Tight Squeeze at Wedgwood Car Show

 

8/24/25 '56 Thunderbird convertible at the Wedgwood Car Show

New on my summer events radar this year was the Wedgwood Car Show, which has apparently been going on for 18 years, but I hadn’t heard about it until a couple of months ago. Just one neighborhood east of Maple Leaf, Wedgwood is practically “my” ‘hood – I was stoked that it was so close!

Packed in tight!

Tiny compared to the massive Greenwood Car Show, which I catch every year, the Wedgwood show is crammed into one strip mall parking lot. Sponsored by the Wedgwood Broiler, a neighborhood institution since 1965, the show had some beautiful classic cars, but they were difficult to sketch if you wanted to get the whole car. Unlike Greenwood, where all the cars are neatly angle-parked so that visitors can walk through the center of the street and see cars on both sides, the Wedgwood cars were parked every which way to cram in as many as possible.

Another challenge was that the temperature was already in the mid-70s and climbing by 10 a.m. when the show opened, so my main goal was to look for views I could sketch from the shade, which was mostly behind the cars.

I stood behind a lovely ’56 Thunderbird convertible (one of my long-time fantasy cars; sketch above and photo below) and had hoped to include the owner, who was dressed in a turquoise outfit and wide-brimmed hat to match the trim on her car, but she kept wandering around chatting with friends.

Once I realized I wasn’t going to be able to see any one car without being blocked by another, I had fun with my composition by layering and skipping the parts I couldn’t see.

Frustrating as it was to sketch there, I probably won’t attend again, but I enjoyed the show for what it was. I always enjoy observing the friendly community and camaraderie of small, neighborhood events.

Technical note: Hoping to make some color car portraits, I had brought along an A5 Hahnemühle sketchbook instead of a large Uglybook. Realizing quickly that it wasn’t the kind of show where I could make car portraits easily, I switched to marker line drawings of the type that I make in Uglybooks. How strange and foreign to use white paper!

Look at this gorgeous T-Bird convertible!

Yes, I tend to favor red cars, but purple's not bad, either!