Bumblebee Camaro Concept car

This is an oil pastel drawing based on this photo of the Chevy Camaro Concept car that was used as Bumblebee in the Michael Bay live-action Transformers movie, which I photographed in the parking lot of the Athens Coney Island Diner in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak during the 2007 Woodward Dream Cruise, which I attended as a guest of General Motors FYI Blog.

I've been working on this drawing on-and-off since February or March, but, as is usual for me, I kept on getting frustrated with little details in the background, and I was also either working on some of the other pieces of art that I am doing simultaneously or was just plain procrastinating.

I printed out a copy of the photo, traced some guidelines on it, and then scaled them up to 22" by 28" posterboard size to keep the major elements in the drawing roughly proportionate to the original photograph, but, otherwise, I drew it all by eye. I try to keep a balance between impressionism and realism, but not photorealism. Photorealism requires a lot more work than I am willing to put into any given image, and, in any event, I took the original photo, so I already have a photorealistic image of this car called a &quothotograph". I like producing drawings that sort of look like photos if you see them from across the room, but, when you get closer, you can clearly tell that it's not; that's my "ideal". Of course, I drew this in thick oil pastels, so you'd have to stand a lot further back to be fooled compared to my better coloured pencil drawings.