Project - Wheels on Vehicles

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

inDrawing Basics

1.2K

Assignments 373

Downloads 5

Project - Wheels on Vehicles

Lesson by

Stan Prokopenko

in Drawing Basics

1.2K

Assignments 373

Downloads 5

Drawing wheels on vehicles is an excellent way to practice cylinders and reinforce what we've already learned.

Level 1

Draw a simple car, bus, RV, or truck focusing on the wheels.

Add a spare tire on the front or back to practice cylinders in different orientations.
Use photos for inspiration, not for direct copying.
Draw your vehicle from a slightly different angle than your reference to practice perspective construction.
Make vehicles toy-like, simplifying details and focusing on perspective.
Start with the side view silhouette in 3-point perspective, then extrude it.
Construct wheels by approximating square planes and drawing ellipses within. Give them thickness!
Experiment with the same vehicle from multiple angles or different types of vehicles.

Level 2

Include at least one tank in your drawings to practice cylinders along all three axes.

Tanks should primarily be constructed out of boxes and cylinders.
Add simple details like headlights, a window, or more guns for enhancement.
Use the X method to ensure consistent wheel sizes.

General Tips

Keep lines light and clean in early stages to avoid messiness.
Apply "X-ray vision goggles" to visualize and construct internal parts.
Remember the techniques for constructing cylinders inside boxes.
Review previous lessons if necessary to refresh on the concepts.

Deadline: Submit by 03/28/2024 for a chance to be in the critique video!

@hjalmarhoeg

•

Looks so easy when Stan does it, then you try yourself..

Chauncey Holder

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14d

First timing trying it. It was extremely diffcult- with the wheels

@al_ic_ja

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16d

@dollydigital

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17d

kind of going for a toy yugo vibe here (level 1)

@solobo

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23d

Level 1 first few attempts. Not sure I understand the axis orientation part, just putting circles in boxes... Will need to watch the critiques.

Michael Longhurst

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28d

The one from the back was based on the orientation in a picture. I did the one from the front next from imagination using a couple pictures as references. Definitely still some errors, but I felt like my second came out a lot better. Still struggling to balance using the axis lines vs the points on the box. Although I think part of the problem is not getting perfect squares in perspective. Any advice would be appreciated.

Michael Longhurst

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28d

A couple pictures I took of the car at the Fourney Transportation Museum in Denver. Great source for old car, motorcycle, and train references!

Natasha Johnson

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1mo

Both scared and excited . Loved the project , this is my dream camper to go camping in . I can see there are mistakes with keeping lines in perspective . I’ll do this again . Any critique is welcome . 😎

Amani Noor (Amu)

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30d

This looks great! You've got nice line quality and most of your forms seem to be correctly in perspective. My only critique would be that the angle on some of your ellipses are slightly off. On some of the wheels you used the corner-to-corner angle of the square as the angle of the ellipse. Instead, the ellipse's angle should be perpendicular to the the axel between the two wheels. It can be tricky to find the correct angle as the corner-to-corner angle can look similar to the correct angle but I hope that this little diagram helps a little.

J. Menriv

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1mo

Project - Wheels on Vehicles

Rachel Dawn Owens

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1mo

Very nice 👍

@aakerhus

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1mo

First sketch of the day!

Melanie Scearce

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1mo

I reeeaaally like this style, do more!

Martin M

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1mo

I like the stylised look of the drawing! For this exercise I would suggest to draw larger wheels and perhaps push the vanishing points together a bit more. At the moment there is no convergence for the lines because the VPs are too far away. So it is hard to evaluate if you really mastered the topic of this lesson: drawing cylinders in perspective

J. Menriv

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1mo

Project - Wheels on Vehicles

Martin M

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1mo

Very cool tank! The spaces between the wheels are filled in with black. This is a great stylistic choice but it makes it hard to evaluate if these are correct cylinders. I can only see one plane of the wheel cylinders: the ovals facing us. And I think you have the major and minor axis reversed on them. I would suggest uploading one more attempt at this exercise and not erasing the construction box that you use to draw the cylinder. That way we can help you improve or validate that you have mastered this lesson.

@aakerhus

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1mo

Straight lines with help from Photoshop, wheels by freehand.

@aakerhus

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1mo

Straight lines with help from Photoshop, wheels by freehand.

@aakerhus

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1mo

Two cars in 2-point perspective. First ones a warm-up. Doesn't really look like wheels yet, but they are at least not as squished as earlier. I also got kind of lazy and drew some parts of the wheels intuitively instead of following the x-method etc, I still get too confused by all the different lines. Next try will be a more patient one with more coherent color-coding when it comes to the line work.

@aakerhus

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1mo

First try before watching the demo, the wheels looks horrid and I got lost in some of the linework. I have no gut feeling about the placement of the major axis.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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1mo

It’s not intuitive at all but the major and minor axis’s run perpendicular to each other. This assignment is a tough one. Looks like you got really close though. I dig your car drawing.

@roddangelo

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2mo

DrawYer

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2mo

My various sketches from the most recent to the first one (a mix of level 1 and 2). I stayed a bit longer than expected on this one as I was very unsatisfied with the initial drawings. My first attempts were really bad, incorrect ellipses and wheels incorrectly placed in relation to the body. I wanted to (i) understand a bit more about ellipses and vehicle construction in general (loved “How to Draw” by S. Robertson), and (ii) combine the boxes exercises with the cylinder exercises into a “vehicle into perspective project”. All the vehicles are a mix of reference and inspiration, but I realised I gravitated towards a 3/4 POV a lot… ! I also tried inking with fine liners and inking with ballpoint pens. Inking an ellipse is way harder than expected and this is still a work in progress… but I did discover that I loved ballpoint pens. Looking back at my sketches and the critiques / demo: - I really need to ensure the major axis is perpendicular to the minor axis and not to another irrelevant line. - a very foreshortened cylinder like the tank gun can be tricky to do correctly and I believe you have to play with the ellipse opening at the end and what part of the ellipse is visible to the part that is attached to the tank body. - The more ellipses you align next to each other, the more your mistakes will show (specially looking back at my train..) - I need to find a balance between free hand / gut feeling and too much planning / construction. I guess it’s better to overly plan as a beginner. - I need to stay light on the construction lines, as erasing should not be an option (without losing helpful cues) I will probably go back to drawing vehicles once I made some progress in the basic training. Anyway, as usual any comments or feedback welcome :)

J. Menriv

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2mo

Project - Wheels on Vehicles

Evan Wray

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2mo

Attempts #1-2 before demo, #3-4 after demo. I feel like I'm understanding the perspective and minor axis, but as soon as i place a major axis and try to create the ellipse all semblance of perspective disappears. Trying to figure out what exactly the disconnect is, on to the critiques!

Michael Koch

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2mo

The far side of the interior isn't angled like the other side. Whoops. Also wheels are hard in dramatic perspective.

Mary

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3mo

This was a very tough assignment for me. The “toy bus” has issues with the tires for sure. The toy truck looks better. I did not use a photo. First time doing something from imagination. I’m up for all the help anyone is willing to give. Thank you.

Mary

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3mo

Dang it. See that know. I know better than this. I’m going to redo it. Thank you so much for the feed back

Martin M

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3mo

Congrats on taking a leap to draw from imagination! It will be tricky. Some feedback for the truck: The lines of the body of the truck are converging in the wrong direction. As things get further from us they should get smaller. But the truck looks like it's closest parts are smaller than the parts further away from us. I have added a picture with the lines highlighted and an example of how they should converge. I'm unsure about providing feedback about the tires. I see you constructed them with the box which is good! And you might be doing all the steps correctly there. But as I mentioned above, the vanishing points are not used or used incorrectly so the tire construction boxes might be incorrect as well. I would suggest trying this exercise again. Mark down the 2 vanishing points and make sure that all the lines are converging to those points OR going vertical.

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Stan Prokopenko

Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.