It took me over a year to make this drawing...

You read that correctly. It took me over a year to make a drawing. You might think: "well, it doesn't look that good." And no, it doesn't. It wasn't the drawing that was so difficult it took one year to draw, it was everything else that made it really difficult to make a drawing. I'll explain most of it in this article, so keep reading if you're curious.

Why did this drawing take over 1 year to draw?

There are multiple reasons why I hadn't made a drawing in over a year: School, starting a blog, perfectionism and Instagram.

School

I'm studying Industrial Product Design at a university for applied science. And as good as that sounds I really don't like it. I mean I do like the study, but it takes soooo much time and energy. Every day after school I'm so tired I go to bed. And I often think that I might've made the wrong decision to go the uni. Would I have been better off if I didn't study?

Towards the end of the previous school year, June/July, I felt so burned out that I decided the quit school for half a year. I also quit one of the two classes so that I could at least finish one of them.

I needed some time to just focus on myself and my mental health. At the time I thought it would just take 2 weeks or so and then I could start on something I wanted to start for a while. But I noticed it would take much more time.

Starting a blog

During that time some YouTube videos popped up about how you could earn a living by writing on a blog. I really wanted to try that, but for a long time I needed to focus on school and I couldn't do anything else. But I finally got time to start a blog.

Starting my blog took a lot of work as I chose to code it myself. I wouldn't have done it differently if I could do it again though. I really like coding a website. But it took me multiple months to build this website which is a lot less time actually than it took to code my first website That took over a year probably.

When I finished coding this blog I wanted to make an article every week starting from the day I quit school. But I just couldn't. I wanted to work on it so bad that it made me feel even more tired all the time. So I just decided to not think about writing. Instead I would listen to music and podcasts and watching YouTube videos. I probably didn't do much more.

When summer vacation ended I wanted to start working on my blog. It was so difficult to write a blog. But at least I had time to learn it. It took over 7 articles and over 3 months of writing to be able to write one every week.

Until about 2 weeks ago I used all my time and energy to write blog articles. That was my main focus and it still is, but now I'm able to write most articles in 1 or 2 days leaving the rest of the week to do other things like drawing.

I was scared to make bad drawings

The previous drawing I made was probably one of my favorites and definitely one of the best I made. So after I finished last school year I felt like I needed to beat or at least match the perfection of that drawing.

I also felt like I didn't know how to draw. I hadn't done it in so long. Could I still draw like that? This made it so difficult to start any drawing. And because of this question I was more likely to make mistakes and making mistakes was the last thing I wanted to do. So for a long time I just didn't start a drawing because I didn't want to make mistakes and make bad drawings.

Instagram

I wanted to post consistently on Instagram, so to do that I wanted to work ahead. I would post the drawing I made when I finished the next one to stay ahead and to always have something to post with a week of margin.

I wanted to do this to relieve a bit of the pressure of constantly posting whenever i finished a drawing. But it only made starting a drawing more difficult. Because now I had the pressure to make one drawing every week.

Now I'm still going to plan every post and story, but I'm not going to wait until the next drawing is done.

Not the first drawing I started

The Ferrari Portofino isn't actually the first drawing I started in the past year. I started 5 other drawings before this one. I think the Portofino is the first drawing I finished is because everything else is going well and I had time to make this drawing. This wasn't the case before I started this drawing.

Porsche 992 GT3 Touring

The first drawing I started this year was a Porsche 992 GT3 Touring. They look so good. But I wanted to draw it a a piece of paper that was way too big and I started this drawing even before I had taken some time off to feel better. I felt like I needed to draw so I started this one.

I didn't come very far with it. I sketched the Porsche and a colored the first layer of the body. I also made tones of photos and short videos to post on Instagram when I finally would finished it.

But as it goes with every drawing I really like working on it in the beginning, but as soon as I don't work on it for a day I'm not as interested and motivated to work on it anymore.

Another Porsche 992 GT3 Touring

After that drawing I started another GT3 Touring. This time I was smart enough to draw it a a small a4 sized piece of paper. But just like with the previous one I was really motivated to work on it for a few days. I did get further with this drawing then the previous one though.

The new Porsche 992 GT3 RS

Yet again I started a drawing of a Porsche, but this time the new GT3 RS. I hadn't been on Instagram for a long time, but when I logged in again I saw a photo of the new Porsche 992 GT3 RS and I decided to draw it. And of course I chose to draw a difficult photo with a background.

I really wanted this drawing to be perfect. And that was probably why i didn't finish it. It does look really good though what I've drawn. Maybe i will finish it one day, but I probably won't...

Audi RS6

Then I started working on an Audi RS6. @auditography made a really beautiful photo of a dark blue RS6 in the mountains during a sunset. You can probably guess that this was one hell of a difficult photo to draw from. And after I messed up the front wheel I quit this drawing.

Porsche 992

This was a stressful drawing because i really wanted to finish a drawing by now. I had started a painting of this exact photo a long time ago which I also never finished. But this time I wanted to draw it. I wanted to use solvents to blend the colored pencils, but the paper I used didn't like that at all. So it ended up looking really bad and grainy.

Ferrari Portofino

And then finally I started the drawing I would finish. Not that everything went well while drawing this. There are lots of things that didn't go well, but i had come so far i might as well finish it even though it won't be the best drawing I've made.

Ferrari Portofino drawing process - What went well and what didn't

Sketching

For this drawing I used the grid method to sketch the outline. This is something I started doing this year. Previously I would just trace it because I loved the coloring part. But I wanted to learn how to sketch. Btw I wrote an article about how to use the grid method to sketch.

I might have sketched the wheels a little better, but the spacing between the spokes looks good enough.

I also forgot to sketch some things like the shield on the side and the door lines.

Drawing the wheels

The first thing I color most times are the wheels. they are by far the most difficult and detailed so i just like to get them done straight away. As the are mostly black they really help a lot by judging the values of other things as the darkest parts are already colored.

I actually didn't draw for 2 months after I drew the front wheel. So the rear wheel looks very different from the front one... But whatever right?

Drawing the other non body colored parts

Next I colored everything that was the blue body color: the side skirt, the shadow, the grill, the diffuser, the cabin and the rear light. And the shield on the side of course.

The body color

And this is where everything went wrong. At least when you look close up. When drawing this blue color it felt like the paper couldn't handle my drawing skills. Everything I colored blue looked really grainy and it was really difficult to layer and blend. And sometimes the pigment would just scrape right off when coloring. This would have been less of a problem if I used markers first and then colored on top of it with colored pencils, but I chose not to do that. I don't know why this happened, but it is either my drawing skills, the paper I'm using or the pencils I'm using.

I had this same problem too when drawing this blue Porsche 991.2 Speedster, but I made this drawing twice as big as the Portofino so you don't see it as clearly.

Finally I finished a drawing!

I finally finished a drawing in over 1 year! Even though it didn't turn out the best I still really like it. I'm definitely going to try out new paper to see if that helps. I want to try the Strathmore mixed media paper and the Springhill Bristol Vellum paper. If you have any suggestions which paper I should try to let me know in the comments or on Instagram.

Luuk Minkman

Full-Time Artist Specialized in Automotive Art

I'm an artist and I draw realistic cars with alcohol markers and colored pencils. I have been doing so for a decade. I'm sharing everything I know about drawing on this blog. On here, you can find all you need to know to learn how you can draw realistic cars and other subjects yourself. Stay updated by following me on Instagram.