MY TOP 5 TIPS IF YOU WANT TO IMPROVE YOUR CAR DRAWINGS!

#1: Practice makes perfect!

Look at this drawing I made around 8 years ago. I made it for my grand-dad’s birthday, and I was super proud of it when I finally finished it after some hours. And if you check out the post I created just seconds before this one, you can see how far I’ve come since then! It’s just years of practice!

#2: Cheat!

Alright guys, don’t get it wrong, cheating usually is a bad thing. But if you always mess up the proportions of your car, then it is very useful: Just print your template and lay another sheet of paper on top. Now you can roughly sketch the cars shape - just try to reduce the cheating with every drawing - at one point you will have a feeling for the proportions and can draw the cars freehand! NOTE: If you have an old Computer screen, you can even tape a piece of paper to it and copy the shape with a SOFT pencil - it is easier because you have got light from underneath. NOTE 2: I admit, even I am cheating. I’m not too good at drawing cars by hand, and it also saves hours of time - and as time is my biggest problem when it comes to drawing I don’t feel too bad about that.

#3: Get yourself some professional gear!

Yup, professional drawing gear is expensive. And many of you probably can’t afford it - me neither. Take these Copic pens for example: They are fantastic for drawing - but they cost around 3,50€ / 3.60$ EACH. And you need at least four or five of them to properly draw a car in this color (That’s the reason why my cars are always grey…) If you want really impressive drawing results, a full set is almost the only option - but a set with 72 Copics costs 250€ / 222$ which is unaffordable for me and many others. So look out for cheaper alternatives: For example a 72 set of Prismacolor Premier pencils ‘only’ costs 45€ / 54$ and you can achieve awesome results as well [Check out Orhan Özvatan, he is using them!]. And if you combine that with your birthday or Christmas, you can easily get some gear that will definitely improve your drawings.

#4: Get yourself inspiration and motivation!

Browse the Car Art community on Car Throttle, explore car drawings on Instagram, watch car drawing videos on YouTube - no matter what you do, if you get blown away by their results, it will motivate you to draw as well (or in my case to finish my drawings…) - and the more you draw the better you get. Also you get inspiration what kind of car you could draw. [Check out Darko Iker, he is amazing!]

#5: Listen to audio books or CDs!

Do you want to finish it quick or do you want it to become a masterpiece? Masterpieces take time, so listen to an audio book or a CD when drawing (can be anything, I prefer crime stories, for example ‘the three investigators’* or ‘Professor van Dusen’) to blend out the time! It might just sound like a little trick, but try it out, it helps so much! It also will prevent you from stopping halfway through the drawing because you’re only halfway through the story!

UNNECESSARY INFORMATION:
I still like these even tho I’m 14 years old… And there is an endless amount of them in German… Although here they are called ‘Die drei Fragezeichen’ (‘The three ???’) and the names of the detectives are also slightly changed: Justus Jonas, Peter Shaw and Bob Andrews… I can only recommend them, but you can listen to anything ;-)

That’s it for now, I hope it was helpful! See you soon!

Tobi aka The Stig’s German Cousin