Behind any good rendering is a good idea sketch.  This was sketched in my notebook with a biro.  Keep your lines loose to start with, roughing in the basic shape with light biro lines.  I then start to firm up the lines by going over the them again until I am happy.  I then used chartpak markers (any AD marker is fine) to add to the sketch with form, colour and graphics.  For the grey areas I used a cool grey 3, the brown is a buff marker.  I used the same marker over the top to achieve tonal variation.  The next step is to take a white gel pen or white paint marker to add the highlights, instruments and other details.  Look at products close to you, you will find that the highlights almost always fall on tight radius corners or edges.

Good sketching is a skill which you will develop through practice, the quality of your sketches really depend on this, if you are a beginner try to do some drawing everyday, even if its just ten minutes.  Sketching car interiors is very difficult, so if you are a beginner aim to improve on what you can already achieve.

I often use an underlay for this kind of work, but in this case I used a reference image. Once you are happy, scan it into your computer at 150- 300 DPI.

Desaturate the sketch and reduce the lightness so it looks a little more like this.  You can also clean up around the perimeter using the eraser tool (the paths tool can help you here a lot).

Start working over the top of the sketch using colours that match cool greys.  A cool grey 5 will give you both shadows and highlights by using it on a multiply layer (for shadows( or a screen layer (for highlights).  I have also started to work some of the highlights back up using a soft brush and painting white on a normal layer.  Make sure this layer is on top of all other layers.

Start picking out areas of colour working on a multiply layer, these early graphic stages are important, Photoshop gives you a lot of room for experimentation with graphics and colour.  When I was doing this sketch I was always trying different variations of colour, texture and graphical break up.  These screen shots are the result of a bit of tweaking, especially layer opacity.  I have also picked out the dash display using a white soft brush at about 10% flow.

page last updated; 2007-03-06

LEE ATWELL

INTERIOR RENDERING

This tutorial explains how to create an interior rendering using Adobe Photoshop and a graphics tablet, along with some pens and markers.  The Author, Lee Atwell, graduated from Coventry University in 2006 with an Mdes in Transport Design.  He has worked for Arup Vehicle Design as an automotive designer and Alias modeller, as well as completing various freelance contracts.

More of Lee Atwells work can be found at www.coroflot.com/leeatwell and he can be contacted at [email protected]