# 20 Colleen's Taco Lady Chevy Step-Van

This thunderbird's on the hood.

September 2012

I'm afraid Mister Google makes it too hard to put these photos in the order I want, so you'll have to work harder than you should.

Colleen, the Taco Lady at the Saturday Morning Market in St. Petersburg, FL, saw my car driving down the street one day, and decided that's what she had to do with her step-van. And what a thrill it was! For one thing, it's huge. For another, there were so many pieces of it I just loved: the skirt with the lace border, that Tree of Life, the water lapping up to it, those Mexican flags – like Tibetan Prayer Flags but not – and more.

This was a lot of work and even more fun. One of the best things about painting cars for other people is that I'm led to discover things outside of my normal world.

I don't usually like both sides to match, but I did put the same Mexican blanket design on the passenger doors. It was just too perfect a configuration to ignore.

#19 Carol's 2009 HHR

August 2012

Carol only wanted parts of the car painted – not the whole thing. That made me nervous, but I did it, and it came out pretty good, wouldn't you say?

I'd never heard of Ed Hardy till Carol told me about him. I patterned my roses after his.

After a couple of months, we added French bulldogs to this beautiful blue car.

#18 Melissa's 1998 Buick LeSabre

The beginning of the frog pond on the roof.

Melissa's little boy Benny knew right away that these were frog eyes!

Water bug!

Yipes! Lettering scares me but THIS was an easy way to do it.

Here's the Miracle Sponge before I've put it in water.

October 2011

Melissa chose some colors, told me of her love and concern for frogs, and let me do whatever I wanted. Yay! She and her husband are both artists. It used to puzzle me why artists would want me to paint their cars – can't they paint their own? But when I see all the art I've collected, I get it.

Shreeram's Yamaha Virago

September 2011

This isn't a car, either, but I was thrilled to have something black to paint.

My biggest challenge here – besides the small surface – was that the owner wanted recognizable critters on it the motorcycle. Or maybe he assumed that since I'm an "artist," I could just, just do it. Not really. Still, I now know an anole when I see one.

Shreeram wanted them to be specifically Floridian, too, although he agreed to the cobra, for which I'm grateful. I really like that snake!

I like the above photo because it shows how very well I follow the line ...

Laura's Schwinn

August 2011

Fine. This isn't a car, but it was a lot of fun anyhow!

#17. Eunice's 1991 Toyota Corolla DX, "Dixie"

September 2011


A couple days before her seventy-fifth birthday, Eunice picked up her painted car. Happy birthday, Eunice! She paints pet portraits (www.pet-drawings.com) and was my neighbor when I painted my first car. She always said she liked driving through our alley and watching the progress I was making. The time finally came when I painted her car.

This was another collaboration – my second. Eunice drew twelve animals on brown kraft paper, and then cut them out. I glued the resulting stencils to her freshly painted car and filled them with black. The plan was for me to decorate each animal – polka dots! scribbles! swirls! checkerboards! – but when it came down to it, I decided they looked better solid black, except for a couple defining lines with an orange Sharpie oil paint pen, which we later found out faded really quickly. Shame on you, Mister Sharpie.

Because positioning a curling, thin border – the stencil itself – would be very awkward, I used the center of the drawing for that purpose. Once I liked its orientation, I taped it in place and glued the stencil around the interior.

Then I removed the interior.

And filled the center with black paint.

I expected the edges to be sharp because I used a glue stick on them, and really glued 'em down tight. I also expected the edges to be sharp because I am delusional. If the paper absorbed the glue, it also absorbed the paint, but I wasn't thinking that far ahead. Therefore, the edges were rough at best ...

... and horrifying at worst.

But it was nothing mineral spirits + elbow grease couldn't handle. Also, I immediately liked the rough effect. It went along with the great texture of sponge-painting in the first place, and it added fur – even to critters who don't have fur ...

And then I just made some fun designs on the bottom of the car, using the great colors Eunice had chosen. I herded all the critters together with bright magenta dots. On the roof, where the parrot lives, I made stylized flowers using more dots. It's true that I saw the resemblance of the flowers to paw prints, but it's equally true that I dismissed paw prints as being trite. Eunice agreed with me ... and yet ... and yet ... And so a handful of the flowers did in fact become paw prints, so it's only a minor cliché.

#16. Geri's 1993 Volkswagen Eurovan

March 2011

Geri, a mosaicist who was my neighbor-vendor at Circus McGurkis one year, called me to say she'd decided to have me paint her van. It's a big van, too, with a Westfalia roof – a roof that opens up into a sort of camper.

Since I have that horrible fear of heights thing (which is really a horrible fear of falling thing), I wondered how I'd be able to get up on that roof to paint it, but I did. Cheryl Cawthon, my acupuncturist of all things, figured out a way for me to set up a scaffold, and my friend Bob Phillips came by one morning with a second ladder. I made him watch me get up and get down again, and I did it without breaking my neck. Al Scott told me to be sure to keep my cell phone with me. I would have been embarrassed to ... what? call the fire department to get me down, like a kitten in a tree in a Dick and Jane book? Yes. Still, there were two times when I thought it might come to that, but I talked myself down (heh), and so now I think I'm all big and brave.

Geri chose these great colors, and said she pretty much wanted vertical stripes. The stripes could be made out of whatever I wanted: squares, balls, snowflakes, whatever. She wanted some Klimt-type poppies and some paisleys. As you can see from the top picture, it looks like a blanket, a tapestry. I really like this van!

The roof is a field of poppies, but I haven't yet seen it from any perspective other than my sitting cross-legged on it, quivering. When Geri opens the roof for camping, she'll take some photos, and when I get 'em, you'll get 'em.