Drawing Fundamentals Building Basic Form

You ever faced a situation where you were unable to draw an entire car or reconcile some of the shapes and forms you’d like to explore?  Many people do…and so have I!  That is why some of the techniques I am about to show you will help you to build a visual vocabulary of shapes and forms by tackling only certain sections.  If you don’t do it this way, your brain will have trouble trying to figure out so many details in one single shot.

Part of the problem is we tend to get tensed up knowing we have to draw an entire vehicle and make sure it looks great!  However, notice that when you try to draw just a headlight or just a fender…what happens? Suddenly you just don’t care as much correct?  That is why drawing components or particular items helps you to focus on form development without being worried about messing up your entire drawing.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with creating terrible drawings.  In fact you should count on it.  However, you should be aware that you will most likely create terrible drawings of components but not feel as bad about it  So in this video, we’ll focus on drawing just a basic shape and form of the front of a car.  No headlights, no details.  Just drawing basic shapes and building them.

What you’ll find is that it becomes a much more relaxing process.  The more you exercise this, the better your drawings will be.  Check out the video and let me know what you think.

Sketch Notes:

1.  Demo assumes a reasonable grasp of two point perspective drawing
2.  Start with sketching a box in 2 point perspective
3.  Begin to build simple shapes on top of each other
4.  Transform these simple shapes using cross sections