Up Close & Personal with Christopher Paris Lacson
My first knowledge of automotive art happened some 30 years ago when I featured a Filipino artist in my car show (Transhow) who did a beautiful oil painting of a Targa Florio racing scene and I was completely floored! Instantaneously, my love affair with that specific art began and it likewise fueled my interest in vintage sports cars and racing. I was greatly inspired to be an automotive artist but I knew it won’t be easy. Even my Dad who knew I was so into it, gifted me with some of his car paintings (he painted only still life and landscapes but never cars). Alas, they looked more like caricatures of floating cars (as a friend humorously described it – you know who you are ). I have been searching for local automotive artists since then because I thought it would be good to share the same passion and learn from others.
That was how I met the automotive artist Christopher Paris Lacson.
Chris has been a car enthusiast friend since the late ‘90s or early 2000s I believe. I met him through the Manila Sports Car Club and have known him to be an intense and meticulous artist. I always listen in awe when he talks about his amazing works because he delivers it with passion – describing the how’s and the why’s behind each piece. His impressive educational and professional background justify this. Chris is currently the CEO and Design Director of Christopher Paris Lacson Design Studio Manila. He heads BANATTI- a subsidiary of MEEP, Inc. (Modular Energy Efficient Portage). He studied architecture in U.P. and U.S.T. before moving to and holding a degree in B.S. Industrial Design (with honors) from the Art Center, College of Design (Pasadena, CA).
He was a Department Director in the Academy of Art (SFO, CA) and Art Director/Production Designer of the video game company formerly called Angel Studios (Carlsbad,CA, now RockStar San Diego) before putting up his own design studio in San Francisco until 2000. Chris specializes in Art Illustration, Production Design, Art Direction, Environment and Transportation Design, Racing Concepts, Product, Concept, and Interior Design.
For my maiden feature in CAR/ART, Chris shares his story, his journey, his creative inspirations to becoming the accomplished automotive artist that he is now.
Sophie: How did you get into art? Did you just start doodling when you were young? Or did you get inspired by anyone?
Chris: I would play with LEGOs and draw. I was fiddling with sculpture too in grade school. I used to watch my dad doodle. He drew very, very well.
Sophie: How young were you when you started drawing?
Chris: I guess I was 9 years old. I remember I had my first art award then. It was for Procter and Gamble, at that time it was the Moonbeams magazine contest to envision “Christmas on the Moon”. So I did the three astronauts with the moon lander and a Christmas tree, all with crayons.
LOVE FOR CARS
Sophie: When did you become a car enthusiast? How young were you when you started getting interested in cars?
Chris: Well, because of Dad, actually, all my uncles were also into cars, but it was Dad, he came home one day when I was 8 or 9 and he drove up with the Honda S600. And that was it. The look did it. It was so cute. Aesthetically, I just loved it.
Sophie: When did you start drawing cars?
Chris: I started drawing cars maybe when I was around 13 or 14.
Sophie: Cars are not easy to draw, right?
Chris: Yes, it’s hard to draw cars and also people. You know, it helps if you’ve got a good eye of course, you need to understand what it is you’re drawing. Some draw just for the pure art of it, but car design goes far beyond just aesthetics.
Sophie: When you design a car where do you actually begin? Is there a technical rule that you follow?
Chris: In order to design a car, you should start with what they call the package. Because the package is the basic “under bones” or, the reason why the car exists. You must determine how to package the driver, number of occupants, all the elements of the car within its platform.
Sophie: What are your favorite car subjects? Your inspirations?
Chris: I can’t really separate drawing and designing cars from painting and drawing cars, or race cars. I have this favorite book called Grand Prix. And it was illustrated by Dexter Brown. It is one book that I could say truly guided me or inspired me about cars, racing, it had great cut-away drawings, showing the engineering inside the cars. I mean, I could look at it and understand right away, even when I was 9 years old. It had racetrack layouts, and a cartoon story of a racing driver. I have the book up to now.
Art by Dexter Brown
Dexter Brown is the artist who did the book cover and the illustrations. He truly inspired me. That book was really crucial for me falling in love with Graham Hill, Jackie Ickx and JIM CLARK! That book made me idolize Jim. I was thinking about it the other day. I said, You know, as a nine year year old, all I did was read that book and hear stories on the radio. And then when he (Jim Clark) died, I was smashed. Oh, I was smashed. And I didn’t take to another driver until Ayrton Senna.
It is one book (Grand Prix) that I could say truly guided me or inspired me about cars, racing…
– CHRIS –
MEDIUMS
Sophie: What mediums of art do you use?
Chris: I have used almost every medium except oil. I use what I call “analog” mediums, which are the old tried and true mediums, pencil, watercolor, acrylic, chalk or pastel, markers. Sometimes I will combine several, and also combine the analog with the digital world, predominantly I use Photoshop. It’s fun to use many mediums, creating art, corporate identity, graphic design, posters
Sophie: Pretty much everything. How about sculpture?
Chris: Yes Of course. Automotive design IS sculpture, on wheels. I also do FOUND OBJECT SCULPTURE. The Green Falcon motorcycle (the panel) was sculptured. I also do sculptures of people.
Sophie: Why not oil?
Chris: Hmm, well, it’s a smelly thing. It’s kind of expensive. I just haven’t done it, perhaps when I get older, I’ll give it a try.
Sophie: What is your favorite medium or that which you are most comfortable with, or you can create something with easily?
Chris: The good old pencil by far. In the U.S. I made my living drawing . Yes, I love to draw either with a pencil or ballpen.
Sophie: What are the things in your studio that you find the most valuable or those that you cannot live without?
Chris: Oh, well, I would have to say, pencils, I have this favorite pencil brand which is quite hard to find — the 314 eagle which I used to get in the U.S. but not here in the Philippines. So the closest would be Staedtler HB or the softer one.
The next would by my Mac desktop and Photoshop. As a tool, the thing is just Wow. I do movies, videos, I do my art with this. Oh then there’s also this nice ballpen that I’ve found made by Schneider. It’s the Schneider Slider Edge XB. Oh, it’s a really beautiful drawing ballpen.
Sophie: Is it refillable?
Chris: No, it’s not refillable but I keep the plastic barrel for my Recycled art. It is hard because I tend to keep stuff. You know, like a bottle can become the body of a sculpture. It’s not garbage, but gold. I have a site/page for recycling called The Green Arks Project. There are about 14 admins across the world.
CHALLENGES
Sophie: What do you find most challenging when you do car art?
Chris: Okay, the most challenging is when it’s a commission because it is for somebody else.
So for example, my last commission was for a Congressman – quite a car guy with an eye and an artist in his own way. He wanted his three Rolls Royce to be expressed in one painting and he wanted it manually done, not a digital art. What I did was I had to do several comps (comprehensives). What I ended up with was reflecting two of the Rolls Royce in the side of the other Rolls Royce. So on the side view of a Rolls Royce convertible there are two Rolls Royce coupes reflected. I did that digitally first, because digital allows me to do a lot of changes and submit these changes before the client says “okay”. And then after the client OK’d the digital I have to transfer that and paint it. So it was a very, very expensive commission.
Sophie: Wow. Have you come across a client that was so hard to please? Or someone who will cancel In the middle of the game?
Chris: Thankfully no, I have not. That would be extremely difficult.
Sophie: When doing Car Art commissions, which part of the car do you start with?
Chris: If it is a question of just art for art’s sake, then you think about the rules of a rendering. The rule of a rendering is to show an object in its best light. So you want to pick an angle, or show the part that is really beautiful. You ask yourself, what is it about the piece that you want to really express, and then you go from there. Let’s say, for example, a Jaguar E type. The silhouette of a Jaguar E- type, or say, its front three quarter view is beautiful because of its lines, the curves. Basically, a beautiful car is a rolling sculpture. It is performance art.
Another example is the MGTC, a beautiful car, right? But everything’s there for a reason. Everything is there as elegantly simple as it possibly can be. But this thing doesn’t just sit there, it drives right? And if you look at an MG TC, the octagon is everywhere as a detail.
You look at the octagon of MG, prevalent all over the interior, the collar around the transmission, the shapes of the instrument bezels. It’s prevalent all across the car. And the lines are such that they are as taut as they possibly can be. It’s straightforward and yet there’s a sensibility about it. It’s the same thing with a Mini Cooper. It has an iconic chassis layout because of the way it was packaged by Alex Issigonis, a revolutionary front wheel-drive car. A small engine, transversely mounted up at front, leaving a flat platform to put four big people in a very nicely packaged way. And then it had its suspension, and a wheel in every corner. Cooper came along, they put in a bigger high performance motor. It was able to not just challenge but actually win against bigger faster cars.
So it all goes hand in hand in a package. Today you’ll see, for example, the new car of Gordon Murray’s T50 which is absolutely amazing — an elegant solution to packaging a hypercar, yet smaller than a Porsche. It is not just the successor to the F1, It surpasses the F1 in every single way possible.
CAR ART FOR BUSINESS
Sophie: Do you also create car art to sell?
Chris: From what I’ve found, it’s better for me to create purely and then if someone likes it or gets inspired to have something like it done for them, then it becomes a service.
Sophie: Have you done any one-man shows?
I did a long time once in Sofitel for the Manila Sports Car Club Concours d’ Elegance and one in the U.S.
Sophie: How do you keep updated with the motoring trends that is vital to your work?
Chris: I do a lot of reading, a lot of studying. I am a designer so the work ahead of me is predicated on not just what “is”, but whatever we can innovate. In the case of the Falcon, we called it the disRaptor because a Falcon is a raptor. The falcon showed that you could use bamboo to create a body. The design was predicated, based on all kinds of different parameters. It is electric, it is minimal. It ended up weighing 55 pounds less than the donor motorcycle.
Sophie: Did you get offers to produce the Falcon?
Chris: Yes people ask all the time, but we’re not yet ready for that stage. If we sell it, it would be limited edition only 111 of them. Just by order. Bespoke. It was meant to inspire and prove a point that we can do our own vehicles like this. We can create our own brands. It was really meant to inspire us as a country, to understand that we can do these things. We don’t have to be fawning all over for other cars from other countries, because we can do our own.
)
Sophie: Tell us about your project car – Gitano.
Chris: The Gitano was originally meant to be an electric series hybrid sports car. When it went to SEMA, the principal met up with the ex- TVR engineers and they formed a partnership where the ex-TVR engineers would provide the running gear for the body design – it would then become a track day car to be sold in Europe. So it ended up with a British pedigree chassis, an American LS3 Motor instead of the electric .It is still in process right now as to how it could be produced .
Sophie: And your role there is the designer?
Chris: Yes. It is a series hybrid electric sports car, the theme we chose, to base it as a retro modern design.
Sophie: Do you have anything on the drawing board, another project?
Chris: Oh yes. Tons of car designs that are just waiting.
Sophie: Wow, it’s good that you don’t run out of ideas?.
Chris: Ha ha! Thank God, not really.
KEEPING UP WITH THE PASSION
Sophie: What do you eat or drink while you work?
Chris: Nothing gets me going like a good cup of coffee. Definitely brewed, with Muscovado sugar.
Sophie: What’s your best time of day to work? Or your most creative time?
Chris: It does not matter. Sometimes I work until late at night. Sometimes, it’s all day long. Typically, if I start, I don’t stop. I’m kind of obsessive that way. If I start to do something, I don’t want to stop. So even if I’m getting hungry and unless I’m getting really hungry, I don’t stop until it’s done.
Sophie: Doing art is basically a solo thing. Others drink alcohol while working. How about you?
Chris: I like red wine. Typically though, art is also like a meditation. It’s a flow actually, and I have to say this. It’s very important for me to say . When you’re in the flow, you’re keenly aware that it is that God gives you the ideas. I became Christian about six years and years ago and It made a huge difference in my life.
Sophie: What advice, tips can you give our aspiring automotive artists?
Chris: Art is a means to an end. Art is one of the things that’s passed forward through generations. Art is a means of providing many different things, it’s a means of providing entertainment, information, a means of inspiring, it’s a means of grounding an idea that is yet unseen, except by the person doing the art.
Art is not just used to represent life as it is. It is a tool to represent life as it could be, which is why art is used to design cars, and so many other things. Nothing in this world is here without a conspiracy between God and the person who has the antenna to receive God’s inspiration. From the cavemen doing art on the walls, to Apples Macintoshes, to Gordon Murray’s latest T50, to space shuttles! Murray’s T50 was drawn on his board by hand before it was computerized / digitized. He drew it by hand the old fashioned way. I am using Gordon Murray right now because I am very, very inspired by his last piece. I mean the amount of thinking, the amount of technology, the amount of complete passion is just ridiculous. That’s another thing, don’t do something you are half-hearted about and don’t do something because it’s going to make you money. That’s the wrong approach. You do it because you love it and as a consequence of that, you make a living. It’s something that’s been put into you by our Creator to co-create with him, and create with the rest of the people that are needed to make it a reality. You can’t do it because of the money. That will come. That’s what I’ve found. As difficult as it has been and can be, it’s far better you do it because you have a passion for it. Now, if it’s because it’s a means of surviving, then the challenge will be to find the passion within every piece you do, and you do it as though it’s your last. You do it right. You give it your all. You don’t take it for granted that you could be doing another one. That’s not going to work, NO.
CONTACT: christopherparislacson@gmail.com
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