Taxila, Pakistan – Just off the Grand Trunk Road, in an old auto yard filled with rusting axles and rotting trees, Arshad Mehmood is completing his latest masterpiece.
The canvas is propped up on oversize tires. The medium is oil on metal. The palette is bright enough to make an impression even at 70 miles per hour, the speed at which Mehmood’s latest will be traveling when it joins his other masterpieces whooshing down the highway.
Each day, Mehmood splashes trucks with the intricate designs and elaborate color schemes that are their hallmarks throughout South Asia. By the time he is through, every inch must be covered with animals, mountains, flowers or whatever else Mehmood’s mind can conjure.
Mehmood’s apprentices lay down the basic pattern, using tape and string dipped in chalk to mark off the canvases. Each side of the truck is divided into a dozen or more spaces, and each will display a different image. It is here that Mehmood’s artistic vision takes over. He works without a net, painting directly onto the truck, with no sketches or stencils, in electric shades. He has an overall concept when he begins his work, but many of the details get worked out as he goes along.
Other than requesting hot pink, the truck’s owner, Raja Naseer, 36, did not give Mehmood many specific instructions. “I have asked him for leopards,” he says. The rest is up to Mehmood.
Naseer says that the more beautiful the truck, the more business he will get because it will stand out from the rest.
“Even if I have to spend a lot of money, it must look very beautiful,” he says. “Everyone should want to look at my truck.”
