Car Design Drawings and Developing Your Line Quality

One key element of any automotive design education is developing your line quality. For many young car designers hoping to make big leaps in their skills, achieving the elusive “flow” in their car design drawings can be the most challenging. Professional car design drawings have a certain quality in the line work. There seems to be no effort, nothing wasted, every mark adds information about the form or adds gesture to the design theme.

For a struggling young designer scratching away on some notebook paper with a ball point pen, seeing professional car design drawings can leave you feeling inspired, yet hopeless at the same time. What am I missing? What will it take to get my drawings to look like that? I need to learn how to draw cars better! If you’re still in high school or looking to apply to a top design school, be sure to check out our automotive design course to take your skills to the next level.

Wax On, Wax Off

There are some great scenes in the 1984 movie “Karate Kid” where the teacher, Mr. Miaggi agrees to train Daniel, who wants to learn karate. Mr. Miaggi has Daniel complete what seems to Daniel as slave work, painting his teachers house, washing and waxing his cars, etc. In each instance, the teacher give Daniel a specific way to do his task. In the famous “wax on, wax off” scene, Mr. Miaggi shows Daniel how he wants the wax applied to the car, how he wants it removed and how he wants Daniel to breath while doing so.

Again, the young charge completely misses the point and just feels like his teacher is talking advantage of him. It’s only later does he realize (and to a greater extent the audience does too), what he perceived as chores were actually training in the very movements he will need to become proficient in karate. Mr. Miaggi was teaching his student’s muscles muscle memory. A key component of karate.

What does all of this have to do with improving the line quality in your car design drawings? Everything really. No, I am not going to go tell you to wax your car. The muscle memory movement of karate, or any other movement where a certain outcome is desired, can be directly applied to drawing cars.

How to do think car designers can draw perfect circles or ellipses over and over again, each time they need to? Wax ion, wax off. Where do you think the skills to draw so smoothly, so each line flows into the next, comes from? Wax on, wax off.

Drawing is just like karate, or trying to hit a baseball. Watch a professional hitter swing. Then compare them to a little league player. See a difference? What does the professional player have that the little leaguer is missing? About 10,000 hours of practice. That’s it. Hitting a baseball, like drawing cars, is hard. So hard, that you can make millions of dollars and be considered a super star if you fail 70% of the time. It’s crazy.

Want to Get Better at Sketching Cars?

So here is a rare thing for someone to say who is trying to teach aspiring, young cars designers how to get better: If you want to improve the line quality of your car design drawings, stop drawing cars.

Yup.

And right now you are thinking:

“How I can get better at drawing and designing cars if I’m not drawing and designing cars?”

Makes no sense, I know.

But let me ask you this. You’ve been drawing cars for a while, maybe years. You draw cars everyday. It’s your passion and you love it. But you look up at your wall and you see that the drawing you just did doesn’t really look that much better in terms of line quality, than the drawing you did 3 or 6 months ago. Why do you think that is? You’re not getting any better in the one area that you want to improve the most. You watch all the videos on youtube and are in all the right car design clubs on Facebook. Yet, there it is in black and white, all around you, the evidence that your drawings still lack the “flow” you want them to have.

I’ll say it again. Stop drawing cars.

And while you are at it, stop using a ball point pen. Stop using pencils designed to fill out standardized tests. Stop drawing on note book paper. Stop drawing small.

How to Improve the Line Quality of Your Car Design Drawings

Just like the karate movements Mr. Miaggi was trying to teach Daniel by having him paint the fence and wax his cars a certain way, we need to go back to basics so you can relearn how to draw. Most of us grow up drawing in coloring books.

These tend to stifle our creativity teaching us to stay in the lines and copy what we see in the real world. Worst of all, they reinforce a technique we carry over from learning to write: Drawing with our hands and wrists. This is an anathema for young car designers. This is where the scratchy line quality comes from.

Not know this and continuing to draw from your hand is why your line quality is not getting better. You’re doing the opposite of what you need to do to achieve your goal. It’s hard to change what you don’t know you don’t know. Believe me, I know.

Are you ready to make a quantum leap in your skills?

Are you ready to achieve the flow in your car design drawings?

The first thing you’re going to need is a 18 x 24 smooth newsprint pad. Yes, 18 x 24. I know it’s about 100 times the size of the notebook paper you’re used to but that is the point. It’s time to get you out of your comfort zone. How can you get the flow if you’re bottled up trying to scratch out a drawing on a 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper? You can’t. The newsprint pad will set you free. And it’s relativity cheap paper to work on so you won’t feel guilty if you mess up a lot. It’s ok. In fact it’s encouraged.

Now you’re going to need something to actually draw with. Let’s start with Primacolor Premium Colored Pencils. You don’t want a set. Pick one or two dark colors and buy 10 of them so you’ll have them. They are very soft but will teach you control, line weight and efficiency. Do not get the Primacolor Veritin. The lead is too hard and you won’t learn anything. You’ll need a good sharpener too.

Even better than Prismacolors for what we are going to do, are Conte Crayons. Five minutes ago I was railing against coloring books and now I am telling you to buy crayons. Well, yes and no. These are far from the Crayolas of your youth. Conte crayons are what find artists use for life drawing, aka, drawing nude models. They are a great tool for getting your skills to the next level. They usually come in a set of black, brick red and white.

So you have your very large scary newsprint pad open and ready, Conte crayon in hand. And you’re thinking, “What am I supposed to draw?”

The answer: Speed Forms.

The beauty and simplicity of speed forms

Cool Car Drawings Come From Speed Forms

Drawing speed forms is car design at is most elemental. If you stripe away the function of a car, and just look at the form, you basically have the very large sculpture. Well, that is what we are going to draw. Sculptures. Sculptures that look like they are moving, flowing, interacting with the air. There are no rules here. This is a challenge for your creativity.

Draw the shapes of anything you want just don’t make them literal: spaceships, planes, boats, animals running, birds, sharks. If you want to improve the line quality of your car design drawings, then the exercise of more about gaining control of the psychical movements, rather than worrying about what you are actually drawing. When you’re all done with this exercise, you should be able to generate some very cool car drawings.

Forget windows, grills, wheels and tires. bumpers, door handles, everything that makes a car a car. Forget all of it. Just think about shapes and beauty. This is what you are going to draw. Speed forms. Big, one or two on a page. And just like wax on, wax off, you are going to be very cognizant of drawing in big, sweeping strokes from your shoulder, NOT from your wrist or hand.

Think of a conductor conducting an orchestra, waving the baton. That’s how you are going to draw. Waving the Conte or Prismacolor with your whole body. Big arches of movement. Big lines, big gestures. Let the flow flow through you. If you draw speed forms for a month everyday (I’m talking pages and pages, not just one a day) and refrain from drawing cars, by the end of 30 days, the flow you so desperately have been seeking will have found you. Your car design drawings should greatly improve.

If you have any questions regarding the information contained in this article, please leave them in the comments section below and we will get them answered. Thank you.