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Earlier in April, Wheels24 published an article on a couple of Utes penned by an Australian company.
These utes, or bakkies as we know them, were not your ordinary run of the mill offerings. Budget Direct Car Insurance looked at a few offerings from premium automakers and transformed them into utes.
It's not to be scoffed at, but these bakkies are computer-rendered products. They are aesthetically pleasing to look at and almost verges on being perfect.
Upon reading the article, one of our industry's service providers reached out over WhatsApp with a few images. These were sketches drawn by one of his friends, Thys Matthee.
Matthee, fresh into retirement, is the first to say that he is not an artist and that it's only a love for pen and paper that he's been living out for as long as he can remember.
Do you consider yourself an amateur artist? Do share your sketches and stories with us via email.
Sketched by: Thys Matthee
'Go to the café'
The difference between Matthee's conversions and that showcased in the ute article, is that he did not rope in the assistance of a computer. Everything is done by hand and with a keen eye for detail.
"I don't know when it started," Matthee says as he connects the dots of his drawing past. "My school in Vredenburg, on the West Coast, didn't have art as a subject, but one of my sister's teachers told me to visit cafes. There were photos of naked women, and I should draw them as practice."
As expected, his mother wasn't very keen on this and destroyed some of his most beautiful work at the time. He recalls how he'd wake up in the morning and find that paintings, some that took endless hours to complete, would be torn apart and thrown in the bin.
READ: If Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, and Dodge built bakkies, this is what it'd look like
It's understandable, given that parents generally do not want their children to be exposed to things ahead of schedule.
In the early years of his craft, the women he drew and painted provided him with a set of skills he still uses to this day.
Matthee recalls: "The human body gives you the best and most shades of light and dark. Shadows, too! In my occupational years, I eventually found myself in Kwazulu-Natal - almost 2000km away from my hometown. At night, I'd draw cars on the back of a letter, and I'd bring alterations to these cars. I would see an ad of a car and then draw a hotter version of it, or change it into a bakkie, convertible, or station wagon."
Sketched by: Thys Matthee
'Drawing for my son'
Is he a petrolhead? Not in the least, says Matthee. His father was a mechanic - a real mechanic, not a 'replacement technician' like we have today.
He says: "If my car fails to start, I check to see if I haven't broken the key. I sometimes forget which side is loose or tight. But I've always been in love with a beautiful car; inside and out." The cars Matthee bought over the years wasn't for practical or economic reasons. The primary prerequisite was that it had to be a sedan, and it should be loud with plenty of power.
WATCH: This Toyota fan loves the Land Cruiser 200 so much, he carved it out of wood
Matthee says that like him and his father, his eldest son also has an eye for beautiful cars and is his dream car an Aston Martin. As such, the son bought himself a Ford Fiesta, simply because the grille reminded him of an Aston. Matthee duly took his pen and paper and transformed his son's Fiesta into something a little special.
"I created the 'Asiestama' for my son (merged from the car names Aston, Fiesta, Martin)," Matthee says proudly as he shares the images with us. You can sense the pride beaming as he remembers every moment about the picture.
And it all started with a naked lady in some café on the West Coast.
