have to come up with these lies about, oh, these key lines are from BMW. Everything they make right now. Freaking awful. Every single time.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s awesome. Is it because they’ve exaggerated the kidney grills?

It’s just gotten out of [00:46:00] control? Or is it something else? I couldn’t

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: place one thing that would be like, I don’t know. The whole thing is just a how, how did we arrive here? A company that makes such good cars, even aesthetically, they’re very German, they’re very utilitarian, but they’ve started to lean this Let’s try to be a little bit Lamborghini and it just misses the mark.

It’s so dumb. It doesn’t mean the cars don’t perform great in most of these cars, you know. Well, I guess say maybe like the M2 definitely is a good looking car, but the M4, I don’t know, there’s something about the way that they’re going with their design. You’re just like, I don’t know where you guys are going.

I actually, I think if there’s a lot of contemporary stuff, that’s pretty hard on the eyes, you know, the electric EV Hummer. Not really sure where that’s coming from. If we’re all just going to like draw ideas with rulers and stuff, then people don’t need my help.

Crew Chief Eric: And a lot of these new cars are rendered.

They’re not drawn by hand anymore. I mean, I’m, I’m assuming here, but I mean, a lot of it is done in CAD. Tires are designed in CAD. A lot of things are done in CAD, 3D printed and otherwise.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: It’s true. That’s where a company like BMW is really, really confusing. They have a [00:47:00] really, really artistic take on why they do the things.

They still clay model. So does, uh, so does plastic. Porsche, but you get a very different sense of how Ferrari, Porsche, and BMW handle their audience and their target cars and, and who they’re trying to sell to. Same with Lamborghini. I mean, how many lines and slats and vents can you put on the same car over and over and over and over again?

Enough? No idea. Never

Crew Chief Eric: enough.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yeah. You know, maybe it’s just ’cause that See ’em all the time. It seems like if you’re a full-time YouTuber, you own a McLaren. And to me, they’re really not that interesting to look at.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. And they all kind of look the same. They’re hard to tell apart, but you brought up something interesting about BMW.

I think there’s certain brands that are iconic for certain features like the kidney grills. BMW is associated with that. BMW is, I think we all look back to the era of square bodies and round headlights, much like there’s a big craze of the pop up headlights, just like your 348 Ferrari there. Is there something in your take that is that iconic thing that you love about a car?

Maybe it’s the pop up headlight. Maybe it’s the Porsche whale tail or something. [00:48:00] Is there something that just, it’s that one facet that sticks out to you that maybe every car should have? That’s something that you really love.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Maybe not on the nose in that way. I think each manufacturer, Or at least in some of the higher end models have done a really good job of keeping the heritage with where they’re headed.

The one thing that I can say about designs that I think are just a little bit sideways, like some of this BMW stuff is silver lining is you can only go up from here and you can only bring back the classic look and people will be stoked. Kind of like when Porsche went from the 996 to the 997 return back to round headlights, as opposed to the Friday, kind of giving the people what they want.

It’s sort of misled 996 is a great car, but if you go too far, you can return to Coke classic and people will be stoked.

Crew Chief Brad: We’re in an era right now where all cars are starting to look the same and it’s in the technologically and for the best aerodynamics for the most fuel efficient vehicles or whatever, but in your opinion, what is the best?

Best decade for the best looking cars before the accountants and the bean counters [00:49:00] got in and ruined the industry.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the bangle BMWs. That’s what he likes.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: That’s a good question. I think most people are going to probably. Think about cars the same way they think about music, whatever influenced them most as a kid is probably where they would go.

And I would have never really guessed that mid to late nineties would be where I find a happy spot with design because we’re still like OBD one, tipping into OBD two cars, regulations are changing a little bit. There’s still some freedom of design. They might not be the best cars overall, but that’s how you end up with something like the E36 BMWs and threes that are just, you know, Become like this kind of great timeless classic, you know, the three, five, five Ferraris, uh, Porsche going from nine, nine, three to nine, nine, six to nine, nine, seven.

The early 2000s stuff is really, really cool too. But I think there’s so much design in there that also went too far, like for tourists, you know, once they turn all the headlights into these weird round shapes. Things went a little bit strange. So there’s good moments, I think, in every decade. Lately, something [00:50:00] about the 90s feels pretty comfortable because we’ll never get flip up headlights again.

We’ll never get non airbag steering wheels again. Cars at least have some shape to them, but they also don’t have to be purposeful. There doesn’t have to be a reason other than it looked good, and I like that. I mean, further back, everything just about from the late fifties and early sixties, you just couldn’t ask for a better era of just, let’s just make it look cool.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, that brings up a really good point, which is a couple of years ago, we did a sub series of articles called retro relativity, and it was all about the resurgence of the retro cars, right? Bringing back the mini, the Fiat 500, the beetle, the challenger, right? And so I have to ask you the question, who wore it best?

Which one of the retro reintroductions is your favorite?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I guess favorite is going to be kind of a tricky one. I know which one is absolutely my least favorite. Well,

Crew Chief Eric: let’s let’s go with that.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Anything that Dodge does. as a rebrand is awful. The Dart, the Challenger, Charger, whatever. Whenever you use your old badge [00:51:00] to sell a new trick,

Crew Chief Eric: you know,

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: even Ford, their Mach E with their Mustang right now could have happily been called a Mach E.

It didn’t really need to be called a Mustang. Hey, I’m not the marketing department. So what do you know? But yeah, I’m not really a fan of how Dodge does their new classics. They’re not my favorite, I should say. Um, especially something like the Dart. You just kind of go, you used a really cool, like, identity, and you just stuck it on the little car, you know?

Yeah, it just sort of misses the mark for us. Because they

Crew Chief Eric: didn’t want to call it a Neon, but you know, hey, whatever.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Honestly, it would have been cooler if they called it a neon. It would have been a little bit more honest, but I do got to give it to Chrysler. They’re like the last American brand that really knows what Americans want as far as like a minivan with 700 horsepower, because that’s what, yeah, that’s just what they do.

I was actually going to say, strange as it might seem, the new beetle, like that design, actually I think really worked well as far as like the new classic look to bringing something back. Strangely enough, you still kind of see him on the road and you go, yeah, it looks like a beetle.

Crew Chief Eric: The retro hasn’t stopped, right?

That’s true. [00:52:00] I’m sure you’re aware of the most recent re release. Let’s talk about the Alpha five by DeLorean. Oh, that’s not where

Crew Chief Brad: I thought you were going. Oh, where? Where did you think I was going? Where did you

Crew Chief Eric: think I was going?

Crew Chief Brad: I thought exactly. I thought you were doing Kosh. Oh, we can do

Crew Chief Eric: Kosh. We can do Kosh,

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I think we can all agree both of those examples are pretty awful. Oh no. I’m in love with the new Kosh. Yeah, I don’t think so. I

Crew Chief Eric: love it. I’m with you, Chris. It feels like an upgraded Aventador. It’s it’s

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: just too, it’s a little too body kitty for me. It’s just a little bit like we put this body on an existing platform.

It’s, you know, it’s easy for me to be cynical. You guys know I’m a Maryland guy. That’s just the flavor of conversation. It’s not the worst thing that I’ve ever seen. Um, especially compared to, let’s say the DeLorean, the Kutosh thing is just kind of like Lamborghini has this habit of doing these kind of special models that you have no idea who they’re for.

I’m like, who’s buying these? Where are these going? Who’s signing up to get one of these? I mean, I have some really strange

Crew Chief Eric: allocations. I mean, Bugatti does the same thing. Look at the Devo. They made like 40 [00:53:00] of them. You’re like,

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: yeah, there, there’s definitely some weird stuff in there, but I think Bugatti, you can say they have way more years of heritage to back them up, but Bugatti and then some higher tier McLaren’s and then Pagani’s on the, and Koenigsegg, these are just like way higher tier cars all the way up in the spectrum, Lamborghini in that world still feels great.

Very mid spectrum feels very sub Ferrari to me, but I don’t care.

Crew Chief Eric: So you partnered the Kutosh and the DeLorean together. What is it that turned you off about the new DeLorean’s reveal? I’m just curious.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Man, people are just going to hate me because I’m so cynical about aesthetics and the way cars look.

And it’s not like my opinion is worth anything. It’s just an opinion, but if you ever follow me on social media, you’ll know. I never share opinions about this stuff. Cause I just sparing myself a headache. But, uh, uh, Welcome to

Crew Chief Eric: break fix Chris.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yes, yes. I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s all fair game

Crew Chief Eric: here.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: We’re making awful automotive journals. I’m the owner of a 348 Spyder, so I’ve, it’s fair game, you know, so I get it. From my point [00:54:00] of view, it takes something like the DeLorean that already doesn’t look good. Different time period that I was born and raised. I had no nostalgia for the DeLorean to begin with.

So I have no want to see a reborn version, let alone the fact that you’re going to revamp something that seems like a pretty far departure from what the original idea, DeLorean is only one thing. There’s only one DeLorean ever. So if you’re going to rebrand and make something new. You really only have one vehicle to reference.

How can you mess that up so bad?

Crew Chief Eric: I’m with you there. And my sister said the same thing when we reviewed it on the drive thru episode twice, my departure from it, because I was super excited about it. I’m like some of the angles and the teasers. I’m like, Oh my God. There’s other perspectives that it does look really good.

That the front end is actually

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: details.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, there’s that front end has some really cool features to it. Brad says it looks kind of like a lucid air. I’m like, I get that. I see that. What killed me were those doors. Yes, I get that the gull wing is iconic, but it’s a four [00:55:00] seater gull wing, which means if you look at the doors, they go from fender arch to fender arch and they’re just enormous.

And it drives me nuts, drives me nuts. I think we got some other questions to ask you, right, Brad?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. So what is the best color combination for a vehicle? Black, red, tan, black, reds and blacks. Are there

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: some red or yellow to me that that’s it. But I like loud colors.

Crew Chief Brad: Are there some cars that only look good in one color, like red Ferraris or yellow Corvettes?

Well, nobody likes Corvettes. So

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: actually a yellow Corvette makes a way better argument to me. I’m like one of the three people that actually likes yellow cars. Once it’s yellow, I’m like, all right, let me hear you out because the car listing says yellow. I better check this out. Cause you never know color is a personality trait.

Her vehicle, it can say a lot, whether it’s over the top or not enough, or in such a boring time for colors right now, there’s only a couple of manufacturers that are still sort of eccentric with color ideas and that that’s really the personality behind the way a car looks. You can really [00:56:00] kill something by painting it the wrong color.

Same with a custom build. You really do have to be picky about it and you should be because color and wheels and stance. These are just basic identity traits. of any car. So to do it wrong can throw the whole formula off.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re right about that, Chris. But there’s one car that has been said over and over again.

It looks good in every color and that’s the 9 11, especially a classic eighties, 9 11 wide body. You know, that 9 30 turbo look, is there a wrong color for a 9 11?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Maybe not. I’ve had a few and I’ve enjoyed them in a few different colors and I see them every day. I think I’ve ever seen one where I was like, Why did they choose that color?

There’s better yellows than not. And there’s better silvers than not. But it is kind of this timeless shape that the light looks, you know, rolls over it almost the same way with any color. So they do look good in pretty much any color. That is true. Probably shoot any color on and be pretty happy

Crew Chief Brad: about that.

Wagon, sedan, convertible, or coupe? I think we know which way you’re leaning because of what’s behind you, but we’re going to ask the question anyway.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Got a motorcycle, a roadster, and a convertible. So I like as much sunshine and [00:57:00] air as possible, but it depends so much on the car. Even something like the 348 the difference between the Berlinetta, Spyder is actually really big aesthetically.

So it depends on how the manufacturer approached each design, because there’s aspects like I thought, I feel like the three 48 spider looks better than the Burley Netta or feel like the three five five Burley Netta looks better than the three five five spider. It’s just the way that they handle the lines for each car is just different enough.

These days when I’m in a car with, with a roof, I feel very claustrophobic.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, Chris, this is one of my favorites. It tells me a lot about who you are as a petrol head. You’re the last one in the design room, your vote. is what swings this. It settles the debate between the Porsche 959 and the Ferrari F40.

Which do you choose? Man, that’s really interesting.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yeah, I think naturally I’m just going to go F40, but note that I did have to pause and think about it. You know, it wasn’t instant because the F40 is not my favorite flagship car of Ferrari, but I do quite like the 959. But you just, it’s hard to beat something as timeless as an [00:58:00] F40.

Crew Chief Brad: I think, I think you said the F50 and your three garage notes. Yes, exactly. Thank you. Thank you. Someone who finally agrees with me. It’s just you and me. Nobody else likes it. No. If that was the truth, then the prices would come down, but

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Oh yeah, I was about to say, they aren’t getting any cheaper actually, so maybe I’m wrong.

Crew Chief Eric: Chris, kind of switching gears, how does one go about getting some of your artwork?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: I post new stuff every week on Instagram, and usually the new stuff is also listed on the website at the same time, uh, artofchristianlop. com, and Pinstripe underscore Chris on Instagram, showing new videos as regularly as possible, new artwork.

And that’s usually the best way to get ahold of me, either contacting me through the website or straight through Instagram. I’m still one of those weird people that tries to respond to every message and every comment that I can.

Crew Chief Eric: Thank you for responding to us. Yeah, I think that’s how we got connected.

Yeah. Sometimes you do commissions. It’s very rare. I do that, but you will entertain [00:59:00] ideas, but you start with me. I’ll always hear

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: somebody out. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I, it’s just simpler that way. If. There’s not enough time in the day to say yes to everybody. I would like to, but for the time and the expanse, I want to make sure that artwork is going in the hands of people that are like, I realize they’re just paintings of cars, but for some people, this is like, is it part of their family?

Or it’s a really an important part of them. Or it’s an aspiration car. And it’s not always easy to find those types of people that are interested in artwork. But to me, there’s not one type of car person. I think there’s a lot of like passive people that enjoy cars, but there are some really diehard car people.

And I just really want to make sure that I’m putting the effort in. It’s for the people that are really serious about it.

Crew Chief Eric: I guess my request then is out the window. Cause I was thinking, you know, you make this photo realistic art. Why don’t we make a car look like it’s canvas and go the other way and texturize it, right?

That kind of thing. Very

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: interesting idea. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: Interesting ideas. What are you working on now? Any big projects or anything you can share or reveal for our audience, things that they should be looking forward [01:00:00] to.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Yeah, anything that I’m working on design wise is either all completely related to SEMA, so I don’t even get to really share much about that stuff that’s really up to the builders to do the unveil on those things.

But the way that I work through the paintings and artwork here, I’m always working on something new, so I don’t even think that many steps ahead, I You know, wake up tomorrow and I paint that day and that’s what I’m working on. So it’s hard for me to look down the road beyond that, really, tomorrow’s painting, whatever that is.

Crew Chief Eric: So in closing, any shout outs, promotions or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover thus far?

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Not a single one. No, I’m just kidding. I don’t have any sponsors, so, uh, except Raid Shadow Legends. They’re the greatest. YouTube. Really, really want to get into Ray Shadow Legends. Maybe one day they’ll sponsor me, but we’ll see.

GTM will sponsor you for 50 bucks.

Crew Chief Brad: Chris’s automobile was conceived like all true art to share a passion. His art includes exclusive works, including prints and originals themed in the automotive and motorsports world. And he offers pieces that [01:01:00] will fit virtually any home office, dorm, garage, or museum. And to learn more about Chris and his artwork, be sure to log on to www dot art of Chris Dunlop.

com or follow Chris on social at pinstripe underscore Chris on Instagram and add pinstripe Chris on Facebook.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Brad and Chris. We can’t thank you enough for coming on break fix and exposing our audience to yet another corner of the vehicle enthusiast and motor sport world, the main. An artist, right?

I mean, who’d have thunk it? We talk about all sorts of stuff on this show. So we really do appreciate you, a fellow former Marylander coming on here and talking to us about cars and about art.

Pinstripe Chris Dunlop: Thank you guys so much for having me and weathering all my cynical responses towards car design. I appreciate that.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re in good company, Chris.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on [01:02:00] Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization. And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

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