Newbie here - an old Maser and Mick Doohan.....

Hello all - posting here for the first time. Have been drawing and painting cars and F1 cars for years - YEARS... well since about 1990. I'm a graduate of the RCA Vehicle Design program, worked at Ford Europe as a Designer and am now a professor of Industrial/automotive design at Humber College in Toronto.

A couple of sketches I'm thinking of making into paintings....:

Wow.. You've got academic skills indeed.. I love the way you not just draw a car, but also make a suggestion of speed in it!
I wish I could do that :thumbsup:

By the way: welcome on the forum, I hope you'll have a great time here!

Thanks Jeroen - I like the Stratos - and the racing Mini's are good - they capture a nice sense of movement.

My problem with these sketches is that they hardly ever end up paintings - 1) due to time constraints but 2) (and more importantly) the paintings never look as good as the sketches.... which is frustrating, given the paintings take so much longer. I have a problem keeping the paintings loose.

The way I dod these sketches are overlays - I start with a couple of studies on normal Letter (A2) paper and then when I have a "base"drawing I like, I overlay it on tracing paper.This allows you to make small adjustments - for instance - in the "Doohan" piece, it took me a while to get the knee right - the original drawing had it "in" the shadow- I did several overlays and realized that it needed to raised above to give visual tension.

Yeah, painting is something else than just drawing on paper. I learned measuring all the sizes, a lot of looking to either the subject as well as the painting (in order to get it in proportion), are important things. Also, I don't paint a lot, really. Once a month or so. That means I got time to watch the painting over and over again to evaluate what I'm going to do next. Takes some patience, too! :smile:

What type of paint do you guys typically use?

I use acrylic paint. It dries quickly, and there's a wide variety of colours. Also, (good quality) the paint remains opaque when you make it thinner with water for more precision.

But it's up to you what you like best.. If you didn't decide yet what to use, I'd take some samples, and start trying out! :thumbsup:

What type of paint do you guys typically use?

I typically use acrylic too. It generally has the same "tendencies" as oil, but dries much more quickly. You can also thin it to a "watercolour" like medium, and it works just as well. If I need some real "standouts" (that knock out the colour behind I use gouache which is a type of opaque watercolour...

I'll attach a painting I did a couple of years back - if you look carefully you can probably see the transparent arears (especially in the blue) and the more "painted over areas" (like the white in the tyres and hubs....)

Nice draftsmanship and painting examples.