Art & Inspiration Roach Studios Artists?

Tom, I went to Ohio State from 78-81. Was some of your commercial artist teachers at OSU??

I went to a yard sale at a house maybe 3-4 blocks north of campus. The woman who had the sale had a ton of Roach artwork and transfers. I bought maybe 15-20 car related transfers and some artwork. The impression I got she was involved in the art dept at OSU -maybe a grad student. She was hot maybe a 9/10 on the scale. Very bohemian type. I'm not sure if she did the artwork or a roommate

Anyway I think I paid $25 or so. I sold most of the transfers later on to t-shirt vendors or ebay. I think I still have one left-it's of the '79 Street machine Nationals.

The 2-3 pices of artwork was pitched after getting beat up over 12 moves.

 

GREAT TO SEE YOU ON HERE MAN!

You guy's should really support this dude. He's got a lot of history and is a great guy. He just re-launched the brand and has a ton of amazing stuff for sale.

 

I didn't work in house at Roach, just freelanced, but I would go to Columbus quarterly and sit in on the design meetings. There was never a lady in the art dept. when I was there. She may have freelanced.

The artists were mostly commercial illustrators as opposed to car people. Ed Newton was the creative director and Chris Mullins was the art director and they were definitely hot rod guys. Ed would do the concepts for most designs, a 4"x5" really tight sketch and then the artists would illustrate from that.

Here's one I did in 1980.

 

Interesting thread... I've been looking for more info on Redina, can't forget those crazy ads in the early 60's Car Crafts (especially with the green ink on newsprint), and also Kampney/Novelty shop out of New York State.
Also, I wonder who did the pre-Newt stuff for roach? It was pretty simple. I know they were going as far back as 1967. There's a definite shift in the quality of the art when Newton took over...

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