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.
