A cool new chapter opens for our ever-growing collection of horological art prints with the first addition of a colorful artwork! The Rolex GMT-Master reference 6542 and 1675, as well as today’s 126710BLRO (in steel) and today’s Rolex 126719BLRO (in white gold) are all lovingly called the “Pepsi” by watch enthusiasts the world over for its distinctive blue and red (BLeu-ROuge in the reference number) bezel. This is the first color-drawing of aBlogtoWatch Store’s featured watch artist, Tamás Fehér – read on to learn more about the production process.
Available in easy-to-frame, B2 (large), and B1 (extra-large) sized prints of exceptional quality, you may get your Art Tribute To The Pepsi GMT from the aBlogtoWatch Store for $199 and $249, respectively, all with fix-rate $15 FedEx Priority Shipping to just about every country in the world.
Let’s hear from Tamás: “The idea of this project, to feature Rolex’s highly popular iconic GMT watch, came to my mind really long time ago. I know it is an important collection for many collectors of vintage and modern Rolex alike, and so I wanted to do something different this time. I’ve done a lot of research on the different coloured pencils to find the best ones for my style and the specific paper I draw on. Unlike grey gradients, colors are much more difficult to blend together, but it is really interesting (well, to me, anyway!) to see how many variations these simple colours have.”
“These vintage Rolexes have special faded colors over time. There are many variations, but I had to make some experiments to find the best colours for the faded bezel. Then there was the great challenge of finding a vintage Pepsi bottle, because I wanted to match with the year of the watch.
I found a bottle collector in my country who had an incredible collection of vintage bottles and caps.
I picked the perfect one and some nice bottle cap as well. After that I had to destroy them.. I grabbed a hammer and broke it into shivers and I placed them around the watch to show the original shape of the bottle.”
The drawing process is a long and arduous one that cannot be expedited. Having and carefully broken up the bottles, the fragments are arranged over a B1-size paper. They are then photographed and the image is then manipulated on the computer to finalize their arrangement. Notably, from the rough outlines (faintly visible on the image above) through the rendition of edges and shadows and colors to the drawing of the most intricate details, Tamás draws the entire horological artwork by hand – in this case entirely with pencils. Just in the center of the image is a Rolex GMT-Master reference 1675 with a matte black dial with tritium indices and a pale blue and red Pepsi bezel. Produced between 1959 and 1980 for a whopping 21 years (in multiple variations), the Rolex 1675 stands closer than its Ref. 6542 predecessor to today’s Rolex Pepsi GMT in that it introduced crown guards to the design – something that is present on today’s GMT-Master IIs.
The entire drawing that serves as the base for our affordable prints took about 100 hours of desk-time to realize.
The final effect, we hope you’ll agree, is that of an eye-catching, yet tasteful work of hand-drawn horological art. The goal was to blend the much-loved Rolex Pepsi GMT and its the physical object behind its nickname, illustrating just how well the two actually go together. Whether you own a modern or a vintage Rolex GMT-Master Pepsi, our intention was to offer to you a larger-than-life, fun tribute to it.
Accurate to extremely fine details such as the characteristic patination of the “Pepsi bezel,” the hand-painted tritium dial or the glow around the edge of the acrylic front element, Tamás’s art brings this spectacular timepiece – and its watch enthusiast-designated product counterpart – to a larger-than-life scale for unrivaled appreciation.
Visit this link directly to get your “Tribute To The Pepsi GMT” in the popular and easy-to-frame sizes of B2 (large), and B1 (extra-large) with exact measurements listed on the product page, priced at $199 and $249, respectively, with a fixed $15 FedEx Priority Shipping to just about every country in the world.
Browse a total of 17 Horological Artworks on the aBlogtoWatch Store or check out some of our other best-selling horological artworks:
– Tribute To The G-Shock DW5600 and its black resin exterior
– Tribute To Ed White’s Spacewalk Speedmaster Moonwatch
– Tribute To Steve McQueen & His Heuer Monaco
– Tribute To The Past & Present Of The Tudor Black Bay Dive Watch
– Tribute To The IWC Big Pilot Watch & Aviation
