I love drawing cars, and I also love watching other people draw cars. Which is probably why I find these sketches from Richard Fletcher, the man who assisted and drew the Dick Tracy comic strip from 1961-1983. Cars weren't the focus of the strip, but it's interesting to see how they were dealt with.
The goals in the context of drawing cars in Dick Tracy clearly weren't about creating identifiable, accurate cars, but to make cars that looked correct in a given scene. Perspective and angle were more important than detail, which is why the two-block trick showed here for roughly getting the perspective of the car right makes so much sense, especially when you think about the deadlines these guys were working under.
What I can't quite figure out is why these guys just didn't keep a couple of toy cars on their desks to reference when they needed them? Were the blocks more flexible because they could be used to gauge, say, a building's perspective?
Still, fascinating stuff. Oh, and they're called "Gouldisms" because Fletcher was working for Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould.