Hot hatchback concept sketches

Here are some sketches of a small car (it’s more of a hot hatch really) that actually started life as a small electric vehicle for urban environments. The proportions grew larger and larger as I refined the sketch – and it was quickly turning into a sport coupe – but I forced myself to stay true to the compact/small car genre as best I could.

Did I succeed? Well, I am happy with the sketch. But I’m not totally happy with the way it evolved into something entirely different than what I had originally intended to draw. That’s a very difficult part of art and design that many artists won’t talk about, but I’m not afraid to put everything out on the table for this blog!

I’m still trying to break out of my mold of drawing the same cars over and over again, and I’m not going to lie when I say that it is a really difficult habit to break! Even when I was a child I was drawing pretty much the same car over and over again, and nobody ever really called me out on that until my freshmen year of design school.

My professors were really tough on me, and I thank them to this day for challenging me to think outside the box when it comes to automotive design. Now 20 years later with nobody else to guide me, I have to keep myself on track and focused if I want to get any better at this kind of illustration.

In my last post, you saw a handful of quick and loose SUV concept sketches. Big trucks are not my thing at all, but I admit that it was really fun to step out of my comfort zone for a bit and explore some designs for a segment which I admittedly don’t have much interest in. It’s difficult to be creative in those kinds of situations, but I’m a believer that a change in perspective is good if we want to learn and grow our core strengths.

My core strengths in automotive art and design are solidly in the “sport coupe” segment. And you could probably tell by looking at those trucks that I drew! Designing trucks that looks like cars would be something that I would excel at I think…