June 11, 2015

some car sketches

(part of the "anything but doodling heads" project, #ABDHP 2015)

5 comments:

DirtyHarry said...

Fantastic!!! I am doing almost the same (nothing close to your level, though), following a bit Scott Robertson's book on freehand perspective.

All these have really a beautiful flow and look so solidly built at the same time.

Can I ask if you use Gouache ot watercolor in tubes?

tozo said...

Thanks,really appreciate it! That Scott Robertson book is terrific, isn't it?
I just used regular half-pan watercolors on these, two, maybe three colors on each picture. Since it's thin moleskine paper, I couldn't do too many passes either,or wet in wet blending...

DirtyHarry said...

Thanks to you Tonci - I have been enjoying all your sketchbook posts.

Scott's book is fantastic; I sort of coupled it with a few great and cheap lessons from Marshall Vandruff that he has on his website to refresh the basics. It is scary how much Scott insists on doing almost everything freehand, but boy, does it help as an exercise. This said, I have the disquieting feeling that drawing straight lines or ellipses freehand voluntarily - it seems the best ellipses I do come out when I am not thinking about it - is never going to feel easy, no matter how much you try.

I find it interesting that many of the cars you drew are cars I tried to draw or that I would like to. Is it just me or most contemporary cars (with the exception of sports cars, maybe) tend to be rather anonymous and ugly?

I don't know: you see photos from the 30s, the 60s, the 70s and cars seem to harmonize more with the surroundings. Which reminds me that I have been trying to copy some of your panels from Get the Lobster while doing these car studies. Tough stuff, really!

tozo said...

Freehanding is very useful in a medium like comics where setting everything up properly would take forever. Whatever can be done without drawing grids...

All the cars I drew are from the same cheap Taschen book called Car Design-- not great for drawing since it doesn't open flat, but the only one I have at home-- and obviously my preference is also older cars. They look terrific! Maybe if I were more of a car person, I'd like the recent cars more, but old cars look great even to people not interested in cars. They're just beautiful objects.

I did try drawing some very recent BMWs yesterday and found that missing the proportions slightly makes them into a Chevrolet, or some other brand. So it has all blended together. Also, I needed to learn a different way of sketching for them that I didn't need for the old cars. Bone lines, etc. So that part's interesting, at least. It's very fun to go from not knowing how to approach it at all to getting some basics in place.

Reverse-engineering Lobster panels -- might be tricky since my process is so chaotic!

DirtyHarry said...

Haha, chaotic or not, it works so well.

"Maybe if I were more of a car person, I'd like the recent cars more, but old cars look great even to people not interested in cars."

Oh man, this might explain my case as well!