Angles, Cars, and adventures in frustration

[PracticeMakes]

Hi, sorry if this is a little long winded. I'm not exactly new here as I've drifted on these boards for some time. I love this forum, all of the people are great and share a likeminded attitude to achieve great art.

Lately I've been going nuts trying to improve, drawing from life, imagination, studying antatomy books. I *want* to be better. 6-12 hours everyday, and about 60+ sktechbook pages a week should say that much.

Now, I'm no beginner, (I'm not fantastic either) but I have been having terrible issues when drawing from life. (Pictures I can do, photographs, whatever; I know everyone here by now is familiar with how much easier it is to draw from a book than from plain sight.)

Which brings me to my issue.

I'm a people drawer, so I hate cars, drawing them is so aggravatingly difficult. Since I want to get better though, cars have been what I draw most of the time. I take a lawn chair out back and sketch my roommate's car, an old, beat up jetta. But here's the deal, 1) I can't sketch it accurately without slowly "crawling" across the car, tackling each detail as I come to it. This, however, prevents me from controlling my picture plain, as I can't set up the parameters of size and proportion, leaving me with half a car on the page. And B) If I try to set up proportion, my picture just gets warped and constantly fluxes in size.

I feel like there is a block in my sight preventing me from "seeing" it correctly. When I'm far enough back, the issue is almost nonexistant, and I can sketch the car with only some difficulty. Any closer, and bam, I don't know what to do. Despite it being within my frame of vision, I feel like the fact that my eyes are forced to pan over the entire car to draw it prevents me from acheiving any semblance of precision. I'm forced to bob my head up and down, oscillating been my picture and my subject in an attempt "place" the image on top of the car to see if it lines up.

I have similar difficulties when drawing a table and the furniture around it. Things become skewed and suddenly, BAM, the tv needs to be smaller to accomodate the box of cords in front of it, but then they won't be right size. Does this make sense to anyone? Did anyone suffer from the same thing?

Plumb and verticle lines are the techniques I prefer, but they don't seem to help. Can anyone tell me if there is some other technique I could use to aid me here? Or perhaps explain to me what's wrong? My scanner is on the fritz, but I'll fix it tonight (hopefully) and show you what I mean.

Improving is the only goal in mind, I just hope others have advice for me. Sorry for writing so much. I just wanted to specificly detail the problem in words since the scanner isn't working.

[NightVision]

Maybe you ARE too close. Our cone of vision is 90 degrees, but only about 20 degrees is in focus.

You could draw details close to your object, and the whole thing from further away. The good thing from drawing from life is also, you can go look at smt from another angle or closer when it's not clear, and then draw it from your original POV.

I also have the feeling that you don't start with a quick sketch: sketch with light lines the biggest masses of the car, look forth and back between object & sketch and adjust until it looks good. Then get more into detail. Measuring is good too, but do think about the whole masses/volumes, instead of 1 line/side at the time. Negative space helps too.

Good luck !

[Seedling]

Yup, NightVision is right - you are too close. Try drawing cars from fifty or more feet away, and see if that helps. Then do drawings progressively closer. And focus on big forms before getting down to details.

[ExilE]

Hey man, your dillemma piqued my interest, I used to have similar problems with proportions and such. One thing that stuck out to me is how you described drawing cars as slowly crawling across the surface, focusing on the details... I agree with the eariler comments, you might just be too close to the objects you are trying to draw, but your frustration might come from how you are approaching your subject matter as well. You can't draw a forrest by starting out rendering each and every leaf on a tree. Absolutely do not get caught up in details first. Think about how you can simplify your object into the most simple terms, regardless of what it is- box, sphere, cone, etc. Look at how the main elements relate to one another, ask questions: How large are the wheels in relation to the door?, how large is the window compared to the wheel, etc. Mastering proportions is really about understanding the relationships between the different elements on something.

Also it's great that you are enthusiastic about wanting to learn, but be careful. Filling up 60 oages in a sketchbook in a week is a lot for anybody. Make sure you are filling it with things that either are fun for you to draw, or you are genuinely learning from. You might find that you can learn as much from a few pages full of thoughtful studies as you can from 20 super quick ones you did, just to fill up pages. Keep it up! If you have continuing trouble, post some of your drawings here or in the sketches section.

[PracticeMakes]

I'll post a sketchbook thingy and hopefully people can tell me specifically what I should do. My brother's coming down today, (pretty soon hopefully, has to bring the steam vac so I can clean my carpet before I move out) and he's a computer expert. I think he can fix this scanner thing.

Thanks for the support everyone. I didn't know about this "cone of vision" thing.

[Maiku Jaguar]

I know this is kinda an old thread but I thought I would put in a few suggestions...drawing cars form life is ok but to be honest you won't learn to draw them very well with the "draw what you see" methond. You need to learn perspective first, 1, 2, 3 point etc...then you need to apply that to vehicle sketches from your mind. To do so involves studying a little bit of industrial design. Those guys make it up, because they are familiar with how a car looks and the parts that make it up. Things like using the wheel as a standard unit of measure, kind of like the head is used for the figure. Just as a starter, a standard car is about 5 wheels long and 2 wheels high. ie you have the front and back wheel with 3 inbetween, this is called the wheel base...there is a lot when it comes to it. I suggest checking out the book "How to draw cars the hotwheels way" by scott robertson. It talks about toy like cars I know, but the techniques in it can be appled to any automotive drawing. Scott is an expert in this area and probaly your best source or knowledge for "how to draw cars"

[Dizon]

Do cars have a guide for proportions? Like how we have the 8 heads proportion system for the human figure?