How to draw wheels

Drawing wheels

How to draw wheels

02:08 20 September in Blog

If you’ve been trying to create the perfect drawing of a car, you have certainly realized just how important drawing wheels can be to the end result. While some may think it is easy to simply free hand the wheels for the first time drawing a car, they have probably learned the hard way that these intricate round circles are even more complicated than they look. So, in order to help you figure out the proper way to get from a blank page, to the perfect wheel base for your car, use the following steps. Be sure to follow the steps carefully and remember to always use a reference image when possible – this will go a long way in helping with proper proportions, especially when drawing the wheels.

The Process of Drawing Wheels on a Car

1. It probably doesn’t come as a big surprise that we are going to start the wheels by drawing a circle. If you have an ellipses tool and have measured your reference image with a pencil, use that to create a perfect circle. Otherwise, you can free hand the circle if you feel comfortable. Once you have the first circle, you will then draw three more. The second circle will begin seeming with the first, but go away in the opposite direction to create a 3D effect of having the second wheel in the front. The third wheel, or the back wheel closest to the viewer, will then be drawn by overlapping the second, and the last wheel will be drawn by starting from the third, and then going away and coming to a close. Remember that the second and fourth circles will not be full as they are being overlapped by the first and third circle.

2. Now that you have all four wheels, it’s time to create the inner rim. All this means is that you will be drawing a second smaller circle within the four you have already drawn. This created the effect of having the rim on each of the tires.

3. After creating the rim, draw a large ‘X’ that connects to the inner circle of the wheels, do the same with a vertical line that intersects the center of the ‘X’ and still attaches to the inner circle.

4. You now actually have the rough sketch of your wheels – congratulations! It may have taken you a few tries to get to this step, but you have persevered and are now ready to begin shading in the wheels. You can use a shade of gray or silver to color the rim, be sure to use additional layers in places where you want there to be more contrast, such as the top of the rim, and fewer layers where the light would be hitting the wheels, such as where the wheels are touching the ground.

5. Once you have colored in the rim, start coloring in the actual tire itself with black by using side-to-side strokes to create enough layers that the paper does not show through.

6. The space above the wheels now needs color to add dimension – these areas will soon be seen as the wheel base and should be even darker than the tires.

7. Add depth to any area of the tire you believe needs it, which can be done with a black or by simply smudging what you have already colored.

There you have it, seven relatively simple steps to go from a blank piece of paper, to an excellent set of wheels. Once again, we highly recommend using reference images until you feel comfortable drawing from scratch to ensure proper proportions as you practice drawing wheels.