How to Draw a Muscle Car Online

Online applets have tools to help draw muscle cars

Applets offered by several Web sites allow you to draw muscle cars and other subjects online. However, new artists may have difficulty drawing cars because they're not familiar with this subject's visual structure. Even those who are familiar with this structure may find it difficult to draw on a digital canvas if they're using a mouse instead of a drawing tablet. One solution is to use the applet's tool for drawing edges instead of the regular paintbrush. The edge tool reduces the jitter associated with drawing with the mouse.

Things You'll Need

• Printed photo of a muscle car

Instructions

1. Draw lightly a square whose perimeter surrounds the car's image. You'll use this square to visually separate the car into pieces that are easy to draw.

2. Draw a line connecting the midpoints of the square's top and bottom edges. Draw another line connecting the midpoints of the square's left and right edges.

3. Subdivide, using the instructions from step 2, each of the new, inner squares repeatedly until the sides of each square are 1 inch or less.

4. Open an online drawing applet, (such as one listed in Resources) and select its edge-drawing tool. Use this tool to recreate a matrix with the same number of squares as the one you completed in step 3.

5. Mark on each edge of the top left square of the photo's matrix the places where the curves of the car intersect the edge. Draw each mark in the corresponding edge of the top left square in the applet.

6. Draw, in the applet's top left square, the same curves that are in the top left square of the car photo. Use the intersection marks you drew in the previous step as a guide.

7. Make and then transfer to the applet the intersection marks for each of the remaining squares in the photo. Draw the car curves for each remaining square in the applet, as you did in step 6 .

8. Delete the matrix from the applet. Fill the gaps in the drawing by applying the same tool (e.g. paintbrush, pencil) you used to draw the car's curves.

9. Adjust your applet's color selection controls until the current color matches one of the colors in the original photo. Using the applet's paintbrush tool, duplicate this color in your drawing. Repeat this step for each of the remaining colors in the original photo to complete the muscle car drawing.

References

• "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain;" Betty Edwards; 1999

Resources

• Queeky Paint
• Imagination Cubed
• Rate My Drawings