How to draw a cartoon car - Part 5

Learning How to Draw

You know, it's funny how some artists "draw down" on people. What do I mean? Have you ever bought some art book or watched some art video, looked at some pictures and think to yourself that you're going to produce the same thing?

And when you realize that you cannot produce the same results even after following the instructions, you feel frustrated. If this ever happened to you, take comfort in knowing that you're not the only one. :)

The reason why you cannot reproduce the same result is that there are "gaps" in the instructions. There are techniques or nitty gritty things that the artist left out, and these can only be discovered through experience.

So we see a polished end result and think that it's so difficult to draw like that and go "Wow, I wish I can draw like that." That's "drawing down" on people. At the end of the day, they make themselves look good by showing you all the wonderful work of art that they drawn, and you know what. Honestly, I have little use for training materials produced by these people.

I'd prefer to have an artist produce a mediocre painting but show me all the tips and tricks that they use, then seeing their godly works of art. You know, it's not about them. It's about you.

I want you to be able to learn how to draw, even if you don't like my artwork or my paintings or whatever. I hope you can tell that from the materials that I produced.

Drawing on a Grid

I added these few short paragraphs near the completion of the report. So I just plug it into some space that I can find. You'll find this useful.

One popular method that I forgot to mention is to learn how to draw on a grid. A grid divides up the composition of an image into smaller squares. The grid method makes it easy for an artist to focus on tackling a small area at any one time without having to worry too much about proportion.

This method can be used to transfer a small image to a larger image and vice versa. For example, if you have a small photo you want to draw, you can use the grid method to help you transfer the image to an A3 drawing paper.

We also see this method being commonly employed when drawing wall murals.

A quick note about drawing cartoons:

When drawing cartoons, pinpoint accuracy is not necessary. Sometimes, lines that appear out of place makes the drawing looks a bit wacky. And we all know that wacky drawings look comical and are fun to look at. So try experimenting on your own to see if you can come up with some unique effects. Exaggerate certain portions of your drawing and observe what happens.

And one more reason on why I choose this image as a subject. My wife loves this animation and I'm going to show this to her. She'll probably hammer me for defacing her idol, but oh well…