an honest opinion please....

[chevellez16]

65 buggy. i did this for a freind of mine who is restoring his vw

67 plymouth gtx. this is a rendering i came up with for a model car i enterd into a build off on scaleaotomag.com
'71 datsun 510

69 chevelle = hellvelle
i start by tracing,then photo copy,enlarge then go from there.
i really would like to know what you guys think.
all comments are welcome.
-Will

[Hdesign]

Will,
Looks like you're off to a good start. The biggest piece of advice I can give you is to draw, draw, draw. Tracing is a good way to get a general perspective down or at least understand how it works.

Here's my critique, I'm sure others will want to add:

3 toughest parts of car drawing and rendering- 1. perspective, 2. ellipses, 3. shine/glass.

-Your perspective looks pretty good.
-Ditch the checkerboard background, it's distracting. Try doing one more faded.
-Paint schemes look good, that's a subjective thing anyway. (not sure about the blue and yellow)
-You give the appearance of shine with high levels of contrast, these look a little flat to me
-By adding white "hot spots" for highlights, that may make it pop more
-Chrome is extremely difficult, anything facing up gets cool colors, anything facing down reflects ground surface
-The VW has a couple perspective issues with the wheel ellipses, the front needs to be tilted a little counter clockwise, the back looks like it's folding under
-reflections on the bumpers (GTX and Chevelle) need some more work
-study actual photographs of cars in different settings to see how the surface reflects objects and light.
-Same thing with glass, it's highly reflective and the tough part is that it's transparent. You should be able to see inside even if it's tinted

Hope this helps, you just need to analyze how cars really look. Copy photos, copy other renderings. Read How to Draw books, look for rendering tutorials online.
A great book to start with is by Thom Taylor called "How to Draw Cars Like a Pro". www.cardesignnews.com also has some good online tutorials to check out.

Good luck and keep posting work!

[chevellez16]

thanks again for the pointers.i visted the link and found it very helpful.i'm going to try to buy that book you recomended.i'll post my next one up when i'm done with it.

btw,your website is very inspiring.

[Hdesign]

Thanks Will, I really need to allocate some time to update that stuff, starting to get a little long in the tooth.

[city_ofthe_south]

Well, I'd say Ben covered it pretty well (who am i kidding, of course he did). I just wanted to throw in something to go with shine and contrast. I'm all about contrast anyway, in any art, but it's true that it will help with giving the impression that something is shiny. There are fewer gradients in something shiny than a lot of artists use, as in your case. gradients work to show a color shift in paint maybe for a metallic feel but reflections are another matter. Use hard lines to show the horizon for example, or a bend in the sheet metal. Combine that with high contrast and you will look more shiny. Find your happy medium though. There are artists who draw cars that don't do it like that and are excellent, and others who take it even further to make the paint look like still water or glass. It's whatever you want to accomplish.
Also if I was starting all over again and hadn't settled on my method (or hadn't spent so much money on it) then I think I would try markers. There are lots of marker tutorials to be had online and some people doing really cool cars with markers. They might offer you better results than colored pencils.

[city_ofthe_south]

Oh and I forgot, put your camera on a tripod or something and use the timer to fix the blur.