Week 29- transport

 Preparatory work

To  choose a final subject I did a series of small study sketches, since I am not confident in my ability to draw mechanical objects I know I needed to take my time and properly observe the shapes they broke down into and the foreshortening that occurs due to perspective. I started out using the vehicles in the tours provided and these turned out fairly well done, my favourite being the tram since i was able to recreate how the lighting worked when looking through the windows. But my best sketches were done from a photo reference of a car I chose to look at because I found the lighting in some areas of the tour made it hard to see certain things and also there weren't many cars from the late 1900s. I did two studies based on images of a ford cortina 2000e but I chose the front view sketch since I think the perspective is interesting and suits the style of the car. There were also quite a few reflections on the bonnet of the car which would challenge me more when it comes to the final piece.

Final piece

the prepatory sketch I did was very basic but I tried to keep it clean so I could use it in the final painting which would give it faint line art, it would also help keep things accurate since painting cars is much different than painting more organic forms such as trees and water.

I tried to avoid the paper rippling on this painting so i used a piece of wood as backing and smoothed it on whilst slightly damp before I started painting. this did have a slight hiccup however as the dye on the box I use to weigh down the top edge bled onto the paper so I cropped the framing to make it a wideshot rather than a square frame like it was originally.

this painting was done by building up large washes of colour and then building upon the base colour to add shape and tone. this is most clearly seen in the bumper area of the car which is a huge contrast to the bonnet even though they started out the same colour. I left the highlights till later where I added them back in using white gouache that is thicker so could cover the colour and doesn't pick up the colour underneath.

I overplayed orange hues in some areas and around the edges of some highlights since some of the reflections were of warm lights and the matching this with orange accents on the shines worked really nicely. one area that I struggled with and I think ended up being the weakest part was the headlights since I was having problem with getting the reflections right and the panelling inside which I think I could have improved if I used thicker strokes to build up the reflections in the lights and then lines the panelling with a finer brush later, also adding stronger highlights here would also help since it doesn't look as reflective in comparison to the rest of the car and it should be around the same. one thing that I think worked well was the layers of depth and insetting of the grill at the front since I managed to get the curved edges down well whilst still showing that harsh contrast that defined the shapes. Another thing I would improve is the lines in the grill at the front as I struggled with getting them straight and i think if I were to redo it I would go back and use a smaller brush to make sure these lines stay straight, this also is the same for the two metal sections divine the grill into three sections as these are also slightly uneven and taking more time with it and having a steadier hand would be good if I were to re do this.

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