I’m not normally a fan of American muscle cars, but several days ago I had a pretty strong urge to do a quick sketch of an old-school 1972 Chevelle. I’ve always had an attraction to the ’72’s, as my neighbor’s brother had a red (and loud) one when I was growing up in Michigan in the 80’s. It left an impression on me.

Like the 1988 Mustang GT I just drew, this was supposed to be a quick and loose sketch just like that one. However, I found myself falling into the same trap I usually fall into, and that’s slowly overworking the drawing until it’s lost any sense of artistic spontaneity and character. I love the look of quick and loose sketches, especially those with beautiful line quality and a clear focal point. Unfortunately, this Chevelle drawing doesn’t have much of either of those two qualities. I literally had to tell myself to STOP working on it and call it done, otherwise I would have tightened it up too much and turned it into what I call a “sloppy rendering”. You know what I’m talking about…a rendering that looks as if it’s supposed to have been a super-detailed and crisp representation of the real car, but it looks like crap because the details and line work are overly sloppy.

With that said, I have mixed feelings about this Chevelle drawing. On one hand, I like the perspective and I feel like I did a decent job of capturing the correct proportions of the iconic Chevelle shape. On the other hand, the sketch and rendering style is rather weak. To me, it looks too tight to be considered a sketch, but too loose to be considered a rendering.

I suppose these are the things I’m going to have to deal with as I learn how to draw cars again. And even though I’m not entirely happy with it, I had fun drawing an old-school muscle car.