Gmay3's Sketching Journey

Hi everyone, design school has been amazing and really busy, but in the best way. I wanted to share some of the sketches from SQ1CON at UIC in Chicago. I learned so much from this weekend, too much to summarize, but I wanted to focus on 2 things I took away from the conference.

  1. Aspire to design everything, even if you’re not an expert in the specific industry.
  2. Don’t limit yourself to sketching things you like, sketch things you’re not comfortable with.

With this in mind, here are some first attempts at Architecture and Footwear design. I’m a little embarrassed that this is the first time I’ve tried sketching these topics but I want to document them here and improve.

Cars are always something I’ve been putting off, I decided to jump into a daily study. I started with the side views to try to understand the proportions.

Moving into the third dimension I used a sharpie, hoping to keep it quick and loose.

Good work with sketching outside of your comfort zone. Cars can be a difficult thing to draw (I still can’t draw them), but I’ve heard that sketching them will make you better at sketching everything, so keep it up!

I’d like to see you clean up the line quality on these. It feels like you’ve drawn each line slowly and carefully which makes it look scratchy. Try to draw long flowing lines from your elbow and keep your wrist stiff, even if the line doesn’t end up where you wanted it. You can always draw it again.

Also have a think about what details you’re trying to show with each sketch, and choose a perspective that emphasises it.

Yes, draw through!
And be as precise as possible in terms of perspective.
You can’t become loose and flowy and get out of the box before you have fully mastered what is in that box.

Andy, thanks for the feedback. Yeah cars were something I’ve been afraid to start because they’re such a complex thing to draw. It’s getting a bit easier but they’re tough!

Ralph, thank you that’s a really good point. I think I need to take a look back at How to Draw by Scott Robertson for a perspective refresher. I haven’t looked back at it since I started this thread. I’m hoping now that I have been practicing I should be able to understand and digest much more about perspective.

Are you using an underlay? It might help to choose a few images with perspectives that you like, trace a box over the top with proportion marks for wheels etc and use that as an underlay to define your own sketches. Tracing and using underlays isn’t cheating, it’s about efficiently communicating your ideas.

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Overlays are indispensable in the design process, especially when working on details and how they can interact with the overall line flow, stance and proportioning. We do hundreds of them for one vehicle.

I developed a simple DIY Lightbox, simply light it with some LEDs or your phone and you are ready to trace your sketches.

Great job tackling this aerodynamic territory! Even when drawing people these days I still draw in a basic skeleton/block foundation. I imagine with cars it’s the easiest thing to do compared to the rest of the car. At least you’ll have proportions going for you and people can critique the rest!

Great ideas about overlays and using a light box, I didn’t try this on these but I’ll give it a shot for the next round! Thank you all!

Gerry, would you mind if I overlay one of these to help with perspective and proportion?

I wouldn’t mind at all Michael, thank you!

All right cool. I did a screen capture of an overlay. I’m going to record a voice over for it tonight when I get home from this client workshop I’m running today…so you will have a good step by step on what I did. Maybe I’ll start a tutorial Tuesday series.

That’s awesome! Thank you, I’m looking forward to it.

Allright Gerry, I dropped a VO on this over lunch. I hope this helps a little bit. This video mainly covers proportions and a bit on shading. One thing I didn’t talk about is line quality. Getting those predictable, repeatable, dynamic lines down is so important.Once you train yourself to be able to put down some controlled arcs with nice line quality, it is just a matter of rotating the page and controlling the length/position of the lines… easy to write, hard to do, it will take years of practice, but that is the same with anything.

Whoa this is so awesome, thanks so much!

I really like how you added a bit of perspective in the wheels, I can see how that helps a lot. As a beginner car sketcher, seeing the order of your lines is also really helpful. I’ll definitely be checking back at this and reviewing it as I get a bit deeper into shading. I think I’ll use your video to do some overlays to some of the other side views I posted to make sure I get that down.

Huge thanks Michael! Looking forward to the next Tutorial Tuesday.

No problem. Here are a few of the key moments as well:





Working on some cast shadows and hopefully more accurate line work. Using a pencil is helping a bunch to slow things down.

I’ve been working on my linework and shadows a bit and I’m finding that using a C1 marker as a rough underlay is helping a lot. I’m excited for the IDSA Midwest Conference this weekend at UIC, hope to see come Core77 folks there! :slight_smile: