The process or the result? For me it is both. Every drawing starts with a sketch, that either gets erased or traced on a lightbox. Sketches show the build-up to the final composition, corrections big and small, notes & arrows. Then after the tracing and erasure follows the pursuit of perfection, which is defined by the end result.
For me, as an artist, the process, the road to the result is by far the most important and I guess that holds through for any artist. The pleasure of creating, the struggles that are overcome, the coffee spills, “Oh shit, that can be thrown away, start over again.” That is why every artist returns to his easle and brushes, or in my case the coloured pencils and drawing board, and lets hers/his coffee turn cold.
It is that process I want to make you part of, so it gives you insight into the build-up of the composition, my mistakes and the battles.
To create a picture of a car rulers, compasses, elipsographs and French curves are required. I feel those take away from my draftsmanship. Eyeballing a wheel, the straight line on which the car sits on and judging the vehicle proportions, that is where my coffee goes cold. Working this way improves my craft; circles got rounder, proportions get better and I will never stop learning.
My father was a panel beater and a good one at that, so I grew up in garages and around cars. I turned airbrush illustrator in the advertising business in the pursuit of the perfection. Later I became an art-director and worked in a difficult to describe creative IT-job for high profile websites. Now, aside from creating drawings, I develop, design and produce accessories for classic cars. My upbringing and my carreer happily merged into these activities.
Perfection is also he road to frustration as it never can be achieved. The highway to hell and most certainly not the stairway to heaven. Excellence is the goal, no the path, the way, my Tao, “What is your best piece?”, “The next one.”
The Japanese call this Kaizen, the contineous improvement in which there is no place for the French curve.
My work with the sketchlines and sometimes paper replacements could be viewed as imperfect and rightly so as it stands far away from the traditions of this craft, but you are made part of my process and hopefully I can make your coffee go cold while your are admiring the result.
Ronald van den Boogaard – Barna, Italy, October 2026