I don’t think there’s any special
skill involved in sketching vehicles, but maybe what makes a difference is
whether you like vehicles for their own sake or not. For example, there’s a
world of difference between a sketch which has cars in it: -
And a sketch of a car: -
I
n the top picture it’s the
footbridge which is the star. The cars, which are not particularly detailed and
not brilliantly drawn, are just there to give the footbridge context and scale.
In the second picture, the street furniture, the wall and the car behind are
just outlines, which serve to highlight the car itself which is the star of the
picture. If the cars are just a background feature, then you really don’t need
many lines to suggest the shape of a car to the eye of the beholder.
So, when you’ve decided that the car
– or tram, bus or train – is the star of the picture, what then? Well, the
first thing you need to think of is composition, and what I mean by that is,
where are you going to put the viewer in relation to the vehicle. I’ll give a
couple of examples to help explain this.
In this picture :-
- you can see that we, the viewers,
are looking down onto the Bubble Car. This is appropriate, since it helps
emphasise the diminutive size of the car which is one of its most interesting
features. By the same token in this picture,
we’re looking up at the train. Our
eyeline is roughly level with the bottom of the door nearest too us. This, and
the rather extreme perspective serve to emphasise the train’s great size, power
and speed.
Once you’ve worked out the viewer’s
viewpoint in relation to the vehicle, then it’s worth spending some time
deciding just how you’d like to contextualise the vehicle. I’ll explain that.
Both of the vehicles above appear on the page themselves without any background.
That’s because in those pictures I’m only interested in the qualities of the
vehicle itself, and didn’t feel the need to contextualise them. However, adding
background can help your sketch say more about the vehicle, and it’s not a bad
thing to spend a bit of time considering just how much background, if any, you
want to use. For example:-
The very light foliage in the
background of this beautiful Jaguar XK120 conjures up an image of driving down
summer country lanes with the top down. On this next picture:-
the railings and shaded shoreline
are just enough to place this ice cream van at the seaside. With this Swansea
tram:-
- I felt that the edge of the
platform, the passengers and the pole carrying the cable overhead were enough
to contextualise it. This can be compared with :-
Where I really wanted to include all
the background details to help put it within a place and time within my
childhood. This picture isn’t about the train so much as its about my memories
of using the Tube, taking it to interesting places to see and things to do.
With this sketch, if you take away
the airport buildings then it’s just a single decker bus, so the context is
important to this sketch.
As for sketching in the vehicle
itself, as with anything else you sketch it is a matter of looking, looking,
looking, of getting the shapes right, and applying the shade in the right
amount, in the right places. It sounds simple when you say it like that. Yet it
needn’t be that complicated either. If you decide to go for a heavy contrast
between areas of light and shade, you can end up with something like this:-
It's an effective depiction of a tank
engine, even though the train itself really wasn’t a very complicated sketch,
having so many areas of complete shading.
Of course, if you use more subtle
shading, then you can make what looks to be a more accomplished sketch. This
one underneath is not actually that well drawn – the front end of the boiler
for example just isn’t quite right, but it still looks pretty good, I think,
partly because of the amount of platform detail, and the contrast between the
dark underside with the wheels, and the more lightly shaded boiler.
Of course, if you’re feeling really
confident and have time to really work at the sketch, then you can go to town
on detail.
If you were to strip away the careful
shading, what you’d be left with is still quite a complicated sketch, but
nowhere near as complicated as it looks.
For me the attraction of sketching
and painting steam engines is that they put a lot more of what they’ve got in
the shop window than other types of train, or road vehicles. Look at even a
rather simple tank engine and you’re still going to see pipes, domes, handles,
and all other kinds of interesting bumps and protruberances.
Going back to my earlier point about
viewpoint, you’ll notice that with each of these the viewer is looking up at
the train, albeit to a slightly lesser extent than in the diesel train above.
A few random points:-
· When you’re sketching a car, bus,
tram or train perspective and viewpoint are every bit as important as they are
when you’re sketching buildings. If the viewer is looking up at a vehicle, this
emphasises size and power, which can be enhanced by exaggerating the
perspective more than normal.
· You can always choose not to sketch
in any background to the vehicle. However, if you just sketch in outlines of
the background it can give the vehicle a context, while at the same time
highlighting it.
· Even really complicated vehicles,
like steam locomotives, can be simplified through the use of areas of total
shade, leaving you with a very simple set of outlines to sketch. Careful use of
various gradations of shading can really give your sketch depth, body and
definition.
