How To Draw Cars

This video is all about drawing cars. We'll start with some simple block-in shapes, move on to a sketch study using reference, and then create a concept military vehicle from scratch. And be sure to check out the end of the video for a huge time-saving cheat using SketchUp. I'm David Finch, I've been a comic book artist for over 25 years. This is a long one, but I had a lot to pack in here, so I hope you enjoy and I hope you find it useful. And if you do, please hit like and be sure to share. Also, I've got a Red Sonja cover on Indiegogo going live in a few days, and a Batman Catwoman exclusive variant available now. Help support the channel and get some great collectible covers. Links are in the description below. All right, we're going to start this one by drawing a really, really simple blocked-in car shape. And so to do that, I'm drawing in a horizon line, and then I'm just drawing in some simple perspective. This is going to be a two-point perspective. And so I'm just throwing it in really quickly, not using a ruler, it's just a sketch. And so now that I've got that in, I'm getting in my block for the main body of the car, and then a block for the cabin. I'm just using the most simple shapes I possibly can here, and just simple blocked-in shapes for the wheels. You'll notice that the back wheel is much more narrow than the front wheel well, and probably more narrow than you might be thinking just at first glance when you imagine drawing a car. It's a common mistake that I see people drawing the wheel wells or the wheels much too wide along the side of the car. And so I'm just adjusting my lines just a little bit, just to make it look a little bit more like a car, rounding out the cabin, rounding out the front of the car a little bit. There's no reference for this one. It's really just a very, very simple shape, just to show you how easy it is to block-in a car, being essentially a simple rectangle with a smaller rectangle on top, and then using your perspective and making sure to line up the details to get the rounding and the detail that you need. And so quickly, I'm just drawing in a sidewalk. I've got a little lamppost there, a garbage can, just a little bit of detail. I've got a sidewalk on the other side, and just a quick indication of a couple buildings behind it. And you'll see how quickly you can establish an entire street scene using the very simple perspective that I put in. And this is why when I draw my scenes, anything that has any kind of linear perspective in it, I draw perspective for the entire scene, because I can very simply place all of my elements in it. I have to admit, the figure in that one is probably a little bit too large for the car. It's a very, very short car. So in this next example, we're going to be drawing a car from reference. And so the truth is, while I have my reference, I'm really not following the actual perspective of the car and trying to make it look exactly like the reference. And strictly speaking, using proper perspective, I can draw a car from quite a few different angles just using one reference photo. I really don't methodically copy the reference that I have, because it rarely fits into the scene that I'm trying to draw. And so I'm doing the same thing that I did earlier. Really, really simple blocks. Simple blocks for the wheel wells. I don't do this really when I'm actually drawing a car for a page. This would be a step that I would skip. But it can actually be helpful just to get all of your dimensions down. Know the space that your car is taking up in space and making sure that it's sized well for the other elements in the scene. And so from there, I've lightened that down. And now I'm just looking at my reference and drawing in the basic broad shapes that I can see. And so I've got my wheel well, the front bumper. I'm lining up in the center of that my grill. And you'll notice it's much further to the, I guess it would be the left side of the car, but the right of the screen than it is to the left. Very similar to the reference, really that way. And that's just because as things get closer, obviously they get larger. And as they get further away, they get smaller. And so I've got my headlights lined up. I'm just making sure that the top of the headlights line up in perspective and the bottom also lines up. I do some quick guidelines just to make sure that my bumper was centered where I wanted it to be and projected out from the grill. And now I'm just drawing in the detail below the bumper. There's a bit of a, I guess, design element or something that catches wind for the radiator. I don't know cars. I just know how to draw them. And so now I'm drawing the line up from the front of the car up to where the cabin rests. Drawing in the top of the hood and just a little bit of detail on top of the hood. And now my roof line and my roof is actually taller than I drew that box. It was a little bit too short. And you'll notice that the actual cabin is narrower than the rest of the body of the car. So the two main pillars at the front of the cabin actually come together a little bit. And the side windows angle up quite a bit. There's a lot of rounding to the car. It's not a flat shape. And so you really want to make sure that you're getting that established. And I also want to point out that I've got quite a bit more forced perspective in my drawing than there is in the reference. And what I mean by that is the front of the car is quite a bit longer and then it gets a little bit shorter as it goes back and it really kind of pulls out to you. It just gives the car a little bit more drama. I really like using that when I'm drawing them in a panel. I don't know what focal length or camera you would... I just don't know cameras well enough to know which would be which. But I'm just lengthening the car and forcing the perspective a little bit. Getting the back of the car established in. And now I'm going to go ahead and draw my wheel. I'm drawing the center where I want my wheel to go and the circle around it. And I'm eyeballing that completely. There is a way to use square shapes and draw lines through them and I'll show you in a minute how you can do that. But I don't ever use that really in practice. I eyeball it based on the space that I have. And you'll notice also that the wheels aren't going directly up and down. They're actually angled backward. So the bottom of the wheel is closer to us than the top of the wheel. And that's actually a perspective thing that I just learned not that long ago. Just a few years ago. And I learned that actually from a video that Sean Gordon Murphy did. I'll link that in the description below too if I can find it. And in a minute I'll break down exactly how and why that works. So I feel like the back of the car is sticking out just a little bit too far. I really want as things go back in space to really shorten them. And as things get closer to us in space to lengthen them out and it just accentuates the perspective. Drawing the detail in for the center of my wheels. And you can see it's a very very simple thing. Getting a car in. Using proper perspective. Using reference. And so now I'm drawing a horizon line that's very low. And so I'm drawing lines projecting up from it. It's a two-point perspective again. And we're going to be looking at the car from below. This is just going to be a really really quick sketch. Just to show that I can use the same shapes. Very very simplified. Get my wheel wells in there. And you're looking at a car in a dramatic angle as if you're right on the ground and it's passing almost over you. But it's really the same drawing. Just slightly different angle. Hopefully you can see how using proper perspective you can use the same reference picture and get a car that looks pretty realistic without having to methodically copy the reference. And just a car from above. Just a simple block in shape. No reference at all. So it doesn't look like the greatest car in the world. But it's just very very quick to get most of the detail that you want for a car. So now I want to show you quickly exactly how cylinders actually work in perspective. So I've got my perspective line. And then I'm drawing a guideline up from it using a 90 degree angle. And that is actually the center line for my wheel. And so whatever perspective line you have your cylinder on the rounding of the cylinder always follows a 90 degree angle from that perspective line. It still seems crazy to me. But I've done some research and it totally checks out. So now I'm going to show you how to draw a circle in perspective using a somewhat simplified academic method. And so I'm just quickly faking in some perspective. Drawing in some vertical lines. And then drawing in my box in perspective. And I'm drawing an X through it. And where that X meets I'm drawing center lines in perspective. And then my circle just meets the edges of those lines. But you can see it's actually really not right when it's in perspective because it's pointing directly up and down. And so the proper way to do it. And I don't do this. This would be way too much work for me to try to work things out this way every time. But if it's helpful for you to approach it this way I'd suggest you give it a try. And so I've got my center line. And there's my 90 degree angle. And so I'm actually going to redraw that box along the 90 degree angle like that. And then my circle actually rests inside that box at the proper angle. And so if you're looking at a car downward from that angle that would be the perspective that you would see the wheel in. It wouldn't be directly up and down. Believe it or not. And I suggest you look at photos. It will absolutely confirm it. All right for this next drawing I've already got all my perspective in. And I've gotten it lightened down. And I'm ready to start sketching in my vehicle on top of it. For this one I'm just making it up. This is a military-ish vehicle. I guess you could call it a concept. And so I'm blocking in larger shapes. Just kind of establishing the overall size and shape of my military vehicle on the page. Got some kind of a detail back there. There's actually a picture of some kind of military vehicle that I found online that I used as my inspiration for this one. Honestly it looks a lot cooler than I think this came out really. But the point is that I wanted to create something basically from scratch. Not using reference. And so the reference that I'm using is just for some of the details. And I took some shape ideas here and there. And I'm just kind of mashing it all together into basically my own design. This can be a little bit more difficult. Because I don't really have landmarks established the way that I would with a picture that I'm using reference for. And so what I do is any detail that I put on one side of the vehicle. I just make sure to mirror on the other side. And obviously make it a little bit shorter. Because it's further away in perspective. And so I've got the wheel wells drawn in. Basically the overall shape of my military vehicle drawn in. Some details on the front bumper here. I'm going to give it some little hooks so it could be towed. I always find that the more detail looks like it's actually usable on any kind of a vehicle or setting or background. The more believable it will be. So I try to make an effort that way. I'm drawing in the light bar. I'm getting a little bit sketchy in there. And so I'm just bringing out the ruler just to clean things up a little bit. So just getting in some lights. Making sure again to mirror everything over as I draw it. And you can see how I have basically a triangular shape for the front. And then it goes to more of a slanted kind of a rectangular shape in the back. And so the overall vehicle has a shape that I established. And then the rest is just detail and small bump outs and recesses on top of that original shape. Drawing some thermoses and bedrolls and maybe ammo packs or whatever on the top of it. Like they're all strapped on. I really like detail that just has some humanity to it. That can really add a bit of a story to what you're drawing. And so I've drawn center lines for my wheels. I'm making sure that my wheels are lined up in perspective. Drawn a line in with a ruler just to make sure it's perfectly clean because I really would not like to have to erase a wheel if it's off of perspective once I've drawn it in. And so I've got my ovals drawn in. And I realized that I drew the oval straight up and down. I still always do it and I have to adjust. And so I drew a 90 degree angle. I just eyeballed it from my perspective line. And I adjusted my oval shape to make sure that it reflects the perspective properly. And so I'm drawing in just more detail for the wheel. The actual tire projects out from the rim inside it and I want to make sure that that's clear. And so what I'm drawing, I'm not just drawing flat shapes. Getting in the opposite wheel drawn in there. I'm eyeballing all of these wheels really. And so the exact width of that oval, it's something that I'm sure that there's a real way to make sure that everything is perfectly done exactly right. Nobody has time to do that on any kind of a schedule. And so you really have to learn to be able to just eyeball those kinds of things. And so that's what I did there. And I just went loose and sketchy with it and just made adjustments. And I'm making adjustments still just to make sure that it all works. Now I'm drawing in the rim for my wheel. And then the inside of the rim. And there's a bit of a hub in the center. And I'm making sure to push them in and pull them out. So they're not all sitting on the exact same plane. Also, you'll notice that my rim is actually narrower to the wheel on the sides. And then there's more width at the top and the bottom because they aren't foreshortened the way that the sides are. Something to be aware of. Getting my fenders established a little bit better. And just making sure to get all the detail pretty well locked into place. This is my sketch phase. So everything's going to be cleaned up from here. But the more clear I have it, the easier it is later on. I found the rear tire. I just thought it was a little bit too wide. It's further back in perspective and I want to push it back. So I made it more narrow. And I'm also going to adjust the bumper behind it. I'm just going to erase that out and just shorten that also. You really want to accentuate the shortness of things as they go backwards. And so now I'm just getting in the final line drawing. And so I'm just going ahead making sure that everything's nice and clean and clearly delineated. I'm using the shapes that I have underneath. Adding a little bit more detail. Getting in my little bumper shapes there. And the overall bumper shape. And it's amazing to me always after I clean up something that I put quite a bit of work into to make sure that I've got everything. Just how much more detail it really takes for me to actually get something that I'm happy with in a tight drawing. And so this part takes a little bit of patience. But truthfully this is really my favorite part of drawing these kinds of vehicles. This is where I really feel like I can bring it to life. So I'm making sure that everything is in the correct perspective as I go. So I'm just kind of visually lining up. And I can really see my underlying lines behind the picture. Hopefully you can too in the video. Hopefully it's clear enough that you can see where my perspective lines are. And where I'm on my perspective properly. And places where I'm kind of coming off of it a little bit mistakenly here and there. And it just happens. So I'm getting in my cabin. Getting a little bit of detail like some hinges maybe. I think that's kind of what I'm thinking with those little shapes right there. Just so it looks like maybe you know that could be swung open for whatever reason. Why somebody would want to swing open the front windshield on a truck like this. But it just you know adds a little bit of realism to it I feel like. So I've got a little more of it established here. Getting in the front windshield. And you can see I've added some detail to the front bumper that really wasn't there in the sketch. As I clean it up I find areas where I can just take things a little bit further. And I'm adding some more shape to it. Then finding places where it's really not actually working. It's very easy with these kinds of things when things get a little bit more complex to start drawing shapes that actually fight the form. And so it can be a little bit of a push and pull to make sure that I'm drawing proper completed volumetric shapes. I'm just mirroring it on the other side. Making sure it all lines up as well as I possibly can. It's rare that I'm ever perfect with a drawing like this. There'll be things that are just off here and there. And things won't line up absolutely perfectly. And I try not to be too precious about it. It can be a little bit difficult for me to let things go. Getting a bit of a fender in. That's a detail actually in the picture that I was looking at. It had something like that. I thought it looked pretty cool so I wanted to throw that in there. And then my actual wheel fenders. And getting some of the side of the car established. The bottom of the doors. I want the doors to actually push out a little bit. So they're not flush with the side of the car. And that fender that's in front of the door also pushes out. Just to give it a little more dimension than just a completely flat side. Another thing on this car. I actually made it easier for myself by lining up all of the lines along the side of the car. Level with the ground. If I wanted to make the entire side of the car sit at odd angles. It would have made the whole drawing a little bit more difficult. And it's certainly doable. But it just presents a few more challenges. So I'm just cleaning up my wheel. Getting the rim in. And then the inner part of the tire around that. And here's where you can really see that it's actually much taller at the top and the bottom. And shorter toward the back there where it goes into perspective. It's important to get that in there. It makes things look much more believable as a proper circle in perspective. And it just gives it some dimension. An extra little line. This is actually where I'm going to put the tread for my tire. I want that to be a bit of a separate shape. So it bumps back out from the rounded wall of the tire. And I'm just drawing in some indications of where I want my treads to be. Finishing up some detail on the car. There's quite a bit of this that I skipped. Just because it gets a little bit repetitive. I would love to be able to put the entire drawing up. There's so much that I could talk about every little detail that I'm putting on here. I could go on, believe me. But making sure that everything has a nice flow from the front to the back. And actually fits together. And giving it a bit of an antenna. It's a military vehicle. They still have those. And now just finishing out the wheels. I've got the wheel hub drawn in. And now I'm just drawing in a bit of an inner hub that sits out from that. And some detail in there. And some bolts that go all the way around it. And so those are the holes where I'm going to recess my bolts. It's a bit small so I won't be able to get too much in there. But hopefully an indication will give it a little bit of depth. And now just a little bit of indicated detail for a suspension. I don't actually really know that well how a suspension works. I'm sure I could reference it a bit more clearly. But you really won't see much of it there. So I'm really just drawing a bit of a suspension arm. And hopefully letting the viewer's imagination do the rest. And so now in getting my treads in. You can get really complex with these patterns. And drive yourself crazy. I tend to like to just go with something a little bit more simple. So I'm just doing a bit of a zigzag pattern. That just goes evenly across. Just makes my life much easier than if I tried to go with a pattern. That takes a really odd track over the surface of the wheel. And getting more narrow as it rounds down below the bottom. And it's just it's a bit of a symmetrical pattern. But with a little bit of lighting and detail it really reads like tread. And it's something that I can do pretty quickly. And so now going into lighting. I'm not going to do any rendering or cross hatching on this. I want to keep it pretty clean. Just for the purposes of this drawing. And so I'm just shadowing in the wheel wells. A bit of a cast shadow underneath the bumper over the wheel. Got the shadowing drawn in the back bumper there too. And then so much of the lighting that I do really is just line weights. So on undersides I just go thick with the line. On sides that are facing more toward the light I just go thinner. And I just methodically do that over the whole picture. It gives it a good sense of lighting without using overly heavy shadowing. And so my tire rounds under toward the rim. So I'm just shadowing along the top of it there. And then it rounds out toward the tread here. So I'm just giving it a little bit of shadow on the opposite side here. And leaving a space for my tread which I want to kind of sit flat. And just putting in some shadowing into the actual rim. And getting some of my bolts delineated. Just being aware of my shapes and shadowing on the undersides. Correcting the shape of my tire a little bit. That happens quite a bit. When you're eyeballing circles in space it's pretty easy to come off just a tiny little bit and have it be really glaringly obvious. So I just try to be aware of it and just erase it when something looks like it's not right. The only thing left for my tire is the tread and I will get to that in just a little bit. But first I'm going to add a little bit of heavier shadow to some of the undersides of that fender right there. And just accentuating that it rounds under. And underneath the doors I added a little bit and under some other pieces. Some cast shadow from the little grommet type bolts. I don't really know what they are. But whatever it is that they drew there I put some shadow under it. And throwing up some shadow underneath my headlight bracket. And now just cleaning up my window frames a little bit. And just small hits of shadow into the details. Just enough to kind of bring them out and give them a little bit of dimension. It's amazing how little you really have to do to take a flat drawing and really make it pop. Just with a little bit of line weight. Some shadowing in my small grill here. A bit of a cast shadow underneath that headlight. Moving on to some of the undercarriage. I decided based on the lighting that I've got my far tire is just going to be dark. And I'm going to detail in some of my suspension. And I have a real habit of doing this. That would be pretty shadowed. It's well underneath the bumper and it's well behind that wheel from where the lighting is. So I'm going quite a bit darker. But I kind of build up to that in stages. I don't want to just darken something out until I realize that it's probably the best call. And I'm finally doing that for the suspension on the other side. But I'm also making sure that my tread really stands out in the silhouette. Whenever you're doing any kind of a silhouetted shape the actual outline of the silhouette shape becomes very important. And so I'm just I'm noticing here as I'm drawing this. It's really not centered in the front of the bumper. So I just brought it out a little bit further just to make it a little bit more centered. Finishing up my windows just a little bit more. And just going through and really doing the same thing. Just line weights. Some shadowing underneath the door handles. Underneath that pack in the back there. And then on my light bar here. I'm just dipping the shadows between the light down into them. It really pops them out quite a bit just doing that. So now I'm moving on to the tread. I'm going completely dark at the bottom but not totally dark. I still want to keep that little space there. Because there would be a bit of a hit of light where the where the inside of the tread points up toward the light. And just shoring up my shadowing in there. And finishing that shape out. Now just doing the same thing with the back tire. Really the back tire did essentially the same thing. The back wheel is really exactly the same as the front wheel. So all the same things apply. And so I'm just repeating exactly what I did on the front wheel for the back wheel. And so I'm kind of getting into the final stages of getting all this stuff kind of worked in. Making sure that I've got line weights everywhere. Popping things as much as I want to pop them. I went dark with my windows. I could have gone reflective. And maybe that would have been actually kind of a nice thing to do. Just as a bit of an extra for this. Just to show a method of making the windows look like they're reflected. But in this case I went dark. And so this is the only place in the whole drawing I'm adding rendering. I didn't want that skid plate to be completely dark. It's got detail on it. And I wanted it to pop a little bit. So I just added some line work to it. Just to shadow it out and knock it back. Finishing up my lights a little bit. This is all really just some negative space drawing. Just to bring those out. And finally just finishing some detail on the gear that I've got. Sitting on the top of the truck kind of strapped down. I've got some straps that I've drawn on there. To make it look like things are tied down on top. And the last thing that I wanted to do is add a shadow to my drawing. And because I have all my perspective over the whole page drawn in. It's really easy for me to add a shadow that looks pretty believable. And sits in proper perspective from the truck. And now the truth is my shadow is a bit of a shorthand. I'm not really actually establishing a light source. Drawing a ruled line from every element from the light source. To make sure that everything lines up perfectly. I'm just making sure that it's believable enough. It's going in the right direction. And it's following the perspective that's on the ground. And so now to fill in my bigger black shapes. I just hold the pencil at the side and use the side of the pencil. It's much quicker to fill in a large area that way. And that pretty much wraps up that one. That is our military vehicle concept. And so before I end this video. I want to show you a method that I learned. I learned this from Joe Quesada. Who is the Marvel editor-in-chief at the time. In his office he showed me this. And it blew my mind. And what this is is SketchUp. And so I'm going into 3D Warehouse. Which is part of SketchUp. I typed in Taurus. Which is the type of car that we were drawing earlier on. I'm just opening up into my scene. I can move it around. Place it. I wanted to find a bit of a better model. That one looked pretty cheap. It's not really the best model. But you can see how easy it is to scale things. Move things around. And get a bunch of things established in the scene. And so now I'm using the better Taurus. I've just drew a plane for a ground underneath. I'm extruding a wall. And then I'm going to extrude this up into maybe just a bit of a short curb. Just to give it a bit of a background. And you also have a field of view option. And I can slide it in. Slide it out. And very quickly pick how much I want to push my perspective. Also you have a lot of face options. And I just went with a monochrome that makes everything white. And makes it much easier to trace. Then you export it as a JPEG. And trace it on your screen. Print it out. Or put it directly into your drawing program. And the work is done for you. Just like that. It's a cheat. But it saves a whole lot of time. You can get some great results. They're models of just about anything that you can imagine on SketchUp. All right. That's it for this one. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to catch us live on our Monday Night Draw live stream. Monday nights at 8 o'clock Eastern. And I will see you in the next video.