Car Design Drawings | 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.
Watch the Video on the Secrets of Improving the Line Quality of Your Car Design Drawings
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.
Michael’s Pro Insight: Line Quality is the Key
“It takes years to master the skills of a professional car designer, but it all starts with your line quality. As a beginner, line quality is actually more critical than ideas. Concepts are great to have, but if you cannot express them due to a poor sketch technique, frustration grows and many aspiring designers quit. The very first thing I teach when a student starts working with me is how to develop the line quality of a professional. Yes, it takes time and focused practice but once you begin to make your lines flow across the page, a whole new world opens up. Skill development and design ideas come much more rapidly, and the results follow: we maintain a 96% acceptance rate at top design schools and have helped our students from 114 countries secure over $733,000 in merit scholarships.”
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.
Improving Your Car Design Drawing Skills
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.
Curious About How to Become a Car Designer?
Do you have the passion for car design? Do you love to draw? Are you curious about the path to becoming a car designer? Are you wondering how to put together a portfolio so you can apply to a top school? Check out this quick video that follows one of our student’s path to successful admission to a top automotive design program. For more info on the program that Abhi used to achieve his success, check our Automotive Design Course.
Want to Get Better at Car Design Drawing?
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 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?
Tools of Car Design Drawing
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.
Speed Forms in Car Design 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.
About the Author – Michael Santoro
Michael Santoro is an award winning American automotive, transportation and product designer. He spent 6 years as an exterior designer for Chrysler where he created the the 1995 Car of the Year, Chrysler Cirrus and it’s sibling, the Dodge Stratus. Before leaving Chrysler, Mr. Santoro penned the exterior for the 1996 Jeep Wrangler returning the iconic vehicle to it’s roots. As part of his Jeep design, he created the first automotive “Easter Egg”. A practice now widely used throughout the industry to connect with owners and brand enthusiasts. In 1998 he created the Apple-specific case market with the launch of MacCase, a company he still runs today. He created the livery designs for a pair of Audi TCR RS3 race cars which went on to win the National Championship. Mr. Santoro has taught transportation design at Pratt Institute and guest lectured at College for Creative Studies (CCS) and Art Center College of Design. He recently expanded his tutoring efforts to 10 creative disciplines through Art College Prep.
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How to move the shoulder for drawing what are the practices to do for it please tell me Sir .I need
The practices are what is shown in the video. If you lines are jagged and corse you are not drawing from your shoulder. if you lines have flow and are drawn with one swift motion, you are drawing from your shoulder and doing it right.
The technique is taught extensively in my Udemy course –
Introduction to Automotive Design
If you are struggling to learn this technique, I suggest you take the course where you can watch the demonstration over and over until you learn it. Then you have to practice it, a lot.
Terrific post however I was wondering if you could write a litte more on this topic? I’d be very thankful if you could elaborate a little bit more. Appreciate it!
The attention to detail is outstanding. This is a good resource for car designs.
These car cdesign drawings are looks so good.
I’m glad you like them.