The commercial artist Vic Carless, who has died aged 83, was known for his marine paintings and illustrations, and his posters and advertising work for the car and aviation industry from the 1950s onwards. He produced paintings of some of the world's most significant superyachts for publication in international magazines. Yacht designers including Terence Disdale, Tim Heywood and myself commissioned Vic. His paintings were key to winning many projects as they gave clients confidence, which turned the dream of a yacht into a commissioned building project.
Vic's superyacht paintings were commissioned for the earliest stages of design and he was often involved in concept design discussions. His work included commissions for some of the world's leading shipyards, including Royal Huisman and Oceanco in the Netherlands; Lürssen and Abeking & Rasmussen in Germany; Benetti in Italy and Oceanfast in Australia. His success was due to his ability to work quickly, his skill at reading the technical drawings of the design studios and translating our intentions into visual descriptions of the yachts and their surrounding landscapes. He did not have any art-school training, but always looked to mentors such as the commercial artist Frank Wootton for his "flicks of fluency" and understanding of composition and animation in his painting.
Vic was born in Walsall in the West Midlands. He left school at 15 to become an apprentice in a commercial art studio just after the second world war, when the car industry was beginning to expand. In the early 1950s he moved to London, where he was greatly influenced by Wootton, his colleague at Carlton Studios, who had an extraordinary level of adaptability to commercial markets. Vic worked for the motor companies Hillman, Humber, Triumph, Sunbeam, MG, Austin and Morris. He also produced artwork for posters and brochures for motorcycles such as Royal Enfield and Norton and aircraft for Hawker Siddeley, and illustrations for the packaging of many Frog aircraft model kits.
Vic returned to the Midlands in 1956, initially working for Osman Webb and then setting up his own studio in Birmingham in the 1960s. He continued to be commissioned for transport illustration, including prestigious work in the Middle East for Metro Camell trains. In 1966 he was commissioned for a series of aviation paintings for the Pakistan air force, produced in Peshawar.
In the 1970s, he worked more with graphic design and layout, as illustration and painting were being replaced by colour photography. In 1973, he won the Letraset international typeface competition for designing the font Shatter, an adaptation of the classic Helvetica font. His idea was to obtain a typeface with action and movement, but retaining the clarity of the Helvetica design, with each individual character easily identifiable. Shatter continues to remain commercially popular and has become a classic in its own right.
During the building boom of the 1980s, Vic switched his attention to architectural perspective illustration, including work for Peter Hing & Jones in Birmingham and Michael Aukett, latterly Aukett Associates, in London. He sometimes produced one or more of these paintings a week. He exhibited two works in the 1988 Royal Academy summer show, one commissioned by Michael Horden and the other by Foster Associates.
Vic had a keen interest in sailing and was an active member of the South Staffordshire sailing club. His passion for yachts and marine art developed through numerous painting commissions for the yacht designer Jon Bannenberg, including one of the pioneering yacht Nabila for the Saudi tycoon Adnan Khashoggi. Jon's son, Dickie, remembers Vic's artwork being delivered by train to the studio wrapped in brown paper which Jon would always rip off impatiently, propping the painting on a chair for the day for everyone to admire.
Vic was well-liked for his quiet and calm personality, and was admired as an artist unparalleled in painting yachts against backdrops such as the Antarctic, the Golden Gate bridge and fireworks over Istanbul. He continued taking on high-profile commissions into his 80s. He never used computer technology, instead relying on the techniques of hand-rendering and painting that he had practised during his long career.
Vic is survived by his wife, Hilda, whom he married in 1950, his children, Leigh, Paul and Tonia, and four grandchildren.