How to Draw a Realistic Sports Car

Artist: JTM93 / December 29, 2013

2 votes

Step 1.

There are two main ways you can go about drawing the outline. I’ve described the freehand technique in detail here, but please skip ahead to step 12 to read about ‘the Grid’ technique before continuing. If you choose to draw the outline with th

Step 2.

Draw two straight lines coming off the inside of the egg shape. If you were to imagine the front bumper being divided into thirds, these two lines would point to the two division marks.

Step 3.

Draw a bowl-shaped line joining the two lines added in step 2. Then add two straight lines off the corners of this bowl-shaped line and make them extend to the middle section of the front bumper. We now have the general shape of the hood and cabin of

Step 4.

Now we need to draw the bottom border of the car which includes the car’s ‘splitter’ (this is the part of the floor which forms the bottom of the car's front section) and the sides of the car. To do so, add a line below the leading edge and sid

Step 5.

Here we add some of the detail surrounding the air intakes at the front of the car and around the doors.

Step 6.

Quite a lot has been added in this step. To make it easier to determine what has been added, open the image in full view and swap back and forth between this step and the image from step 5. Firstly, we need to draw the front fender shapes. Unlike on

Step 7.

The major additions in this step are the wheel wells. Given the perspective of the drawing, the wells do not appear circular at all. The sides almost appear straight, but they then tightly curve together with the apex of the curve occurring in the up

Step 8.

Drawing wheels that match the perspective of a car is probably the hardest aspect of any car drawing and usually requires a lot of trial and error. Constructing an ellipse is quite complex. To start off, draw two lines along the sides of the car (fai

Step 9.

Use the above technique to draw the rims of the wheels. These are not the tyres themselves (we won’t be able to see the tyre outlines in the final drawing) which is why they look so undersized for the wheel wells. Also add the outlines of the door

Step 10.

In this step we add the final details to the outline. These include details to the headlights, the windshield, the windshield wiper, the badges, and the wheel rims. The latter is more complicated than the other aspects and I describe the process belo

Step 11.

The LaFerrari has wheel rims with 5 basic spokes. There are two main stages in drawing the rim details. Start by drawing the center of the wheel. To do so, find the center of the oval and then draw the center of the wheel a little bit to the left of

Step 12.

Finally, we have finished the outline of the drawing, which is probably the most difficult aspect of this tutorial. Before we move on, I’ll describe an alternative technique to drawing the outline. It involves drawing a grid over the reference mate

Step 13.

We now can finally start the easier and fun part of the drawing – the shading. If you are familiar with my tutorials, my shading technique described here should hold no surprises. Begin by shading a rough base layer and then smooth it out with cott

Step 14.

In the previous step, I added a base layer of shading to various areas of the car. I've added some more layers of shading to certain areas before I start to smooth it out. You don’t want to overdo the smoothing aspect of the technique as it can dam

Step 15.

Now start to smooth out the shading with a cotton pad/tissue. A lot of the panels on the car are shaded in a single tone and don’t have any gradient, making them a lot easier to shade. The top surfaces of the front of the car and the vents in the c

Step 16.

Continue to smooth out the rest of the shading. Now we need to sharpen up some of the reflections and shadows. Because cars have glossy paint, they will reflect a lot of the surroundings and light in their paint. In this drawing, the upwards-facing s

Step 17.

There are a few regions on the car where there are more complicated reflections in the paint. The back of the front fender is one such area (see inset for larger image). Another area with complicated reflections is the side of the car just beyond the

Step 18.

Develop the gradient on the hood and smooth it out. Then add some shading to the splitter region of the front bumper. Note how a shadow from the upper ridge of the front of the car is casting an uneven shadow over this region. You should also start t

Step 19.

The detail along the rear of the side of the car has now been developed. There are three large streaks of shading separated by thin highlights. The upper streak extends all the way over the rear wheel well and has a jagged upper border towards the re

Step 20.

Darkly shade the roof sections outlined previously, but leave the highlight areas untouched for the moment. Also add some reflections to the left wing mirror (see inset for detail). There are a lot of highlights on the mirror housing, but also some d

Step 21.

With the roof largely finished, we now start to focus on the car’s shadow and the windscreen. The car’s shadow will obviously fall underneath the front and side border of the car. In this step we just need to add a thick and dark line along these

Step 22.

In this step we add most of the details to the wheel rims. You need to pay attention to where the shadows fall – in the front wheel, the main shadows are at the 1 o’clock position on the inner rim surface, and on the sides of the 4 o’clock spok

Step 23.

Darken the shadow under the car and start to shade the seats and dashboard in the interior.

Step 24.

Use a 4-6B pencil to blacken the shadow under the car (be careful not to scratch the paper!) and also the tires surrounding the wheel rims. Also darken the shading of the windscreen/interior. You can see some lighter streaks of shading in the interio

Step 25.

Quite a lot has to be added in this step. Firstly, lightly use an eraser to create more highlight streaks across the windshield. You should be trying to get a cloudy texture. Next, darken all the panel lines on the hood and doors. After that, add ver

Comments (0)

Artist: JTM93
Date Added: December 29, 2013
Steps: 25
Favorited: 5 (view)
Views: 1 in last hour, 31 in last day, 119 in last week, 101456 total
Comments: 0
Tags: draw cars, how to draw ferraris
Description: In this tutorial I will show you how to draw a realistic sports car, specifically the new car from Ferrari - the LaFerrari. This car is the successor to Ferrari's previous flagship model - the Enzo - and is one of the fastest and most expensive cars in the world. For this tutorial, you will need HB-4B pencils, a good eraser, a ruler, cotton pads/tissues/blending stumps/q-tips, and a sharpener. It would be good if you could get a hold of an ellipses template, but it isn't required.