1970 Firebird Drawing

One of my all-time favorite cars is the 1970-1973 Pontiac Firebird. Most people go for the ’67-’69 – which are super cool – but my favorite is the Endura bumper-era cars (same for the GTO, which also started with the Endura in 1970). I’ve drawn a 1970 firebird before, but this one is a little different in that it is drawn using my new favorite style – the black-and-white-on-gray. Also, this 1970 Firebird drawing is the first of this style drawn large for an 11×14 frame.

I started with a VERY rough pencil sketch and used templates very little on this drawing – I guess my hand was just feeling extra steady this week. Even the tires are drawn without ellipses. If you look hard you can tell and see some flat spots – just don’t look that hard.

Next, I started re-tracing with Micron pen 01 and adding 03 and 05 weights to give some atmosphere.

I really didn’t want to try drawing the proper honeycomb wheels, so I gave her steelies like a vintage stock car (read: cop out).

Shading large dark areas came next, which was done with Micron 1 brush pen. Here’s the start to that process:

I like using the Micron pen because the ink is dark, but the tip thickness is small so it usually leaves stroke lines. Sometimes, I go back over large dark areas with Sharpie to smooth it out.

I could have stopped here on this 1970 Firebird drawing. I really kind of like the black-on-gray look as it is, but I did finish the drawing with Posca white. You can see the wetness of the paint made the paper warp a little bit – that also shows up in the scan at the beginning of the post. Still…worth it.

Which is your favorite – with or without the white?

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