Oxford Gravel Truck Drawing

This summer, my town of Oxford, Michigan is sponsoring an art gallery to display local artists’ work at our Concerts in the Park music series. The theme is to honor the town itself and Oxford is actually the gravel capital of the world. We have several gravel quarries in the area and gravel train trucks running constantly. Since I draw primarily cars and trucks, I wanted to honor the town with a vehicle of some sort, so I made this vintage Oxford gravel truck drawing.

The parks and rec team passed out these small canvasses to the artists, which was very generous! I’ve painted on canvas before, but I wanted to incorporate my black and white style for this piece, and for the sake of time, decided to use Micron pens and Sharpie markers rather than traditional black paint.

I started with a light rough sketch in pencil on the canvas to outline the truck and lettering. For the truck, I wanted to keep it simple with a side profile view, but rotated slightly toward the front to add some dimensionality. The lettering is tough. Lettering is different art form altogether – getting the spacing, flow, and thickness consistent is a challenge and definitely not my strong point.

I experimented with the Oxford letters, intentionally curving them downward to add to the flowing banner effect. It didn’t quite land for me, but that’s ok! Experimentation is how you learn what works and what doesn’t! It’s ok to fail forward! Enjoy the process!

I used Micron 1 to line the drawing. It’s a fine-ish marker that lays down pretty well on the canvas. The smaller weight pens worked for some of the detail, but had a hard time sticking to the bumpiness of the canvas.

Next, I added the banner around the Oxford lettering. I like the font – I think its old-timey-ness matches the antique truck.

Finally, I filled in the the shading with Sharpie. I was really happy with the way the wheels turned out on this Oxford gravel truck drawing. The shading helps to identify the concavity of the rear wheels in contrast with the convex front wheels. Also, the detail under the dump bed was fun to render.

The final touch was to outline the truck with Sharpie to give it a little extra attitude. We dropped the drawing off yesterday with the DDA office – I hope it adds some unique flavor to the display! Thanks for featuring some local artists!