Bullitt Mustang Drawing

A few weeks ago at the Frankenmuth Auto Fest, I was fortunate to meet a very nice man who wanted to commission a Bullitt Mustang Drawing for his son, who is building a film-accurate replica.

I’ve loved cars ever since I was two years old, but my first “favorite car” was the Mustang. As a Mustang fan, I’m very familiar with the famous movie cars – in this case, the 1968 Mustang GT390 driven by Steve McQueen.

I love drawing Mustangs and this one in particular is special to me. I remember watching the chase scene many times when I was younger, and Jessie and I were fortunate to get to see the car in 2018 before it was auctioned off. It was like a pilgrimage to me. If you look carefully, you can see the square tubing welded to the unibody of the car – these were used to mount the camera rig that shot close-ups of Steve during the chase scene. There are a few shots in the film where you can see these under the car. I tried to discretely add them in to my drawing.

I started with a rough pencil sketch on toned gray paper, and added in line work using Micron pens. I started off pretty heavy, using Micron 03 and layering in 05 for some atmospheric perspective.

Next, I laid in Copic grays in the Torque Thrust wheels, grille, interior, and shadow. The license plate is California JJZ 109, just as it was in the movie.

Some scenes in the film show the car with the round side mirror, some show no mirror at all, and after the film, WB installed a square mirror. To best represent the film car, I used a round mirror.

The body was painted Highland Green, and was artificially aged for the film. Here, I started with a light olive green for the reflective parts of the body.

The rest of the body was filled in with multiple layers of dark green, depending on the amount of shadow.

Finally, I used Posca white paint pen to highlight the light reflections in the body and chrome.

The drawing was framed and matted in 14×18, and ready to go off to the customer. Thank you again for the opportunity to draw this beautiful Bullitt Mustang!