Quaker State DeLuxe - Mink oil.

A sophisticated woman demands the very best marketing money can buy. Every product she buys must have a gold aluminized foil package and swoopy cursive writing. That's how she knows it's allegedly better than the other products.

Based on the indisputable premise that stupid people are dangerous, Quaker State is doing society a service by removing surplus funds from the stupid, thereby diminishing their ability to affect change in the world. So, thanks to Quaker State for that little public service.

Ingenious lies aside, there's some nice artwork here. First there's the beautiful scratchy texture. This is achieved by a certain application of "gesso" to the canvas or art board prior to painting.

Gesso (pronounced with a soft "g", like a "j") is a kind of thick white primer applied evenly (usually) to a surface before painting. It seals the surface and keeps the paint from soaking into the canvas/board/wood so that it behaves properly during the work. Usually, the goal is to get the gesso applied smoothly, but in this case, it was brushed on heavily and in two directions - vertically and horizontally, being allowed to dry between applications. The result is this criss-cross fabric-y texture. This way, the paint tends to skip over the dry gesso, allowing the texture to be seen through the paint. For areas of fine detail like the face and oil can, the gesso can either be sanded smooth (before painting!) or built up to a smooth surface by a thick layer of paint.

Chrome is not so hard to pull off, once you understand the reflections. To do some fairly simple chrome, think about the surface of your metal. Areas that point up at the sky can be kind of sky blue. Areas that angle toward the ground can be grey or some other ground-ish color.

The line where dark and light meet can be contoured to help describe the shape of the surface, but that's just details.

I do not know what kind of car that is back there. Sometimes, a client or director will ask for a genericized car, to avoid, umm, I dunno, car companies being angry that you gave them free advertising? People are smart.

Quaker State made this attempt get the other half of humanity to give a damn about what brand of oil is in their engine. The continued absence of luxury motor oil on store shelves tells us how well it worked.