They say that the more you draw, the better you will get. I’ve always been a believer in this, and it’s been frustrating to admit that my skills as an automotive artist have actually decreased over the past year due to the fact that I’ve hardly been drawing. I mean, take a look at the quick truck sketch I uploaded in my last post. Blech – I don’t even know why I posted that! Well…I’m very happy to report that I believe I’ve finally busted through my slump and found an awesome new rendering style that I actually like.

Before starting this C7 Z06 drawing, I took a good look at the work of many other automotive artists and illustrators – and it dawned on me that I was drawn (no pun intended) more towards the illustrator types who did the tight vector-style renderings.

The guy who runs problemchildkustoms.com is a good example of that. BUT – I’ve never had the patience to create illustrations with that amount of detail so I knew that a style such as that wasn’t the best fit for me. I then realized that I don’t have to replicate anyone, and I’m better off finding and developing my own style. And that’s exactly what I’ve done with this Corvette.

Hey – I don’t always draw in grayscale! Here’s the Z06 in bright yellow.

This style is semi-tight, but not over the top. I like looseness and spontaneity in my car drawings, so that’s why I purposefully left the pencil lines from the original sketch show through, and I wasn’t overly concerned about making all the details perfect. My goal is to capture the essence of the car, and then move on to the next one. Like I said above – I don’t have the patience and attention span to create photo-qualtiy renderings and illustrations.

This is how this project started – I did a loose sketch in SketchBook Pro, and then inked it in Adobe Illustrator

So this will be my style going forward, and I’m anxious to try it with some other cars.

Now that the seventh generation of the Corvette has been unveiled, I thought I would pay tribute to one of my favorite current cars by doing a side profile rendering of it. The C6 Corvette Z06 has been at the top of  my “I gotta have” list for a long time now, and it doesn’t help that my neighbor drives an awesome looking black on black one that teases me (and my lowly Mustang GT) every time it drives by. There’s just something about the C6 Z06 that pushes all the right buttons for me.

I’m somewhat satisfied with this rendering, though I think I screwed up the proportions just a little bit by accidentally making it shorter than the real car – either that or the wheels are a touch too big. Unfortunately, I was too far into this rendering before I noticed it and I didn’t feel much like going back and reworking the sketch to make it right. Yes, I have a very short attention span.

This entire drawing took about 3 hours. I spent about 1 hour sketching it out, trying to get it as correct as I could, then I spent the next two hours laying down the color and the details. The one thing I really like about drawing on the computer (with SketchBook Pro and my Wacom tablet) is that I can make very significant tweaks on the fly without risk of ruining the rendering. For example, I originally began sketching this out over a white background, but then I thought it might be interesting to throw a red background under it and render it that way. You can’t make a switch like that so easily drawing cars the old school way (with vellum and pens).

I feel like I’m getting back into the rhythm drawing cars again. I’m excited to move onto my next one, but I’m not sure what that’s going to be yet…