5 Minutes with Keith Weesner – Rods, Customs and Artwork
When you consider the intersection of traditional rods and customs, hot rod culture, and automotive art, one name is certain to come up: Keith Weesner. Weesner has been immersed in the hot rod and art worlds his entire life, thanks in large part to his father, Jerry, a lifelong enthusiast, artist, and automotive journalist. Keith followed in his father’s tire tracks and grew up with a sketchpad in his hand and vintage hot rods on his mind.
A stint at Art Center in Pasadena ultimately led Weesner to a career in animation in the 1990s, where he honed his skills while pursuing outside artistic endeavors like painting. He also teamed up with a fellow group of young, design-minded gearheads to form the Burbank Choppers, a club that had an outsize impact on the burgeoning traditional rod and custom scene in the late-’90s and early-2000s. Weesner has been a self-employed artist since 2004, and we caught up with him recently to learn more about his path and perspective.
GG: You started drawing as a young kid. Was it always cars?
Keith Weesner: I’m sure when I was little it was anything and everything. But my dad had two ’40 Fords in the backyard and I would go out and study them. That’s the first thing I could do, was draw a side view of a ’40 Ford sedan.
GG: How much of an influence was your father?
Weesner: Pretty big. It was the ’70s, and I was looking at his ’50s Rod & Custom magazines. I liked that a lot more than whatever else was happening, like Corvettes and vans. I felt like it was this secret goldmine I had access to, all this ’50s stuff.
GG: What was your first car?
Weesner: It was a ’57 Nash Metropolitan. It was a little silly. I thought a Metropolitan was an interesting piece of design and didn’t really understand how driving it made you look, that it wasn’t aggressive. For some reason, growing up loving hot rods and customs, that little thing eluded me somehow.
GG: Did you have formal art training?
Weesner: I was in ninth grade when I found out about Art Center. I loved Harry Bradley’s drawings and learned that he worked in automotive styling and taught car design at Art Center. I didn’t even know that was a thing. Art Center had Saturday classes for high school kids, so from ninth grade through high school I went to those. Then, after attending Long Beach City College for a while, I went to Art Center from 1988 until 1990. I didn’t finish. I got to about fifth term and I just ran out of everything – enthusiasm, energy, money.
GG: How did you land at Warner Brothers Animation?
Weesner: I sort of accidentally got a job at Warner Brothers. A friend applied there and didn’t get the job and said, “I think you would be perfect for it.” I went and did a test for a Tasmania show. While I was there, I saw stuff on the walls for Batman and thought, “wow, that looks way better!” One of the producers came out of his office and I showed him my portfolio, and he was like, “What are you doing? Come work for us!”
I did that for 12 years. I did black-and-white background designs for shows like Batman, Superman, Batman Beyond, Justice League. I’d get a storyboard and realize I needed to know what the inside of a room looked like, so I’d do two views of the room. Or a street scene, or a vertical pan of a skyscraper. I got pretty adept at perspective and using it well.
GG: The Burbank Choppers came about during that time, correct?
Weesner: Yes. I worked with Jon Fisher and met the rest of his friends, who were in a club called The Chislers. It was a bigger club and there were a lot of guys that rode Triumphs. We decided to make a new club that was only about rods and customs.
GG: Is it surprising how much impact the club had?
Weesner: It was kind of a perfect storm. We all had pretty good jobs, so we were able to build pretty nice cars. And we were all artists to some degree, so we had a fairly cohesive outlook on what we were going to build. We all had a goal to have the best cars we could. Now, there’s tons of clubs that have nice cars. I don’t even know if we would stand out. It just happened to be when we did it, and how well we did it, and that we had a cohesive theme.
GG: Your automotive art almost always includes people and specific settings? Why is that?
Weesner: Partially because I can. A lot of people who are good at doing cars, that’s the only thing they can do. I’m thinking about something that’s happening, like a little scene from a movie. You have two figures and they’re interacting, and you have to think about what they’re doing.
GG: Jimmy Hervatin has built two interpretations of your artwork in metal. How does that feel?
Weesner: That is such an honor. I really won the lottery with him. It’s like if someone decided to make a movie of your life, and instead of the Movie of the Week, it’s Martin Scorsese. He’s the best guy that could have decided to do that. Both of those trucks are just mind blowing.
GG: What’s the primary element someone needs to get right on a hot rod or custom?
Weesner: I would say proportions. Number two would be wheel and tire choice. Because something can be a hunk of junk but if it sits nice and has the right wheels it will look neat.
GG: Why do you think the 1950s and ’60s hot rod and custom era is so enduring?
Weesner: I think it’s because that’s when people started to build these cars. That’s the birth of hot rodding and custom cars, so it all sprang from that. Obviously, not every car has to have whitewalls and old hubcaps; there’s room for every kind of style. And you still have to get it right or have something interesting to say with it.
To check out more of Keith’s artwork, click this way!
