Hi all!

Here is one tutorial that I made on a special request from Allan McDonald, owner of the website: http://designertechniques.com/. Click on post to read the full tutorial.

01 – To begin this tutorial, I obviously started by making a quick pen sketch, which took around 5-10 minutes on the paper. As there were other sketches on the A4 page, after scanning it I took few moments to clean the image I intend to work on and render. There are a few perspective things that can be fixed on this sketch (for example the rear wheel), but In this case I was looking more for productivity and didn’t pay much of attention to those details.

02 – Now we can start with colouring the sketch. With the big brush I spray onto a new layer (on top of the sketch work) forming the basic coat of the car. I usually use a brush with 100% black colour and an opacity level of between 10-20%. I am also going to concentrate on the front of the car only – mainly the area around hood and the wheel arches. This is the area where I am going to build the surfaces and pay more attention. After this, I quickly block in the interior as well. As can be seen, from the beginning I have established the direction of the light source, from right to left. Notice the large highlight on the windscreen.

03 – Well, now I just continue with adding the shadings. I have sprayed a few more brush strokes to darken the body side of the car (the place that doesn’t get illuminated from the light source). Then with the white colour I build the highlights generated from the light on the left (hood, wheel arches…). 

04 – I now continue by applying more shadows & highlights to the rendering. This is the time when you have to pay a little more attention to developing the shapes that describe your design best. Because the shadow always follows the shape it is very crucial that your shadows follow the design you have in mind.

05 – 5-10mins later we’re pretty much done. I have finished with applying the main volumes of the car. I now work into the image, completing the small bits that need the attention and finally – with a very fine brush – the details such as grooves, surface edges, highlights, spokes etc.

06 – Just before I finished the rendering I decided to add a bit of colour to the image, mainly where the focus of our design is. This well placed ambient light can contribute much to the whole rendering and the general feeling of a lightsource too. The last couple of touches are too finish a few more details – the headlights, the badge..few accents etc. The whole thing took me just above an hour.

07 – This last image shows how I applied the light to the rendering – the key areas. Be careful with the light you add to your rendering. Sometimes it enhances the whole rendering and can bring a very pleasant feeling to it. However, if not applied properly it can make your rendering look weird and unnatural. My advice is to take your time and practise it until you acquire a decent level with it – then present it. It may be a good idea to try lighting the same image in different ways…this will help you understand how lighting works in different situations. Good luck!

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Here I decided to post a tutorial that might be useful for some guys. For others – might be just a reference of how another designer works. I tried to explain in 7 steps the creation of a rendering of mine I did for one presentation. Hope it is useful to you!

Let’s start with the tutorial.

01 – The first thing first – the drawing we’re going to colour in Photoshop. I already had a sketch of the front ¾ of the car which actually I was going to render. Then I spent 5 minutes sketching on the new layer the front of the vehicle. It is not so necessarily to be very detailed and precise, because we’re going to put a lot of things on top of it. Just make a decent sketch of your design.

02 – Make a new layer. Use the paint bucket tool or the big brush to fill up the whole sketch with dense colour. I used 100% black colour for this, then turned the opacity of the layer down to 40-50%. Depends on the method you use, sometimes you have to clean up with the erase tool around the outlines of our sketch. You can do the same thing with the interior for example, or the inside of the grill and some shadows casted from the car. Try to place all these shades in separate layers, so when you need, you can play with the opacity of each one of them. After that, we’re going to put all the shadows and highlights forming the car on top of these layers.

03 – Now the fun begins! The bigger the volume, the bigger the brush :) However, before that you must consider the direction of the light source too. In this case the light source was from the left. Use the airbrush to spray over the body. Do it bravely with no big concern, just be conscious about the shapes and the highlights you put and try to follow your design. Don’t forget to keep your rendering clean, it will help you see your design while working on it!

04 – We continue applying shadows and highlights to the render. That’s the mid-stage of the rendering. One by one we pay attention to the smaller details of the car. Don’t be worried if sometimes doesn’t work from the first time. It happens to me too. Just play with the brush, the erase tool…with the opacity too. Continue building the render. By the way, sometimes this is enough. Depending on your taste and the matter of your job, this is good enough to be already presented.

05 – We’re actually almost finished with the rendering. After finishing with the main highlights and reflections and so on, I spent few minutes with the fine brush for the small details – things like grooves, shut lines and small highlights on the edges. Adding the asphalt on the bottom is not so important, in fact I lost a lot of time looking for the proper thing I need, because I was lazy to do It myself. Just having a proper shadow of the vehicle will be enough.

06 – Well, I decided to colour my car. I thought red is good one this time, so I coloured my car in red colour. Added few more reflections and details as can be seen on the bonnet and the windscreen. I just realised, that I have forgotten to paint the side mirrors, so I had to do that too. I applied a texture to the headlights too…for fun.

07 – I had to present the rendering in A4 format. I opened a new document and imported the flattened image of the rendering I already did. Quickly pasted an image of a factory in the background and manipulated a little bit with it. A little bit of work with the brush…using the blue colour. I lightened up few places of the rendering as a final touch to it. The whole rendering took me about 1h and 30 minutes.

[View with PicLens]