How to Draw a Car

Today's drawing guide will take you on a journey to learn how to draw a car. This tutorial will focus on a vintage car's classic and timeless lines, sleek body, and iconic details that make it stand out. Follow along the process of creating a beautiful illustration that captures the retro style's essence.

Use your drawing for various projects, such as designing your own retro stickers, creating a car clipart, making vintage illustrations, or simply making a statement with your art.

To get started, make sure you have all your drawing supplies ready. Our free drawing tutorials can be used with traditional and digital media, such as Procreate, watercolor, poster paint, and Illustrator.

Step 1 - Create the Car Body Shape

The first step in drawing a car is to sketch the vehicle's outline. For rough sketches, you can use a removable medium like a graphite pencil. If you do not have one, use a light-colored color medium and hide it when outlining or adding color to your car illustration.

Sketch the Outer Shape

Let's start drawing the shape of our retro car. In the bottom half of your drawing area, make a straight line the width you want for your vehicle. Then about one-third of the width, add a vertical line on the left side. This is where the hood of the car will start.

Draw the top shape of your car by drawing two curved lines. Draw a curved line from the bottom to the vertical line and another higher toward the right side.

Draw the Bottom Shape

Create the bottom shape of the car where the wheels are. On the front side of your vehicle (the left), draw two half circles and repeat the same process on the rear as we did below. Draw a straight line at the bottom in the space between the holes.

Step 2 - Finalize your Car Sketch

With the base shape of your car sketched, it's time to add the last touches, like wheels, windows, and detail lines.

Add the Windows and Wheels

Looking at the red sketch lines in our example image below, add the front and back wheels with a small circle in the middle. Then at the very top of your retro vehicle, sketch the two side windows (shown in blue).

Add Details

Add the last couple of details to your car sketch. We added a curved line close to the roof's top and on the hood's front. Draw a line between the two windows for the door line and add a small rectangle to the left for the door handle.

Fill out your sketch by adding details such as lights, bumpers, and window wipers and rounding the front and back bottom pieces.

Step 3 - Permanently Line your Sketches

Once you have finished your rough sketches, replace your sketching medium with a defined one to make your car outlines permanent. Grab your favorite outlining tool, a pen, marker, or brush, and start tracing your car body sketch lines.

Then trace the inner detail lines of the body. Pay close attention to your overlapping sketches. If there are any sketches that you do not want to make permanent, simply skip them.

Finish your car outline by defining the wheels, windows, and additional details you added to your drawing.

Step 4 - Add Color to Your Car

In this step, apply your colors to your drawing using any medium, like watercolor brushes, pastels, or crayons. You can also learn how to fill a shape in Procreate to quickly add color.

We used yellow, gray, and light blue for our color palette, but you can use any combination of shades. Design Bundles has a great collection of ready-made groovy color palettes that will look fantastic with your retro illustration.

Step 5 - Decorate your Car

With your sketches, outlines, and coloring complete, you can now style and decorate your drawing to fit a specific theme. Start off by adding details like lines, shading, and texture.

After that, add other elements that complement your colors and general theme. We went with a sunny flower theme and drew flowers on the body. You could even use free watercolor clipart to decorate the car or the background.

Great work. Your car looks groovy and ready to use on t-shirts, digital travel stickers, or even sublimated coasters. Do you want to draw more cool things that will complement your vehicle? Check out our how to draw a butterfly tutorial, or draw a banner with text to make it personalized.