From Art to Working on Cars

Hello everyone and won't you believe it's been 3 years since I've initiated this whole blog of mine!

Earlier, I had the intention to utilise this blog for when I'll hope to do my project car for my bucket list but I hadn't gone that far yet. As I get knocked around as life goes by, I can make use of myself learning from the good and bad things which I can demonstrate though other posts I've published along the way.

There's one significant thing in my life I have established (restarted more) which is art as I've always had strong artistic abilities since growing up. Recently, this is one painting I want to start off with.

With my escape to the National Gallery of Victoria reignited my passion of art, I grabbed my easel, oil paints, brushes and the canvas and managed to achieve this painting titled Abstract Mrs Brinks. That was completed in March 2023 but there's more.

This is my second painting titled Black Sheep Banned. That provided the next step of my new subject matter. The subject matter came about when the Bah Bah Black Sheep nursery rhyme is apparently banned. Why so? Racial profiling? Is that black sheep meant to upset the black community? If it doesn't, this creates the stir and this is what it's all about.

The Black Sheep Banned painting is the start of my new subject matter in my new portfolio with the intention to open up harsh realities.

Next, we have this painting titled The Unmerciful Lowe in the time of tough economics post COVID.

And then, there's Oppression Against Individuality which is about not being accepted for our own unique personal appearances and opening up to the conservative ideology.

Throughout the process, the momentum has been enough to consider pursuing my goal to become a legitimate artist and to have my own grand art exhibition which I'll call Talking Points. From here, I'll intend to address 3 topics.

Personal for any struggles, triumphs and anything that lands us in a bad mental space. Society for emphasising any troubles we all have to come to grips. And then, there's unfavourable perspectives which in a nutshell not being accepted in any way. But here's the link to my previous post regarding my idea of pursuing the exhibition idea.

My Art Exhibition Prospect

The total of 5 paintings has been a good achievement until I had to move out of my unit in Pakenham.

There's this painting of mine titled You Will Fail.

Along with those paintings from the left, A Young Battler and on the right, Terra Cotta People. At that time, I lived in a sharehouse and despite how hard it is working in the carport that isn't entirely weatherproof and having to contend with other belongings, there are 3 good things. I've summoned a housemate who's an apprentice tiler to work out the terra cotta shade which is well achieved. A Young Battler painting provided a seriously good challenge on creating the artwork on courage which leads us to the third and biggest triumph.

The SECAN arts hub provides the opportunity to grow and break into the arts sector. With regards to the idea of making an artwork on courage, us members get given words of every month and our tasks are to create our own artworks using the words. Then at the end of the year, all get exhibited at the challenges exhibition. I've been a SECAN member for 2 years and so far, everything has been a learning curve. But the same cannot be entirely said at the sharehouse especially when the other housemates can be bothering. Not all the time though.

So then, I've rented a room in the Noble Park Tennis Club. It happened when the president of the club visited one SECAN gathering and once we met, she offered me a room to rent to work on my paintings, and so I did.

Once I've been working on this painting titled Just a Shadow, I've been so delighted to get much needed peace. This has been a pleasure but as I've been progressing, the painting had got eerie which I hadn't expected throughout the times I've been working on my art.

Another exciting stage is showcasing my art since I've initiated it again but there's the previous post about all this for anyone else to see.

Not One But Two Art Exhibitions

I now have 10 paintings in total completed in my new portfolio. But I'm not going to end here. I have also initiated my hobby working on cars for the first time.

I'm still hanging on to my idea of doing an AU Falcon project but I hadn't been able to initiate it yet. However, I've started when I was doing repair jobs and maintenance back when I owned my 2006 Holden Astra hatchback and also buying cheap lawn mowers through the Facebook Marketplace to then fix up and sell for a profit. These are good achievements so far and they shall help propel myself to a new frontier doing extraordinary things I wouldn't normally do and also meet another kind of people.

Towards the end of last year, I had to move back to my parents are I ran into difficulties. At least, I hadn't thrown a lot of my belongings especially these goodies including car cleaning products.

At the time, I've set myself a task to give my car a good clean for the Unique Rides Mega Meet. I still have my own portable work bench and my own vacuum cleaner which'll help me get the jobs done.

The interior is all nice and clean.

And also, I gave my car a paint decontamination session. That is to coat the surface with detailer and run a clay bar over it to remove contaminants. Perhaps I'll show you all this diagram.

At the bottom is the painted-clearcoated surface along with bonded contaminants like tar, pollen, tree sap, bird droppings and traffic dirt that can spoil the look on your car. You then give the surface a layer of clay lubricant, even spraying quick detailer works and you'll grab a piece of clay, shape it like a patty and you run on the surface. You'll feel how rough it is running the clay bar until it runs smooth and quietly. The clay has removed the bonded contaminants and the surface will be all good for the suite of detailing of cutting, polishing and applying the level of wax to keep your car spick and span.

There are 3 handy things worth mentioning. My car has been ceramic coated at the dealership which makes car washing easier although it'll be wise to use car wash detergent that's pH neutral and also worth considering using another car wash detergent made for ceramic coated cars and Repco recently released that kind.

And whilst I'm currently back with my parents, I can make use of their garage with enough space and although both my parents' cars have manual gearboxes, I can move them as I have a manual license.

Another addition to cleaning cars is an upgrade to prewashing (or what's called snow foaming) and here it is.

On the right is my long faithful snow foam pump cannon under the Bowdens brand called "The Frother". Once you buy the bottle of snow foam concentrate then fill the cannon with the rest of water to your desired ratio, you'll then pump it up and then spray on your car and let it loosen the dirt on your car. And then on the left, I have recently bought the Repco branded "Hyper Foam" bottle with nozzle. Could it be a better upgrade? This was the time to find out.

Like with new things, I'm yet to be accustomed but as I got my head round, it's time to get set up.

One extra difference to mention is the Hyper Foam bottle will need to be connected to the garden hose and using 2 taps for main water foam and the other for rinsing and foaming, it'll be time to execute this kind of prewash.

And here is the start of the action. According to the instructions, the car is to be rinsed and once that's done, the snow foaming will commence. You work your way from the bottom where there's usually more dirt there. Once you let it soak and the dirt loosened, it's time to rinse it off. The next stage is to hand wash.

With this in mind and washing my car still using the 2 bucket method, it's nice and clean again. There is another change. I didn't feel too tired after my car washing session. So what can we learn here? Prewashing eases the load when washing dirty cars so that we don't have a hard time handwashing a seriously dirty car like a four-wheel drive vehicle that's been out bush bashing.

And there's a reason or so why people hate washing cars. One of them is how physical it gets and for anyone who's old and their bodies aren't up to this task, it becomes a problem. And people do have busy lives so they mightn't always have enough time and energy to clean their cars. Although I'm currently 35 years old, we all get worn out towards old age.

There is another car cleaning product that's years old and living in that chest of other car cleaning products. What you're looking at is the interior cleaner. With those aerosol cleaners, you shake them and then spray a layer of foam and let it soak on the interior you intend to clean. With this case here, this is the floor mat in the garage that is filthy it hadn't been cleaned ever.

With my old and worn out wheel brush and my portable work bench, this has made good work giving this foot mat a much deserved clean despite several processes. The final process and also a pain is drying it out. But it's all a success at the end of the day. My Bissell upholstery cleaner can vacuum excess water which'll help better dry this mat. Another learning curve accomplished.

And then, I bought those 2 electronic tools to help fix modern cars. One is the OBD scan tool to read codes and another is the digital multimeter to sort out electrical problems. When I both played with them, it hasn't been too bad although I had trouble reading amps but volts aren't a problem. I've tested the batteries in both my parents' cars and both carry just over 12 volts enough to start engines.

One final piece after my dad's recommendation is to carry a tyre repair kit as my car uses a space saver spare wheel and they're not as great as full size spare wheels. They're handy to fix punctures saving anyone using the space saver spare wheel or none and the principle go like so.

Once you jack up your car, file the puncture, fill it with the strips and cement provided, trim it, pump up the tyre and you shall be good to go.

Now. Before I'll conclude, there's something worth showing.

It was 3 years ago since I came up of an idea of doing a car project particularly doing a junkyard rescue. And the likes of that AU Falcon emphasised that idea along with my career at Repco spanning 4 years to date, done mechanical work on my then Holden Astra hatchback, buying cheap lawn mowers to fix and sell for a profit, participating at the Unique Rides car group and watching some car repair videos on YouTube.

I'll leave you now with my own redesigned Holden logo which I call Stellantis spec. (My source of inspiration was from the latest Peugeot logo)

See you next time!