How to Draw Motorcycles

Video Transcript

"Okay, folks in this clip I'm going to show you how to draw a motorcycle. Now what I suggest you do is get a good pencil cause a motorcycle is a very complicated piece of machinery and you're going to want to, definitely, sketch the first initial drawing in as oppose to going over the final thing with a marker. I would suggest sketching in the design that you want to first and then, once you feel comfortable with your design, then you take it and do what ever you want to. So, what we'll do is we'll start here. I'm going to draw the outer wheel first, obviously, since we're using pencil, we can always come in and make this big or little as I want to later, and this will be to the actual bike itself. Now, I apologize, in advance, again for you connoisseur's who know the exactly the names for all these parts are. I just go off of what I see, so I am not, by any means, a mechanic, so, I can't tell you exactly what each part is and what it's for, but I can definitely draw what it looks, so, that's what we're going to do. I'm coming up here to the handle of the bike, the handles are important, you're going to want to make these stand out. They almost, I would say, the most important part of the bike. So, come in and really clearly define those handles, give them the look that you want exactly. Next, I would come down, start to draw the frame that the bike rest on and where the engine would be. Again, I apologize in advance for not knowing the exact term, the other thing about this, the other thing I notice when I was drawing different types of motorcycles is, you're constantly adjusting these. If you take a look at it you'll see, okay, I kind of wish I'd made that a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller and I wish I'd added more detail here and less detail there. So, what this allows, it's kind of sketching obviously, it allows you to go in make a rough design, not be committed necessarily to any thing in particular, and have the ability to go back an adjust things as you need. So, I'm going to move my way over to the back of the bike now, so we draw the back wheel, again, we're drawing in perspective here, so the back wheel will be smaller than the front wheel, as you can see. And I'm going to draw sort of the big pieces that you're going to want, like say, the exhaust pipe which will come right along the base and then come up and out. Over the back wheel, give it a nice little effect, a nice little cloud behind it, just like that. Then what we'll do is focus on the bike itself, come in here really start to add the detail and clearly define the lines of the bike starting with the wheel. Really give it a set wheel with some clear cut definition. Now, the other thing about bikes, is obviously, people who know motorcycles, and want to draw motorcycles, have a very very specific look in mind, because they, obviously, have their favorite types of bikes, so they don't want some guy coming in here, hey, that's my definition of a motorbike, obviously, you're going to want to add your own flavor, which is, absolutely, I say do it, make it your own, custom, this is your own little custom shop. Make this thing exactly what you want it to be. One thing I would suggest doing though, unless you're just an engine fanatic, the engine portion, which usually rest underneath the seat, make it as vague and ambiguous as you possibly can, because you do not want, unless you're trying to design the look of an engine in which case I say go nuts, but, unless that's your objective, do not go into much detail with that because people will be so distracted by what it is they won't even know what to look at, honestly, they'll be very very confused by it. The biggest thing when drawing motorcycles make sure to define the overall shape of it, and make sure people also understand your dimension's. And one way you can help them with that is once you're done, say this is sort of a pre- visual sketch and you're trying to show them, roughly, what the bike will look like once it's in motion and once it has people. Draw a, obviously once you have to bike looking, roughly the way you want it to, draw an ambiguous, sort of a stick figure person to sit on the bike and show these people, roughly, what it'll look like to have a person riding on the bike. Now , obviously, if you wanted to have a person on the bike from the get go that's what you would have done, but since we wanted to show what a bike would look like adding a ambiguous looking, temp figure is a great way to show people what you were trying to do. Obviously, you can add as much detail to this figure as you like, but, this roughly shows how big the bike is suppose to be in relation to people. And give this guy some goggles and some sort of helmet situation, have fun with it. But, basically, there you can have you motorcycle."