I tried making a car driving down a street:

I'm really bad at making cars, if anyone sees anything i've done wrong please let me know.

Maybe bring the car down from the center to 3/4 on the Y axis. This will give you more room to draw something on the horizon and give the viewer an idea of where the car going. The bottom of the road isn't as interesting as a skyline could be.

Edited by shampoop - 28 February 2012 at 5:24pm

He means put the car on the bottom third of the image, because what's behind the car isn't as visually or conceptually interesting as what's ahead.

The perspective's a bit off as far as the road's concerned. The edges should be a little wider at the base and straighter overall. Also I'm assuming the road is a flat surface and should be most shadowed where the car blocks the lightsource.

The car itself looks fine to me.

Make largest...

Lfspr, can you be more specific on what you mean?

Thanks for the help cure:

Edited by Andrew-M - 07 March 2012 at 6:55pm

Use references, especially for the car

Edited by cure - 12 August 2012 at 3:50pm

Post the reference. If you're looking at a photograph of an actual car, then you aren't paying close attention to the shapes that comprise it or the relationship of those shapes to one another. You're relying on your mind more than your eye, so you're simplifying the car into symbols.

well, so repeat this machine, to reduce this image to the size of his car - it will be easier ;)

Keep in mind the placement of each piece of the car in reference to the other pieces. The front tire in the reference is out front more, while on your car it's directly under the windshield. The hood of the car slopes down gently while yours has a flat hood. The rear passenger windows are longer than the front ones while in yours they're the same size.

Keep every detail of placement and scale in your mind and don't rush it. After you draw each little piece, check against your reference if you have to and make any tweaks you need. If you're like me and your memory doesn't hold the little details well, you'll have to glance back and forth a bunch.

I changed the colors and started making the trees:

I changed the colors, trees and started shading the car:

I still don't like most of the colors though.

They've told you before - you're not drawing a car. You're drawing what you -think- a car looks like. Which, turns out, isnt very much like a car.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but you have to learn how to see. How to visually break objects down into their basic shapes and build from there.

Here, i have shrunk down the reference car to about the size of the car in your piece, and have broken it down into very simple shapes, which itself shows how strangely shaped your car is.



Also, the colors you have are all very dark. The car is hard to distinguish from the background since it's all so dark. Cars are usually pretty bright, shiny things (even when they're black), so keep that in mind too.

What happened to the nice trees? The ones in your Aug. 13th post are a tad better (in my opinion.)
The hood of the car could be a little longer. The windows are all ascew, the bottem should be flat. The angle from the windshield to the roof is too high. Perhaps a smaller angle like your reference would help?

I changed the colors and a couple other things:

I changed the trees, grass, colors, and car:

I can't find any references for how to shade the car so i'm just guessing how it should look.

Thanks for the help cure:

I'm not sure if I fixed the pillow shading.

Thanks for the help:

The red in the background is supposed to show that there are more trees far away, I guess I didn't convey it too well though.

Edit: I changed more things:


Edited by Andrew-M - 20 September 2012 at 8:13pm

I changed the trees and some colors:

I changed the car:

I can't decide if it looks better with or without the windshield being shown:

I tried to straighten the car and brighten the image as a whole. The red road detracted from the car in my opinion, so I made it lighter. I added wheel covers and a few highlights too. I didn't count colours, but I hope you get the general idea! ;)

I like a lot of those fixes, but that new shading on the red of the car is some weird camo-looking pattern, which makes it look bumpy and beat up. One important thing to note though, is if you decided to go with the sun behind the trees as in that edit, the shadows would actually be on the opposite side of the car they are now (aka, going down instead of up, and the part of the car we see would be in shadow, with around the outline being bright)


The biggest issue right now is the muddiness of the colors. Nothing stands out well enough - the trees dont stand out from the background color (if its supposed to be dense trees make it dark, and the car doesnt stand out from the trees or the road. Speaking of which, roads arent usually dirt. Not that it cant be, just something hat might help de-muddy the image


Doctor DRG's edit definitely fixed all of the major issues. I suggest you take a good look and study it. It has good contrast, the background, middle ground, and foreground are all well separated visually. You dont have to go for that if you dont want, but understand why his colors work and the ones you have are very dull.


For a good look at the difference, turn both images greyscale. Your version is almost a uniform grey with some dark spots, no actual bright areas to speak of, where his has a good range of lights to darks.