Pen and Ink Illustrations of Flaminio Bertoni & Gabriel Voisin

Jacques Helot is very talented fellow who is a member of Traditional Pen and Ink Illustrators — a group who love the bold black and white rawness of pen and ink illustration.

Jacques noticed that there were only a few automotive sketches being done these days, so he undertook to create pen and ink illustrations paying tribute to Flaminio Bertoni, the Italian sculptor who André Citroën hired to design the Traction Avant and then stunned the world with the iconic DS, and Gabriel Voisin, an aviation pioneer who made a fortune with his planes. After WWI Voisin converted to building automobiles. His cars were very successful in the twenties and many famous people like Le Corbusier, Rudolph Valentino and royalty from the Balkan drove them. In the early thirties he made the mistake to go even more upscale, a move that would prove too complicated and expensive for the crisis of the thirties.

This photo was taken of Gabriel Voisin at his drawing table towards the end of the fifties or the beginning of the sixties. Voisin was born in 1880 but still hanging in there and working on projects.

Jacques Helot created this drawing from the photo on A3 paper with a Staedtler 0,3mm fineliner and made a few black accents with a Pentel Sign Pen. He made an initial pencil sketch to get the portrait and layout up to 80 percent right. After that Jacques added-in two models of iconic french cars.

On Voisin’s desk is a model of the Voisin C25 Aerodyne from 1934, one of his most iconic designs. It has a circular roof line and the roof with portholes can slide backwards. The other car is a model of the Citroën 2CV. To Jacques it has a striking resemblance to the Voisin. Surprising? Both cars were designed in the same part of Paris and the chief engineer of Citroën, André Lefebvre had worked as a chief engineer for Voisin. Both cars had to be produced with little tools and investment. Voisin had a very low production and had to save investment costs and the Citroën had to be cheap. The design of the 2CV started around 1935, 2 years after the Voisin C25 Aerodyne had been presented. Only a few Aerodynes were produced and 4 are known to survive. The Mullin Museum had a beautifully restored C25 Aerodyne that won “Best of Show” at Pebble Beach.

For Jacques’ illustration of Bertoni, he created an A4 drawing based on the square picture that Bertoni took of himself in 1953 with a model of a sport version of the Citroën DS. He is holding up a cloth to have a background to better show his model.

As the back of the car was cut off, Jacques recreated it based on sketches that Bertoni made.

Bertoni is best known for the DS, but he didn’t consider it as his best design. His favorite work was the Citroën Ami 6 with its rear window that was slanted backwards like on the Ford Anglia. This may seem strange as it is a polarizing design that is cute, dynamic and odd at the same time.