Vehicles

 

This week's task was challenging as it was to complete a study of a car from either the Transport Museum or from online. I decided to attempt to draw my favourite car, the Bugatti Divo, as I appreciate all its complex forms and shapes along with the interesting metal texture and sheen. I decided that I could create an interesting piece with all the different elements in mind. However, I found the perspective of this challenging as there are so many different panels and lines to consider when drawing it. My thumbnail sketches helped establish from which perspective I would be drawing. However, I think that I would have found it useful to draw some cross sections of the car before trying to draw the final piece. The wheels were something I found particularly challenging to draw accurately because they were turned at a slight angle as the car was displayed in that way. It was difficult to match this up with the perspective of the car and to make it look convincing. I enjoyed the challenge of this task but I can see some perspective errors which I will work on correcting in upcoming tasks. I think more preparation was needed before I attempted to draw the final piece. I initially sketched out my piece using a cage method to establish the depth of the car. However, this wasn't as successful as I had imagined so I had to modify it before I was happy with moving on to the shading.

Adding values to the car was interesting as the material it is made of is a dark and not especially shiny metal. It has a sheen to it but it is not glossy, I tried to portray this within my work, so a lot of the highlights are softer and less harsh than they would have been if the car was glossy. The interior of the car was extremely dark also, so I blended in some charcoal and black coloured pencil in order to create a highly contrasting tone that displayed the vague structures on the inside of the car. Other areas that were very dark were the wheels and the grilles at the front of the car as these are made from a type of black carbon or a matte metal material. When adding value, I tried to think carefully about which parts would absorb light and how reflective other areas would be. I wanted to create a fluidity about this piece as the car itself looks very streamlined and the surface of the main body has a fluid light source on it creating the interesting oil spill like patterns. There are a lot of smooth curves to the car and less harsh angular transitions. 

These are some of my initial thumbnail sketches looking at the car from a few different angles. I found it helpful to use the cage method so that I could asses the faces of the car and what kind of depth it would create. At this stage, I could also have drawn some flat cross sections of the car as this would have been useful. Having an orthographic view to reference would have allowed me to understand the complex structures a lot more.

As you can see from this thumbnail, there were some clear perspective issues, which moving forward, I did try to correct. 

This is my initial sketch that I was about to start shading. However, I changed a lot of it as the car looked compressed and skewed. The Buggati itself is quite long and flat; however, this is small and high like a normal car. I corrected this before moving forward.

This was my first attempt which I restarted as it was inaccurate.

Overall this task was challenging and I can see that I will need to work on perfecting how I use techniques such as the cage method in order to get a an accurate looking piece. However, my work did improve throughout the process from the car above to the final piece.