Operator's manual — original car art
Petrol & Ink

Your car, repainted from a photograph.

Twenty-eight pictures in this collection and not one of them is of your car. The Paint Shop is the answer to that: upload a photograph of the actual car, pick a style, and review the result before ordering. You accept the picture on screen before anything is charged.

A photograph of a plain car beside a half-finished ink and wash drawing of the same car on an illustrator’s desk.
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The short version. Three free previews a day, email verification required, no card. The preview carries a watermark and the print never does. You tick to accept a specific render before you can add it to the basket, and switching to a different render withdraws that tick, so it is not possible to agree to one picture and receive another.

How it actually works

Upload one photograph of the car. Choose one of nine styles. The picture is shown in your chosen style before ordering, watermarked, at screen resolution. If it is wrong, generate another or change style and try again, within the three free previews a day. When one of them is right, tick the box against that render. The tick is what unlocks the basket, and the checkout refuses a custom order that does not carry it.

After payment the same picture is used exactly as selected, without its watermark, and that file is what gets printed. This matters more than it sounds: the accepted preview is kept and used as the basis for the print, rather than the prompt being run again from scratch to produce a different picture at a larger size.

The nine styles

Four of them are painting: oil painting for old-master weight, watercolour for loose washes and white paper breathing through, vintage racing poster for flat lithographic colour in the language of the golden age, and pop art for halftone dots and hard-edged colour blocks.

Three are drawing: blueprint puts the car in white technical linework on cyanotype blue, the treatment the blueprint prints use; single line reduces it to one continuous stroke like the silhouette set; and designer sketch is pencil construction lines and grey marker off a studio presentation board.

Two are photographic in feel: garage noir is dramatic low-key black and white, and night drive is the neon and wet tarmac of the night drive pictures.

What photograph to use

A sharp, well-lit three-quarter view, front and one side visible, on an uncluttered background. Bright overcast light is easier than direct sun. What ruins a result is not resolution so much as clutter: another car half in frame, a busy hedge, a person leaning on the wing. The style has to interpret everything in the picture, so give it less to interpret.

Resolution is checked against the exact size you order rather than in general, and a size that would print soft is blocked before checkout rather than apologised for afterwards.

What it is not

It is not a commission. Nobody paints it by hand, there is no back-and-forth with an artist, and it is not the same purchase. It is also not a way to obtain artwork of a car you do not have a photograph of: the tool works from your picture, not from a description, and it cannot reproduce somebody else's protected design to order.

If the photograph is already good enough to hang as it is, printing it directly is the cheaper and more honest option, and the same resolution check applies. If you would rather have something already drawn, the art is the stage that covers the rest of the collection.

Questions, answered.

How do I turn a photo of my car into art?
Upload one photograph, pick one of nine styles, and a watermarked preview is shown in your chosen style before ordering. Tick to accept the render you want, which is what unlocks the basket, then order it. Three free previews a day, email verification required.
Will the print look like the preview I accepted?
Yes. The picture you tick is kept, and the full-resolution print file is rendered from that accepted composition rather than by running the style again from scratch.
Can you do any make or model of car?
Any car you can photograph, because the tool works from your own picture. It cannot draw a car from a description, and it cannot reproduce a protected design belonging to somebody else.
What if I change my mind after ticking the box?
Selecting a different render or generating a new one withdraws the tick automatically. Acceptance is always of one specific picture, so you cannot agree to one and be sent another.
What makes a good photograph to upload?
A sharp three-quarter view with the front and one side visible, on an uncluttered background, in bright overcast light. Clutter hurts the result more than a slightly older camera does.

Next

Minimalist car art →

Most car prints are loud, and in a lot of houses that is the problem rather than the appeal. These four are the quiet option: one continuous ink line each, warm cream paper, one accent colour, and a great deal of empty space doing the work.

Try it

Upload a photograph of your car, pick one of nine styles, and review the result before ordering. Three free previews a day, verified email and no card.

Try it on your own car

Or the photograph itself, printed as it is