I just saw this awesome picture called ‘Dead Meat‘ by Nik Scarlett on Proper Random (below) and it made me really want to do a post about lowbrow art.

Starting off in the late 70’s by Artists such as Robert Williams and Gary Panter it was a relatively small movement of underground cartoonists and started to grow throughout the 80’s with the first significant boom in the 90’s with the start of  Robert Williams lowbrow magazine, Juxtapoz.

It is one of the main parts of ‘Kustom Kulture’ and has always been closely related to hot rods and kustom cars, with huge names like Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth and Coop becoming familiar names in the art and car scenes.

Ed Roth’s Rat Fink, possibly the most famous creation in Lowbrow.

Coops devil.

As well as the older art there is still a big and ever growing lowbrow scene at the moment with brilliant artists and tattooists everywhere at big shows.

David Lozeau is a good example of a modern artist and his use of unconventional canvases just add to the awesomes. I love drawings in weird places, half of my furniture has got drawings all over it!

And of course, back to Robert Williams, who is probably best known for his album artwork for a certain little band called Guns n’ Roses…

I actually own some of his work and yes call me sad but I have the Vans special edition slip ons he did.

So does anyone else know any artists that I really should check out? Comment and tell me!

Bridgestones might be good but seriously, I would never give up that girl for tyres!

Yep Summer is drawing ever closer and the first show of the year for me, Wheels Day, is coming up very fast. Held on Good Friday every year it is a huge event for a single day show and last year it just blew my mind. It rained all day and was pretty cold and miserable but I still managed to have a fantastic time and if this year has dry weather it would be absolutely brilliant!

After that comes the normal weekend shows and that is where my predicament starts. Every year I camp and every year I get rained on, one day I will have a very nice camper van of my own to live the life of camping luxury but for now I settle for tents or I try out camper van hire. I’ve heard some pretty cool things about hiring a camper van and I guess it would let me do a little trial and see if I really do want to buy one or not.

If I was going to do it though should I go for classic camper van hire? There are lots of sites that allow you to book a VW camper van for the weekend and then that way it would fit in with the shows I was going to.

I'll just cut out this little bit of rust....bugger. Erm shall we just T-Top it?

I have a feeling they might be a little bit more standard than that one though…

Or my other option is to go for the super comfy new big campers, it wouldn’t look anywhere near as good but they have more creature comforts than my house probably does and I could probably trailer my car behind them… Or even better I could just splash the cash majorly and get one of these and put my car inside it!

Who knows what I’ll do this year but I do know that I would probably read my own guide to hiring a van before setting out on my van hire quest and I will hopefully fix my car sometime soon!

For some reason I have been getting ever so fond of Australian Muscle Cars at the moment, I’m not sure why, maybe it’s just because they’re all new to me and not the same old Mustangs and Trans-ams.

My favourite at the moment is the HZ Sandman Ute (pick up over here) which looks like a Subaru Brat from the back and a Cortina/70’s Corolla from the front. It looks amazing and I really want to book flights to Australia right now and buy this Oplaine blue version which looks mint! Sadly the $49k price tag makes realise I can’t!

Failing that I might just directly fly to Sydney and get this lovely Falcon which is a more heavy duty version of our own Ford Granada. It looks better and has a 4.1 litre engine, whats not to love? It is also a more wallet friendly $18,500.

To lose a few hours of your life you can check out the Australian Muscle Car Sales site and find your own dream car.