an honest opinion please....

[chevellez16]

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r3/willdecletjr/HPIM0460.jpg
65 buggy. i did this for a freind of mine who is restoring his vw
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r3/willdecletjr/HPIM0461.jpg
67 plymouth gtx. this is a rendering i came up with for a model car i enterd into a build off on scaleaotomag.com
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r3/willdecletjr/HPIM0462.jpg'71 datsun 510
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r3/willdecletjr/HPIM0463.jpg
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!:thumbsup:

[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.:thumbsup:

[Hdesign]

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

[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. :)

[Hdesign]

If you're gonna do the marker thing. There's 2 or 3 brands that produce the best results.

Prismacolor
Pantone
Chartpak AD markers

I'm a Chartpak guy because I like how it floods an area with even color and no streaky lines. The color selection is really nice too but they are crazy expensive...like $3-$4 each. I have about 60 of them. It's a personal preference though.

[city_ofthe_south]

no copic? :( .... i don't know anything about them really, just wish i had time to try markers .... oh and more digital painting, and vexel art, and technical pen and maybe some 3D and and and and why are there only 24 hours in a day and why do i have to have a job? or eat or sleep. if only i could draw hot rods instead. i don't even remember the last time i got to do some real sketching on PAPER with a PENCIL! ... small rant, over now.

[chevellez16]

what kind of paper do you use when using these markers ?
do you know of any other tutorial sites besides the ones on cardesignnews.com?
the turotrials on cardesign are very helpful. but i need all the help i can get.
i picked up two markers and started to practice on how to apply an even stroke across the page.
another quick question.
in the tutorial on the cardesign web site an air marker is used.i was wondering if any of you had any more info on air markers.
what is an inexpensive software to use on my pc at home.
for now this is just a hobby but i wouuld love to do more with it.
i was thinking about coral paint software. i think i spelled it right.

[Hdesign]

Forget the air markers, I've used them and they're not much better than using good ol' Prismacolor pastel chalk. They just cost more.

Thom Taylor's book goes through all of this but I do it a little different. I scrape the chalk with an exacto knife so that I have a nice pile of colored powder. Take a gauze pad (common at any pharmacy section in Walmart) and rub it into the scraped chalk. Wipe it right onto the drawing and then erase the edges you want to be crisp. Use Prismacolor colored pencils for the detail work like shut lines and edge highlights. Do all your colored pencil work after markers because it gets ruined if you do it the other way around. Use white gouache paint for the "pigeon poop" hot spots last.

I use Bienfang Grafix 360 Marker Paper but I'm thinking of switching to LetraMax brand because I'm sick of the marker bleeding on edges. I've heard LetraMax is better for that. Both are pretty expensive for the size I use. 14x17 is the smallest I'd go because you just can't get the details in a smaller scale. The problem is that I have to scan pieces of the rendering and put them back together in Photoshop. Major pain in the butt.

As far as Corel Draw, I have it at work and used it twice in 8 years. Illustrator seems to do the same thing only better but I use that for Tshirts/logos and vector based graphics, not renderings. Photoshop is the way to go if you can swing the $750 for it. Photoshop Elements is OK but it's very, very limited. Even if you can buy an older verson of Photoshop, you'll have fun with it. I have 6.0 on my PC and it's great, the later versions don't really add any features that help me out so I'm fine with this version.

Bottom line is, don't worry about the digital stuff right now. Stick with doing it the traditional way. You need to learn to walk before you run. All the digital effects in the world can't make a mediocre drawing look killer. You're on a good path right now, it just takes time.

Unfortunately, in the art tools world, you get what you pay for. You don't want your supplies to limit you.

[chevellez16]

thanks for all the pointers.i will definetly have to pick up a copy of thom's book.for the meantime i've been studying all the renderings and studying the tutorial you told me about.

i will continue to practice.i have plenty of down time at work where i do most of my auto art anyway.i hope i'm not a bother.i'm sure that i will have more questions if that's ok with you and the others in the forum.

thanks again Hermance!!!:cheers:

[Hdesign]

Fire away, always happy to help....or at least try.

[city_ofthe_south]

marker tutorials http://search.deviantart.com/?section=browse&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_scale%3A5&q=marker+tutorial

[chevellez16]

marker tutorials http://search.deviantart.com/?section=browse&qh=boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_scale%3A5&q=marker+tutorial

thanks! to both of you.any help is greatly appreciated.:thumbsup: :thumbsup: