two hundred eighty-eight

One of the practice sketches

“What you got under the tarp, Pete?”

"-- a 1967 Chevrolet Impala Coupe.  It's my first car."  We peer underneath and I get a whiff of something good: great American auto art.

“Lemme draw it,” I say.  He replies that he’s got one better than that, and shoves a heavy, metal, super detailed, to-scale smaller version of the same model year.  Also an SS, 427 cubic inch, eight cylinder.  It's not better.  It's not his first car -- the one with loads of stories and emotion, and in that beautiful Marina Blue body color.  But that life sized car will not share any stories if it posed for me.  It would not fit in my studio either.  

This is a side project for me.  Draw a car from life.  True, it's a model car, but tasks like this help me stay tuned up.  Life drawing is great practice.  The artist must use his/her facilities to transform a three dimensional object into a two dimensional drawing.  That's easy, right?  You'd be surprised how many artists don't do that.  They may make tight renderings, but they're not always using life drawing skills.

The final approach begins with a pencil sketch

Check this out: look down the street sometime.  Close one eye and look at a fixed scene. Then alternate closing and opening the opposite eye.  You see slightly two different scenes.  Objects slightly shift from the left to the right eye.  Open your two eyes together and you get stereo vision.  And when you draw from life, you are translating that stereo vision into a pencil drawing that's in two dimensions.  That's what a camera does when you take a picture (you close one eye to make a photo, right?).  So, artists who work from a photo often are using the camera as a tool to transcribe the 3D data into 2D.  And artists have been doing this with the camera obscura and other pinhole-type devices since, heck, forever.

But for me, it's fundamentals -- practice: draw from life.  No cameras.  No rulers.  Yeah -- the power of observation.  It takes longer, but by studying form one has a better understanding of form.  Took me several months to create the 12" x 14" Impala drawing.  That's not because it was that technically demanding.  It was practice.  I did it in my spare time.  And I worked on the rendering when I felt the desire to work on a tight little drawing -- certainly not the approach the big gun artists employ.  Or do they?  Dunno.  

laying in the white marker

I drew the car several times: in profile; three-quarters; with pencil; and with ink pen.  The goal here is to get a more firm understanding of the object.  How many sections compose the grille face?  How are the circular wheels distorted into ovals in perspective?  What is the most favorable position of the car to feature the chrome and high contrast, and dark tires & undercarriage in the most dynamic way?  See, a photograph where all that is already sussed out is much, much easier to work from than actually learning the form and composing the drawing.  However, as a professional visual communicator I feel I must have a firm grasp on the comprehension of the individual components of an object in order to tell a visual story -- or at the very least be able to create an illustration full of competent strokes from practice, practice, practice.  A jazz musician is not improvising a solo if he is reading notes.  A jazz musician is unable to give a solo if she doesn't know what the chords are or what notes are in the chords.  Practice, practice, practice.

the final artwork with sun ray smiles

For the final rendering I chose a toned, neutral gray paper.  I also set a goal to use a black india ink felt pen and white acrylic marker.  Why?  It is important to me for this exercise to re-acquaint myself with mid-tones (paper), highlights (white acrylic), and dark tones (the black pen) and make them all play nice in a dynamic way.  Its a technique challenge to self.  Along the way I also want the drawing to not look 'labored'.  And with marker, the stroke must be crisp with each pass or it looks labored -- like you don't know exactly where to put the stroke -- like the artist is searching.  (Hence all the aforementioned practice drawings.  I gotta know that form.)  But, yes, working from a photograph would be much easier -- boring, and less creative, but easier.

Towards the end of the final drawing, the marks become fewer between the minutes.  The strokes begin to carry more weight.  Less is more, more is less.  And then there were a couple of times I'd make a stroke and then walk away for an hour or so -- or even over night.  Sure, it may sound a bit fussy -- but that's how you keep from overworking an image.

When Pete, the owner of Absolute Automotive Garage in Asheboro saw the finished drawing, he asked to put it up on display in the waiting room of his shop.  And so it was placed not far from a gorgeous coffee table book celebrating the muscle car art of Chevrolet.  And yes, my drawing isn't perfect.  It is an honest impression of my desire to render and take down the clean lines, bits of highlight, and large angles of a great American art - and glad to see this illustration is among friends.