Yep, I'm at it again, if you haven't seen my previous two:
This time, I thought I'd try my hand at a tougher tank(the Ru 251), and... big mistake, I thought I'd try a trickier view angle, kind of an incoming 45 with normal field. The Ru 251 would normally be fairly easy to draw, as it's quite uniform and featureless overall. From the angle I drew, the hull wasn't so tough but the turret was VERY tricky. Aligning and scaling the road wheels was also quite a pain.
Welp, let's get started.
So I drew some perspective guide lines, for the different front-back lines of the hull. Then I went ahead and drew the upper glacias, to get a good solid reference.
After that, I drew the track guards and added the driver's compartment curve to the front so I have it later, and nothing else gets in the way. I also drew out the raised back, I started with the frontmost line going between both sides of the hull, then drew the back, and finished it from there. Now I can erase what I don't need.
This... took forever. Getting the turret right. I think I ended up erasing it about 5 times, because it just looked too weird for me. In the end, what worked was drawing the TOP surface of the turret FIRST, then drawing the base on the hull. Then I could comfortably link the contours going around the right side and the back.
Here, I'm getting started on both the gun and the wheels. The gun was really crazy to draw, so I just dropped it and went to the wheels, which was equally a challenge, due to the angle and perspective.
I finished the positioning of the wheels, but I got bored with them so I decided to come back to detailing them later, and went back to the gun instead. After I started drawing the muzzle break, I realized that... ONCE AGAIN, the gun would be cut off from the side of the canvas.
One IMAGE REPOSITIONING LATER... I finished the gun and went ahead and added a bunch of details to the hull, including the cuploas, gun sight, hatches, handles, rails, and the lights and tow hooks on the front.
Here I added the tracks to the wheels. I think they're not wide enough, I tried to detail them some more too but I got lazy. HOWEVER- I did add a shiz ton of details on the side of the hull, particularly the suspension.
Here, I finished up details for the wheels.
Here's the finished drawing, with my own personal customizations and shading added. I suppose Pic 8 will suffice if you hate my customizations, which is fine... I think they are too much myself. I kinda screwed up with the decal on the side of the gun, it's supposed to be "90mm of fun", but I couldn't get it to show very well.
Hope you enjoyed the step-by-step guide, if you want to see another, feel free to post a request! I had some free time this weekend between my finals assignments.
Here's the link to the album for this guide: http://imgur.com/a/cJ73M