For a long time I've wanted to add some text to these image posts, maybe to add some perspective as to how they were made, and the creative insight. The idea to draw radios was actually kind of a draw-this-in-your-style type of thing, I had seen a friend do something like this but in watercolor, and the style and design of old radios is very appealing, so I just started by searching on Pinterest for reference images.
The process is quite simple and can be broken down in 3 steps: the inital sketch to pin down the proportions, the adding in of color based on the main shadows of the piece, and the defining details which were accentuated with a plain mechanical pencil or a darker shade of the existing color. I work mainly from light to dark, gradually increasing the contrast and moving all around the drawing to keep the whole piece evolving at once - I am definitely not a fan of working in one area and finishing it, to leave another area completely blank. This latter technique has the unfortunate disadvantage of not allowing you to make a focus point in the drawing, everything would have the tendency to appear a bit flat and too even as it were.
All of the radios were drawn entirely with color pencil and mechanical pencil, except the green one, which has an initial wash of watercolor as a base.
As a side note/tip - the bigger the drawing, the more detail it allows, and thus looks better even when it is scaled down, like the golden one below, which was slightly bigger than the rest. (they were all drawn separately in the sketchbook and merged together in Photoshop)
M.
