Cool Cars #03

Cars are a great way to practice your drawing skills and fine tune your style. There are many instructional videos available from the likes of Scott Robertson who can provide you with some really useful information and design ideas. The first step for any budding artist wishing to design the ultimate cool car is to practice your drawing skills. Cars are comprised of a series of lines, curves and ellipses and for the most part you should learn to draw all these free hand especially the curves which will differ as they travel around the vehicle.

Set aside some time to sit down with some blank, cheap paper and a simple pencil. Place three dots somewhere on the page and practice joining them up. It sounds simple but you would be amazed how difficult it is to hit the dots precisely with an unpracticed hand. This can help develop how smooth your curves and lines are. Do this with two dots to practice straight lines and just have a go at filling a whole page with different ellipses. A useful tip to drawing a great straight line is to use your whole arm. Try not to use your wrist when you draw, take your whole arm the length of the line and practice it a couple of times before you put the pencil in contact with the paper.

When you have put in some good practice groundwork you can move on to looking at perspective. The same car shown as a two dimensional image will have a drastic look and feel change when displayed as a front three quarter view or if you have a great hold of perspective already you can try it out with a fish eye lens technique. The right perspective can make your car dynamic, engaging and cool. Even if your car has a simple basic design, adding a one point perspective can create action and realism for your car and has a completely different impact on the beholder than a stationary, stoic 2D design.

Don't forget your car wheels. Many vehicle artists spend more time on the car wheels than any other part. For the hubcaps alone you can have a large variety of designs, the wheels can be large with sunken hubcaps, they can have 5 or 12 spokes they can be regulated spokes or inverse triangular in shape. Have fun mixing and matching hubcap designs and exaggerating aspects of your vehicle. You can even play around with the wheel sizes having large wheels, small wheels, or large back wheel and small front wheels.

If your car design isn't what you want it to be entirely, then pick up a piece of paper and overlay your design. Trace the overall shape of the design you like and the aspects of your drawing you want to keep. Develop the idea further on your new design. Try out different models and version of your original car design until you find one you are happy with. Learning the steps is important when learning how to draw cool cars.