Exclusive: Drawing a Motorcycle Part 1

by Tim Von Rueden

Hello and welcome to the Friday Exclusive Series of Drawing a Motorcycle.

In this series I will take a look at drawing a motorcycle from the initial sketches to the final render. This process will be done with the mix of building grayscale technique and the line art technique. In this part, I explain how I got started and before even laying down a stroke I did research and learned about the subject matter and did a bunch of initial sketches trying to lay out the form. Below are some of the key frames that goes through this process of drawing a motorcycle and it’s foundation.

These are the initial sketches I did before I got started on the tutorial. They can be seen in the image below↓

I start with the basic triangle and two circles as the skeleton for the motorcycle all while keeping perspective in mind.

After that I got started with sketching out a really rough form of the motorcycle, and the parts shapes, while trying not to focus too much on the details.

For size and perspective reference I added a rider sketch to help visualize the size of the vehicle.

Then i layer down a slightly darker gray to give it more of a standalone shape and cleaned up the edges.

It is now ready for the line art process, which will be covered in part 2.

Thanks for watching and if you have any questions feel free to comment below!

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Discussion

7 Responses to “Exclusive: Drawing a Motorcycle Part 1”
  1. john mervin
    Posts: 38

    cool!

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    1
     Feb 10, 2012 at 5:22 pm
  2. Jeff Bessette
    Posts: 101

    Great tutorial! You had some great reference right under your nose though!

    http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/01/22/reference-vfr800-motorcycle/

    :D

    Did Wes review the tutorial before posting it up and was grunting like Tim the Tool Man the hold time? :D

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    2
     Feb 11, 2012 at 9:41 am
    • Wes Burke
      Posts: 12

      lol – Yes you have no idea how excited I am about this. :) “We’ll be right back after a word from Binford Tools.”

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      2.1
       Feb 11, 2012 at 9:48 am
      • oldman44
        Posts: 70

        Hey Wes,

        What ever happened to that model you were building of your bike?

        -OldMan44

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        …
         Feb 12, 2012 at 1:25 pm
  3. oldman44
    Posts: 70

    Tim,

    Can’t Thank You enough for this tutorial series. This is EXACTALLY the kind of series I have been hoping for! A complete breakdown of the thought process that goes into creating something like this project is an invaluable example for a newbie like myself trying to learn to be an artist. Rest assured that I will be following this one very closely. Thanks again.

    -OldMan44

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    3
     Feb 12, 2012 at 1:47 pm
    • Tim Von Rueden
      Posts: 635

      Thanks man, It’s definitely a challenge to capture the entire process and still have a great end result but I will do my best to do just that :D

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      3.1
       Feb 13, 2012 at 11:06 am

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