Not too long ago I got to visit Larry Watson's museum in Victorville. My father an I took a detour to Larry's on our way to the March meet. When we rolled up he'd just gotten back from a garage sale or somethin an ways showin us some ol paint guns he picked up to hang in the museum. We spent like 3 hours there listenin to him b.s. an tell every lil detail about every photo in his museum. It was surreal for a kid like me, cause up till this point I'd only HEARD of this crazy painter, an seen old pictures of his famous paint jobs, but now I was THERE talkin with the dude! As we got ready to go I had him sign a few magazines an the shirts I had painted (I'm wearing one in the photo) An as we were migrating out through the garage he pointed out some of the "new" additions he was making (they were pictures he'd blown up at kinko's!) an he pointed to one of the orange 56 chev (pictured below) I stopped him an said "Larry, how come the flames arent on the car?" "What?" he snapped. I said "yeah, there was cream flames on the rear quaters of that car." Larry paused..."well shit! yer right! how'd you know that?" I told him I had the same picture (actual picture WITH the flames also pictured below) hanging in my room, an he laughed. I snicker over that cause I felt like the young punk teachin the master. Anyways, just wanted to share that with everyone in hopes that it'd spark some other stories (I know there's plenty!) of the greatest kustom car painter. SHAKY
That is a beautiful paint job, absolutely gorgeous. Most flame jobs look like an afterthought to me... on that car, they make the whole thing come together.
Looks like the same picture to me with the flames edited out for some reason? Marble someone was trying to enhance the photo color and couldn't do it around the flames?
Here's some other flames I saw at Grand National last year, I thought they looked a lot like "Watson" flames but the display said nothing about Larry, after some research I found out they ARE Larry's work. It's good to know a few jobs of his are still around. Anybody got any good Watson stories?
When I was a kid, the local Libraries used to have old books from the 50's and 60's that had a lot of his cars in them. That was where I learned how to do flames, just studying his work. To me, nobody does them better. It's funny how after all these years I can still do them without thinking about it and they still look like something he would do. I only wish I could fade and shadow stuff like he does.
Rikster, and Roger Odell, are trying to keep his memory alive. Roger gave Rikster all of Larry's photographs and there is a long and great thread showing most of his fabulous paint jobs. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=573932&highlight=larry+watson Roger also has all of Larry's posters and shirts and they are available on the site below. Thanks to Roger and Rikster Larry is still with us. The amount of work he turned out is amassing.
A lot of those old cars were a progression. He probably had an earlier snap shot of the same car before they decided to flame it.
The flames were Photoshopped out of the photos in the Kustoms Illustrated card/poster. I have no idea who did the photoshop work... or why but it is the same photo taken by James Potter.
Kool! we got Rikster in on this! Rik, you an Roger teaming up to do a Watson book or what? Seems like ya got enough material just in the thread you been posting of Larry's collection.
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