A significant interest in vehicles led artist Rochelle Thomas to start painting cars – and before long she moved onto trucks. She hasn’t looked back.

Rochelle Thomas and her business, Auto Art by Rochelle, have become well-known within the New Zealand trucking scene for custom truck painting commissions.

“I’ve been painting for about 12 years, and I’ve always been interested in vehicles, so I started painting cars. And then a friend of a friend asked me to paint his truck, and from there, I got another order for a truck, and another and another, and it just progressed from there,” Rochelle says.

Rochelle is well-known to readers of New Zealand Trucking for supplying the monthly Little Truckers’ Club content, as well as for her custom artworks.

She says the process of creating the truck paintings is relatively straightforward. Her paintings are completed to order and hand-painted on canvas using acrylic paints.

“People email me their photos. I draw them up on the canvas, mask out the truck and always paint the background first. Then I paint in the vehicle, varnish them, and send them off to their new owners,” Rochelle says. “I find block canvas better than paper as they are more durable and don’t require framing. They also look so good on the wall.”

“I try to work to my customers’ needs as much as I can,” she says. “For instance, it’s not always as easy as copying a photo, sometimes I am asked to create a piece from multiple reference photos.”

Each piece can take anywhere between 20 and 40 hours to complete, depending on the size and the detail.

Although most of the work Rochelle does is truck-related, all her pieces are custom, and she can do anything automotive, including motorcycles, cars, planes, army tanks, tractors, boats and machinery. She’ll even paint animals.

Rochelle says she loves doing truck portraits because of the variety. “There are also so many different types of trucks and there is so much detail when it comes to painting a truck – all the different components, the wheels, the lights, the logos, the metal, the loads. I really enjoy painting chrome, reflections, logs, forestry and anything with machinery.”

Rochelle says one of her favourite pieces is of a Kenworth T904 she sent over to New South Wales. “The painting was of the owner and his son the day the truck came back from the paint shop. I love what it symbolises.”

She has completed about 600 truck paintings and has clients worldwide. About 25% of orders go to Australia. “I just finished one and sent it to Canada last month and sent two to Fiji in June. And about five have been sent to the United States,” Rochelle says.

“Many people buy the paintings as gifts, and many drivers/owners who just love the truck they are driving get them done as well. I’ve done 18 for APL Direct – which has been a regular customer right from the start and orders a couple of paintings every year.”

Rochelle has even completed paintings on hand saws, two-man saws and a round saw blade. “I just completed a two-man with eight trucks on it. A huge job, but so worth it!

“People provide the saws or wood, and I paint the trucks on them. I even have a guy who’s getting his chainsaw blade done in memory of his son, who did logging. It’s quite hard work because the hand saws are so little,” she says.

Follow Auto Art by Rochelle on Facebook and Instagram to view more of her work. Contact her at autoartbyrochelle@gmail. com.