Transcripts
1. Trailer: It's hard to imagine anything more flat than a piece of paper. We need to learn to create
drawings that appear three dimensional despite the
flat surface of the page. I'm Brent Eviston. Welcome to the second course in my
drawing laboratory series, drawing in three dimensions. In this course, you're going to want to do drawings that appear three dimensional that appear to come towards you in space. This course will give you all of the skills and strategies you need to transcend the
flatness of the page. Most people are familiar with the idea of primary
colors that red, yellow, and blue can be combined to create
every other color. But far fewer people
are aware that three dimensional form
works the same way. Just like there are
three primary colors, there are three primary
three dimensional shapes, the sphere, the
cylinder, and the cube. These three primary
shapes can be combined to create three dimensional
drawings of any subject, no matter how complex. In this course, you'll
begin by learning how to draw basic three
dimensional shapes, like spheres,
cylinders, and cubes. Next, you'll learn
linear perspective, one of the most powerful
tools we have to create the illusion of
three dimensionality. Next, you'll learn
how to simplify any subject into its most basic
three dimensional shapes. By understanding the basic three dimensional structure
of your subjects, you'll be able to draw
anything in three dimensions. And finally, you'll
learn how to apply these three dimensional
drawing strategies to any subject. You'll have the tools and
techniques necessary to draw anything you can
observe or magic. As long as you can
figure out what three dimensional shapes make up your subject, you'll
be able to draw. This course will give you all of the skills and strategies you need to bring your drawings
into the third dimension. This course will
also prepare you for shading and even
figure drawing. So once you're ready to
move beyond the basics, then learning to draw in three dimensions
is the next step. Join me in this course, drawing in three
dimensions here on skis.
2. The Sphere: Sees se sss. Welcome to the first lesson of drawing in three dimensions. In this lesson, you're going to learn how to create the illusion of a three dimensional object on the flat surface of the page. Now, it's important
to remember that your paper only has
two dimensions. We can draw lines
that go up and down and we can draw lines
that go side to side. But in this course,
you're going to learn how to break the flat
surface of the page. You're going to learn how to
do drawings that appear to be coming toward you and
moving away from you, drawings that have
three dimensionality, drawings that have
a sense of depth. To begin this process, today, you're going to learn
about the sphere. A sphere is a perfectly
round object. A sphere is essentially a ball. Now, many of you will encounter spherical objects
on a daily basis. Baseball, soccer
balls, basketballs. All of these are
perfect spheres. We also see spheres in the sky
with the sun and the moon. Of course, the Earth we
live on is a sphere. Now, pure spheres are
not as common as some of the other three
dimensional shapes that you're going to learn
about in this course. We don't see spheres as much as we see boxes or cylinders. That being said, many objects are made from partial spheres. We're going to talk a lot more about that later
on in this course. But for now, let's start
exploring the sphere. Now, in the beginner's
gut to drawing, you learned how to draw
straight lines and basic shapes like
ovals and circles. Now, on their own, these
lines and shapes appear flat, but we can combine
them to create the illusion of a three
dimensional sphere on the page. Now, before you learn
how to draw a sphere, I want to introduce the idea of transparent
construction drawing. Now transparent construction
drawing is the art of drawing three dimensional forms as if they are transparent. While you're drawing a
shape like the spear, you'll also draw axis lines. Now, in a transparent
construction drawing, we leave all of the
visible lines on the page. The reason we do this
is because it allows your mind to start to think
in terms of three dimensions. If you force yourself to draw a three dimensional object
as if it were transparent, you have to think all the
way around the object, not just what's visible. This is such a great
way to learn how to think about objects
in the round. Now, I also want to remind
you that we're still going to be starting our
drawings, very lightly. Remember the process that you learned at the beginner's guide. We're going to start off with
very light basic shapes, and later on, we're going
to darken those shapes. But as you'll see
today, we only want to darken some of the lines
we're going to draw. This is why it's so
important to draw as lightly as you can
at the beginning. Now in just a few minutes, I'm going to demonstrate how
to draw a volumetric sphere. But before that, I want to explore the sphere
through diagrams. I want to make sure
you understand all the essential concepts before we get to the
drawing demonstration. Now in this lesson, our
ultimate goal is to draw a sphere that appears round
and three dimensional. As you know, we always start our drawings with
a simple shape. What shape are we going to draw to start our drawing
of a sphere? Well, hopefully, the answer
is obvious, a circle. Now this circle represents the contour or the outer
edge of the sphere. But this circle on its own does not appear three
dimensional. It's flat. Now we need a way to turn this flat circle into
a rounded sphere. We need a way to make it look like some part of the
sphere is coming toward us. Now, one way we can do this is by drawing a latitude line. A latitude line is a line that runs all the way around
the circle horizontally, just like the equator
of the Earth. Hopefully, you can see that now this drawing is starting
to feel three dimensional. This is starting to feel
like a rounded sphere, not merely a flat circle. But why does this illusion work? Now, the way our mind
interprets this line is as if it is emerging from behind
the sphere coming around Toward the viewer and then disappearing behind
the sphere once again. Now, even though we only see
half of the latitude line, the part of the line that is on the front of the
sphere facing us, our mind infers that
this line travels around the back side of the sphere and comes
around front again. Let's pause here for a moment
to talk about this shape. This shape is called an ellipse. An ellipse occurs when a
circle goes into perspective. Now to help you
understand this concept, let's take a look at a circle that I have drawn on
a piece of board. Now, you can clearly see
that this is a full circle. But watch what happens when I start to tilt this board back. What happens to the circle? Now, hopefully, you can see it starts to look like an oval. This is what happens when a full circle goes
into perspective, where part of it
comes toward us, and part of it
goes away from us. Once again, when a circle goes into perspective
and becomes ovular, we refer to it as an ellipse. Now, ovals and ellipses are drawn in exactly the same way. Now, an oval is a flat shape. Think about drawing
an ovular sticker that is stuck to a flat board. But an ellipse is a full circle that
goes into perspective. Now we commonly see ellipses
when we drink out of cups. Now we know that the opening
for a cup is a full circle. But unless you're looking at that cup from directly above, what you see is an ellipse. Now let's get back to our
diagrams of the sphere. Now we know if we were to draw a line that traveled all
the way around the sphere, it would make a perfect circle. But from this view, we are seeing it as an ellipse. In fact, we're not even
seeing the full ellipse, we're only seeing
part of the ellipse, the part that's
on the front side of the sphere that's facing us. Half of the ellipse
is out of sight on the back side of the sphere
that is facing away from us. But our minds infer that this line travels all the
way around the sphere, even though we only
see part of that line. This is what creates
the illusion of three dimensionality. Hopefully, you're starting
to see how important it is to understand how the mind interprets images and
what we need to do to make flat drawings
appear three dimensional. Now, even though we only
see half of the ellipse, in the demonstration today, you're going to see that
I draw the full oval, and I'm going to ask
you to do the same. Starting off by drawing
the full oval will ensure that it is
properly drawn. If you only draw the visible
half of the ellipse, it's actually
pretty difficult to tell if it's properly drawn. I find it much easier to
draw the full oval first and then darken the part of the line that we
once seen by viewer. Now in order to
properly draw and place the ellipse on the
circle for the sphere, we need to start
with an axis line. Now this axis line should cut the circle directly in half, so the top of the circle
mirrors the bottom half. Just like with the circle, this axis line will also divide the oval for the
ellipse directly in half. The top half of the oval for the ellipse mirrors
the bottom half. Now I want you to take a look at the corners of the
oval for the ellipse. When you draw your ellipses, you want to make sure that
the corners are rounded. You'll notice that the
bottom line of the ellipse curves directly into the
contour of the sphere. It is very common for
beginners to make the mistake of pinching the
corners of their ellipses. Instead of rounding the
edges of the ellipse, the lines meet at an angle. This tends to flatten the
illusion of roundness. To properly create
the illusion that this latitude line is curving all the way
around the sphere, we want the corners
of the ellipse to curve smoothly right into
the edges of the sphere. Again, in just a minute, I'm going to demonstrate
all of this in a drawing, but I want to make sure you
understand these concepts. Now, let's talk about opening
and closing the ellipses. Now, hopefully, you went through the beginners guide to drawing. In that course, we talked
about the idea that ovals can be more open or closer to
a circle or more closed, closer to a line. Now you can open or close the ellipses of your
spheres as much as you like. But remember, no matter how open or closed
your ellipses are, that axis line must divide the oval for your
ellipses directly in half. Now we can further
enhance the effect of three dimensionality by
adding a longitude line, a line that runs vertically all the way around the sphere. Now this vertical ellipse
must follow all of the same rules that
we've been talking about with the
horizontal ellipse. It's just turned in a
different direction. I want you to note that
the axis lines for these ellipses are
perpendicular to one another. They are at a 90 degree
angle to one another. I'd also like you
to note that they intersect directly in the
center of the circle. When you're drawing
your axis lines today, remember these ideas. They must be perpendicular
to one another and they should intersect directly at
the center of the circle. Now by drawing spheres with both a latitude and
a longitude line, they start to appear as if they are facing specific directions. For example, this sphere appears to be facing
down into the left. Let's see what happens
when we darken the other sides of
these ellipses. Now the sphere appears to be
facing up into the right. Here are a couple of
variations that you should explore during
your practice today. Your spheres can
be big or small. You can also tilt the axis lines thereby
tilting the ellipses. Just remember to keep
those axis lines perpendicular to one another. Here, you can see
spheres that are at various sizes and facing
different directions. In all of these spheres, I have tilted the axis lines. You'll also notice
that the ellipses of these spheres are at
various levels of openness. Hopefully, you're really
starting to get a sense of three dimensionality when
you look at these diagrams. Even though a circle, and oval or a line are
merely flat on their own, we can combine them
together to create the illusion of a three
dimensional sphere. Now that you have a
sense of how this works, let's head to the drawing
board for a demonstration. We are going to begin our volumetric sphere
with a circle. I'm going to draw a circle. I wanted to be about
the size of an orange, not too big, not too small. I'm going to be drawing, very
lightly because remember, we are just constructing the
basic sphere at this point. Now, I've already covered circle drawing in depth in my
beginning drawing course. If you need some
additional practice on how to draw circles, I highly recommend
revisiting that course. Once I've got my circle, I'm going to draw the axis
lines for the ellipses. Again, I'm going to pantomime. Once I'm ready, I'm going
to tip the pencil down, start off with an
incredibly light line. Now, remember, these
axis lines are not intended to be
seen by viewers. They are just going
to be used to draw the ellipses that we're using for our
volumetric sphere. I want to make sure
that the axis line divides this circle
directly in half. Next, I'm going to draw
a horizontal line. I also want this line to divide the circle and
half top to bottom. Remember, it's very
important that these two axis lines are at a 90 degree angle
to one another, that they are perpendicular
to one another. Now I have my circle, and I have two axis lines, a horizontal axis line
and a vertical axis line. Now I'm ready to
draw my ellipses. Now, it doesn't really matter which ellipse
you start with. I'm going to start with
the vertical ellipse, but you can do it either way. So I'm going to start by
pantomiming and oval. And once I'm ready, I'm going to lightly
draw that oval. Now, it's important
to remember that the goal here is to create an oval that touches both the top and bottom of
the edges of your circle. And that is bisected
by the axis line. We want each side of the
oval to be the same. I've drawn this
oval, very lightly. Now, again, I'd
like to remind you that ultimately this
oval is going to represent a circle traveling all the way around the sphere. In this sense, it's an ellipse, but ovals and ellipses are
drawn exactly the same way. Again, I've covered oval drawing in depth in my
beginning drawing course. Now before we move on, I want to address a couple more
things regarding this oval. First, I want you to
notice that the sides of the oval curve into the
edge of the circle. This oval is not
pinching at the corners. We can see a nice, smooth curve right here at
the bottom and at the top. Now, for this demonstration, I could have made the oval
more open or more closed. But for this demonstration, I wanted to start off
with an oval that was roughly a third of the
width of the sphere. But while you're
practicing today, you're going to be drawing
a wide range of ovals, some much more open and
some much more closed. Now, I have drawn this
oval, very lightly. Remember, these are
construction lines. These lines are
intended just to help me lay the foundation
for my sphere. Now, of course,
we're only going to darken one side of the oval. That's what I'm ready to do. I'm going to darken
the left side. Now, it is much easier
once you already have a line drawn to darken it. Once you've properly
drawn the oval, using the methods that I've taught in the beginning
drawing course, you can darken one side of it. Now I can darken this oval
more later on, but for now, I'm going to move on to drawing
the horizontal ellipse. So just like before, I'm
going to pantomime first. I want to make sure that the ellipse is the
openness that I wanted. I want to make sure that the axis line is dividing
the ellipse in half. Once I'm ready, I'm going
to set my pencil down and lightly make
my first attempt. Again, I'm drawing
incredibly lightly here. My hope is that you can
still see this oval. Before I darken anything, again, I want to check
to make sure that the oval is properly drawn, that the axis line cuts
it directly in half, meaning the top of the oval
and the bottom are the same, that they are
mirroring one another. Now, for any reason
that's not the case, before you darken anything, you can make corrections
to that oval. I'm going to darken the
top line of the oval. Now, in any of the
spheres you draw, you can decide which part of
the oval you want to darken, but I wanted this
sphere to appear to be facing up into the left. Now, using my light
oval as a guide, I am going to darken
this part of the oval. Once again, I want the
sides of the oval to curve nicely right into
the edges of the circle. At this point, this
volumetric sphere is starting to work very, very nicely, and I feel comfortable darkening
it a little further. I'm trying to use
nice fluid lines. In addition to darkening
our ellipses here, we can also darken the
contours of the sphere itself. Again, I'm using my initial
light lines as a guide. Here we have the finished
volumetric sphere. We started off with a circle, we drew the vertical and
horizontal axis lines. We drew the ovals
for the ellipses, and we darkened one
side of each oval. This really starts to give the
sense of a rounded volume. This sphere appears to be
facing up and to the left. And to show that, I'm going to draw a
little arrow here. Now, I want you to note, none of these shapes
are perfectly drawn. I drew all of these free hand and they are not
going to be perfect. That is fine. The goal
here is not perfection. Remember, if you need
a perfect circle, you can use a compass. If you need a perfect oval, you can use a stencil. But these hand drawn spheres are such excellent practice
and will train your mind to think in terms
of three dimensionality. Now, this drawing does have
visible construction lines. We can see the backside
of each of the oval. Now, I think it's
really important to draw these three dimensional
forms in the round. Even though I know
that my pencil is simply moving across the two dimensional
surface of the page. As I draw, I feel the
sensation of this line curving over the surface of a rounded sphere and then
disappearing behind it. Doing these drawings
transparently and leaving your
construction lines will help train your mind to think in terms of
three dimensionality. So before we go on, I'm going to demonstrate this a
couple more times. This time, I'm
going to go through the process a little quicker. So I'm going to
start with a circle. Once I have my circle, I am going to divide it in half vertically and
then horizontally. Now I am ready to
draw my ellipses. Now, of course, you
can make the ellipses as open or as
closed as you like. For this first ellipse, maybe I will open it up much more than the original
sphere that I just drew. Again, I'm drawing
this, very lightly, and I can decide which
side I want to darken. I'm going to darken
the left side. For the horizontal ellipse, I'm going to draw one
that is more closed. Now, I want you to
note here that even though this ellipse
is more closed, I am still curving
at the corners. The corners are not pinching. For this sphere,
I'm going to darken the bottom of this oval. Of course, I can now
darken the edges of the circle to complete the
illusion of a volume metric. Sphere. During your
practice today, you are going to draw many
of these volumetric spheres. You're going to draw a number
of different variations. You can really get a
sense of how to construct them and how to make them appear to face
different directions. Our first sphere was
looking up into the left. This sphere appears to be
looking down into the left. Remember, you can open or close the ovals for your ellipses
as much as you like. The other variation you can play with is tilting your spears. Once again, I'm going
to start with a circle, going to make the motion of the circle and then
put my pencil down. Now, instead of drawing my axis lines perfectly vertical and
perfectly horizontal, here I'm going to tip them. This is one of the variations
I want you to explore. Now, even though we are
tilting these axis lines, they still need to
bisect the spheres, you can see this one
divides it in half, and they need to remain
perpendicular to one another. Remember, we want
the intersection of these two lines to occur directly at the
center of the circle. Now, we can draw our ellipses. Here, you'll notice that I made the motion of the ellipse, but I only push down on
the pencil on one side. This is a quicker way you can get to a more
finished sphere. But again, if you're not
comfortable doing that, you're welcome to
draw the entire oval lightly first and then come back and darken the part
of it that you want. Here I'll draw the next
oval for the ellipse, and I'm going to
darken. This side here. Again, I've drawn
everything lightly first, and now I can go back and use those light lines as a guide. One other quick technique
that I want to point out is that as I'm darkening the lines that I want
to be seen by a viewer, I'm not using the
same line weight. I like to darken the ellipses that are going
around the sphere a little more to give the
illusion that they are closer to us than the
edges of the sphere. Again, this isn't
something you have to do, but it's something I want
you to start thinking about. The ellipses are no longer perfectly vertical
and horizontal. They have been tilted. This sphere appears to be looking down and a
little bit to the right. Now, you are not required to draw these
directional arrows. I am including them
just to highlight the direction that
each sphere is facing. Now, when doing these
kinds of drawings, I don't mind the
construction lines at all. I actually think they add some visual interest and make these drawings more beautiful. I really love the look of
these hand drawn spheres. So hopefully, this has
given you a good sense of how to draw
volumetric spheres. So now you should have a
good idea of how to create the illusion of three dimensions
when drawing a sphere. You should understand
that this illusion is created when we draw lines, not just that move left
and right and up and down, but that appear to move
towards you or away from you, lines that break the two
dimensional flat surface of the page and appear to move
into the third dimension. In this lesson, we're
talking about spheres, but we are going to build on these ideas throughout
this course. So here is your project. I want you to draw a minimum
of 25 volumetric spheres. I want you to experiment
with these spheres, draw some of them bigger, and some of them smaller, tilt the axis lines, explore how open or close
you can make the ellipses. You don't remember
all of the steps, I highly recommend rewatching the demonstration
in this lesson. It's very, very common for
students to need to watch and rewatch the
demonstrations before they feel comfortable
doing it on their own. Before you get to your practice, there's one other thing I
want to share with you. I think that it is
so important to find the re dimensional objects for you to have around as
you are practicing. Look around where you live, see if you can find any spherical objects that
show this phenomenon. For example, a beach
ball is a sphere that has these kinds of
lines traveling around it. A globe that shows
the equator is another common object
that beautifully illustrates the ideas that we talked about in this lesson. Now, again, perfectly spherical
objects are not nearly as common as the other
three dimensional shapes you're going to learn
about in this course. Nevertheless, take a look
around, see what you can find. Now the reason that I
recommend this is because if you learn to draw from
three dimensional objects, you are much more likely to do drawings that appear
three dimensional. In my experience, students
who only draw while looking at flat photographs
tend to create flat drawings. During this course,
I want you to immerse yourself in
three dimensionality. Go look for spherical
objects that may have latitude
or longitude lines, even if they're only indicated. An orange, for example, has subtle indications
of these kinds of lines. Now, if you are really
struggling with drawing spheres, it is most likely
because you need more practice drawing
circles and ovals. If this is the case,
I highly recommend revisiting my first course how to draw a beginner's guide. In that course, I teach circle
and oval drawing in depth. Remember, you should
always be looking for reasons to practice more less. So if you're struggling, it's okay to go back and revisit some of these
more fundamental skills. This is very, very common and nothing you need
to feel bad about. Well, thank you so much for
spending this time with me. I'm thrilled to be part of
your drawing education, and I will see you in
the next lesson when you're going to learn
how to draw cylinders.
3. The Cylinder: See sss. Welcome to lesson
two. In this lesson, you're going to learn
about the cylinder. But first, I'd like to
congratulate you for diving in, practicing spheres and coming back to this lesson
to learn more. If this is your
first time thinking and draw in terms of
three dimensionality, I know it can be
a real challenge, but you've made it here, so let's dive in. So I have a cylinder here. A cylinder has two flat
circles on either end, and these flat circles are
connected by a round shaft. Now, cylindrical objects
are all over the place. You can find them everywhere. So right now, I'd like you
to take a look around you, see what cylinders you can find. When I look around my studio, I can find all
kinds of cylinders, cups, pencils, pens,
light fixtures. Rolls of tape, rolls of paper, glue sticks, bottles
of all kinds. Beyond these cylinders,
I can find parts of cylinders in many
different kinds of objects. My pencil sharpener is
partially made up of cylinders. Cylinders can be long or short, they can be solid or hollow. You can find pure cylinders
or partial cylinders. Cylinders are incredibly common, far more common than spheres. This is why it's so important to understand how to draw them. If you're interested
in figure drawing, cylinders are one of the most important shapes you
can learn to draw. So many parts of the body can be simplified into cylinders. The neck, arms, legs, fingers. All of these forms are
simplified into cylinders. Once you simplify them, you can start to add more
detail in complexity. If you want to learn
figure drawing, you must get good at
drawing cylinders. In order to draw a cylinder that appears three dimensional on the flat surface of the page, we need to understand how
our eyes view this shape and what we need to show to convincingly draw in
three dimensions. Once again, I'm going to
grab my wood cylinder. Now, if you view it like this, you only see the circular
end of the cylinder. But if we turn it like this, now we only see the
straight edges. We might be able to see a slight curve at
the top or bottom, but really this just looks
like a square or a rectangle. In order to draw a cylinder that appears three dimensional, we must see both
the circular top and the shaft at the same time. As long as both the top and the side of the
cylinder is visible, we can make a drawing that appears three
dimensional on the page. Now, before we get to the
demonstration drawing, I'd like to explore the
cylinder through diagrams. So as we just talked about, if you want your drawing of a cylinder to look
three dimensional, we must view both the top
and the side the same time. Let's start off by taking a look at different views
of the cylinder. Here we see the cylinder
viewed from the top. From this point of view, we only see the flat
circle of the cylinder. Vewed directly from the side, we only see the straight
edges of the cylinder. Neither of these views show
its three dimensionality. For a cylinder to
appear rounded, we must see both the ellipse at the top and the straight
edges of the sides. This is how you're going
to make your drawing of a cylinder appear
three dimensional. Now I'm going to take
you through the steps of constructing a
cylinder on the page. We're going to begin with
a vertical axis line. Now this axis line will run straight down the center of
the shaft of the cylinder. You'll also need an axis line for the ellipse at the
top of the cylinder. Finally, you'll need
an axis line for the ellipse at the
bottom of the cylinder. Now the axis lines for
the ellipses must be perpendicular to the axis line for the shaft of the cylinder. Now that we have our axis lines, we can draw an ellipse at
the top of the cylinder. Now, remember, in actuality, the top of the cylinder
is a perfect circle, but because this
circle is going into perspective, it
appears elliptical. We draw it as an ellipse. Now at this stage, I can make this ellipse as opened
or as closed as I want. I want to draw a
cylinder as if we're viewing it from slightly above. Now to understand how we draw
the rest of the cylinder, we must understand how
our eyes view the shape. So in this diagram, we see the cylinder on the left. Now, we're viewing this
cylinder directly from the side so we don't see the circles at
the top or bottom. It appears to be nothing
more than a rectangle. On the right, we see an eye representing the
viewpoint of the viewer. The viewer is slightly above
the cylinder looking down. Now, typically, when you
set up a still life, you'll be viewing it slightly
from above looking down. This is the view that you will observe most cylindrical
objects from. Now I'm going to place
two lines representing the distance from
the front edges of the cylinder to the eye. The line going from the i to the top edge of the cylinder, we will call line A. The line going from the i to the bottom edge
of the cylinder, we will call line B. Now, when we compare
these two lines, we can see that line A
is shorter than line B. This means that the top
edge of the cylinder is closer to the i
than the bottom edge. What does this mean
for our drawing? Well, it affects the drawing
in two different ways. First, because the
ellipse at the bottom of the cylinder is further away from the eye than
the ellipse at the top, the bottom ellipse
will appear smaller. Now this is the
fundamental law of perspective that everyone
intuitively understands. This means that the
edges of the cylinder cannot go straight down from
the ellipse at the top. They must taper in slightly. This is very easy to miss if you don't know
what you're looking for. But if you look closely, you can see that
the entire cylinder gets smaller as it travels down. When you're looking at a
cylindrical object in real life, you can see this
with your naked eye. The second way that
our drawing will be affected by the fact that
the ellipse at the bottom of the cylinder is farther
away than the ellipse at the top is that the bottom
ellipse will appear more open. This occurs because when we are looking down upon a cylinder, we are further above
that bottom ellipse and have to look
down more upon it. So to help you understand this, let's take a look
at this diagram of cylinders stacked on
top of one another. Here, you can see that the
further down the stack we go, the smaller the cylinders get. You can see the sides
of the cylinders angling in toward one
another as they travel down. But you can also see
the ellipses getting more and more open the
farther down they go. Now we can see the
same phenomenon if we turn the stack,
so it's tilted. From this point of view, the ellipse on the
left is closest to us. The further away the
cylinder goes as it travels toward the right the more we
see those ellipses open up. With all of this in mind, let's get back to
constructing the cylinder. We have the ellipse at
the top of the cylinder, and we can see the two sides angling in toward one
another as they travel down. Now we can draw the ellipse at the bottom of the cylinder, making sure it is more open
than the ellipse at the top. Now we have our
finished cylinder. Once you understand
this process, you can use it to draw cylinders at any orientation in space. So here is a diagram
of many cylinders at different lengths and sizes
tilted in various ways. Each of these cylinders follows the exact same rules
we just laid out. Now, before I demonstrate
all of this in a drawing, there is one more thing
I want to teach you. As a cylinder turns
more and more toward you and reveals more and more
of the circle at the top, the two ellipses can
start to overlap. Here is a diagram of a series of cylinders as they
turn through space. On the left, we see only the straight edges
of the cylinder. On the right, we see only the circle at one
end of the cylinder. In between, we see
how the cylinder changes as it turns from
one position to the other. Now, take a look at
cylinders A and B. These are very similar to the cylinders we've been
looking at in the diagrams. Now, hopefully, you can see
that the circular end of cylinder B is turned more
toward us than cylinder A. Now take a look at
cylinder C and D. The ellipses in these cylinders begin to overlap one another. In cylinder C, we see them
overlap a little bit, but in cylinder D, they
are overlapping a lot. Remember, the degree to which
these ellipses will overlap depends on how much that circular end is
turning toward you. Now, I would also like
you to notice that as the cylinders go
from left to right, the cylinders get shorter
in length as they turn, revealing more of
the circular end. You can also see that as the
cylinders appear sh and, the straight sides of the
shaft appear to tilt more. Hopefully, this diagram
gives you a good sense of how cylinders work as
they turn through space. With all of this in mind, let's head to the drawing board, where you're going to
see me demonstrate all of these ideas. Now I'm going to show you how to actually draw a cylinder. Now, I find it so much easier to keep a real cylinder on hand, so I can refer to it
as I'm practicing. I find it so much easier to draw having a visual reference. Before you start your practice, I highly recommend going out and finding some
cylindrical object. It could be a cup, a
can, it doesn't matter, but something that you can
look at as you are practicing. You can get a sense of how much the ellipses at
the top and bottom open and close and how much the sides tend to taper depending
on how it's turned. Okay, so let's get started. So just as you saw in
the diagrams earlier, I'm going to begin with
a vertical axis line. Now, remember, this vertical
axis line is going to run down the center of the
shaft of the cylinder. And of course, I'm
drawing it very, very lightly because this is just a construction line and not intended to be
seen by a viewer. Next, I need to draw the
axis lines for the ellipses. I need one at the top
and one at the bottom. Now, it's important
as you're drawing these axis lines that you extend them further than
you think you'll need. It's also very important that the axis lines for
the ellipses are perpendicular to the axis line that runs down the center of
the shaft of the cylinder. So now I have the axis line
for the ellipse at the top. Now I need one for the
ellipse at the bottom. And again, make any
corrections necessary. So now that I have my
construction lines, I am ready to begin drawing
the actual cylinder. Now I'm going to begin with
the ellipse at the top. Now, I can make this ellipse as opened or as closed
as I want to. Now, it can be
helpful to establish the sides of the ellipse
that you're going to draw. Now, this gives us a framework. By establishing
where the corners of your ellipse are going to be, you'll be certain that when
you draw your ellipse, it will be properly centered along the
vertical axis line. I'm going to begin
by pantomiming. Once I'm ready, I'm going
to draw my ellipse, lightly at first
and then slightly darker as I get more confident that it is
the shape by want. I want to check
to make sure that the top of the ellipse and the bottom of the ellipse
are mirroring one another. Again, I want this axis line to act as a line of symmetry. So I'm pretty happy
with this ellipse. Now I'm going to draw the
sides of the cylinder. Remember, we're going to be viewing the cylinder
from the top, so the ellipse at the
bottom is going to be further away and
therefore smaller. Instead of drawing the sides of the cylinder parallel to the
axis line at the center, I'm going to have them
taper in just slightly. Again, you don't want
to taper them too much, just a little bit to
give the sense that this ellipse down
here is not going to be as wide as the
ellipse at the top. Now, one of the things that the vertical axis line
helps us do is make sure that the two sides of the cylinder are
mirroring one another. So we want these two sides to appear to be exactly the same. Now that I've established
the sides of the cylinder, I'm ready to draw the
ellipse at the bottom. Now, remember, we know that the ellipse at the
bottom is further away, so it's not going to be as wide as the ellipse at the top. But because it is further down, it is going to appear more open than the
ellipse at the top. I'm going to begin
just by pantomiming. Once I'm ready,
I'm going to draw the ellipse for the
bottom of the cylinder, making sure that the top of the ellipse and the
bottom mirror one another. So at this stage, we have a transparent drawing
of a cylinder. Once I make sure that all of the shapes and
lines are working, I can darken the ones that
I want seen by a viewer. Now, we want to darken
the entire ellipse at the top because we are looking
down upon this cylinder, so we're going to see this
ellipse in its entirety. I find it so much easier to darken the lines that I
want seen by a viewer, once I have these light
shapes as a guide. Just like we talked
about with the sphere, I want you to note that the
corners of the ellipse curve. They never pinch into corners. Now that I've darkened
the ellipse at the top, I can darken the sides
of our cylinder. You can see I want the
sides to appear to meet and then join the
curve smoothly. Finally, I can
darken the bottom of the ellipse at the bottom of
the cylinder. There we go. O finished cylinder. Once again, I want to note, this is
a hand drawn cylinder. It's not going to be perfect, but hopefully you
can see that it does a reasonable job communicating the three dimensional
volume of the cylinder. Just like with the sphere, feel free to leave all of your construction lines
visible on the page. These construction lines,
and in particular, the full ellipse at the
bottom of the cylinder, give us a sense of how the cylinder works
in three dimensions. Remember, we're not just
practicing drawing here, we are training your mind to see and think in terms
of three dimensionality. Now we can use these
exact same steps to draw a cylinder
that's tilted. Remember, it's the
exact same process. We are just tilting it. As long as you are
following these rules, you will be able to draw
cylinders that are believable. Yeah. So here you see me
drawing the axis lines. Now, when we are
tilting a cylinder, it's still important that the axis lines for
the ellipses are perpendicular to
the axis line that runs down the center of
the shaft of the cylinder. Next, I will establish the
corners of my ellipse. Again, the distance
from the corner to the center needs to be
the same on each side. Once I'm ready, I can start to pantomime and then
draw the ellipse. Now, with this cylinder, I'm going to make the ellipse
at the bottom more visible. This is going to be the ellipse that we're going to see all of. Once I've drawn the signs, I am ready to draw the
ellipse at the back. Remember, this ellipse
is going to be more open than the
ellipse at this end. But again, I have used all of the same steps to draw a
cylinder that is tilted and one that we are seeing from
the bottom as opposed to the first cylinder which we are looking down on and
seeing the top. Once I'm ready, I can start to darken the lines that I
want seen by a viewer. I'm going to darken the
entirety of this ellipse, going to darken the
signs, And finally, at the opposite end
of our cylinder, I'm only going to darken
one side of the ellipse. Here we have another cylinder that is working reasonably well. Hopefully, you're really
getting a sense of volume, of form, three dimensionality. Hopefully, these
feel as if they are three dimensional objects
existing on the page. The last thing I'd
like to demonstrate is how to draw a
cylinder where you see more of the circular end of the cylinder and the
ellipses start to overlap. Once again, I'm
going to start by making an axis line for
the shaft of the cylinder. I'm going to put this cylinder
perfectly on its side. Next, I'm going to draw the
axis lines for the ellipses. Now, because I want the cylinder to be
more foreshortened, where we're viewing
more of one end of it, I want these axis lines to be closer than the axis
lines I've drawn so far. Once again, I'm
going to establish the corners of the ellipse. Again, I want to make sure that these lines are equi
distant from one another. That the distance from
here to here is the same as the distance
from here to here. Once I'm ready, I
can draw my ellipse. Now, I'm going to be making
this ellipse much more open than the ellipses that we've been
working with so far. And I want this cylinder
to look like it's really starting to
turn toward us. We can see much more of
the circle at the top. Now because this
cylinder is starting to turn toward us, remember, the sides of the shaft of
the cylinder are going to taper more as they
go back in space. Hopefully, you can
see that occurring. Finally, I can draw the ellipse at the back of the cylinder, and this ellipse, even
though it's not as wide, is going to be more open. Here you can see these
ellipses overlap 10. Once I have established
all of these shapes, I can begin darkening the
lines I want seen by a viewer. Again, this is another
opportunity to make any adjustments to these shapes. If you need to
make the ellipse a little more symmetric
along either axis line, you can do that
while darkening it. If you need to make
any adjustments to the tilt of the sides or
anything else you see. Here we have our final cylinder. This cylinder appears to
be turned more toward us, so we see that the
ellipses are more open and the sides of the shaft of the cylinder
are tapering more. Of course, we see that the full ovals for the
ellipses are overlapping. Now, you're not going to
actually darken that overlap, but it's important for you to understand what happens when a cylinder starts to come
toward you like this in space. Again, I encourage you to find a real cylinder to have on hand so you can refer back
to it as you're drawing. You can see these phenomenon occurring in real life
as you are drawing. Now you should have
a good understanding of how to draw a cylinder. Now, remember, these are
hand drawn cylinders. We're not going for
perfection here, but I think all of
these cylinders are working reasonably well. Hopefully, now you have a good understanding
of how the cylinder works and how to draw
it in three dimensions. Now, just like sphere drawing, cylinder drawing takes a
lot of time and practice. So be kind to yourself
while you're learning. Keep your expectations
realistic. Don't expect that after watching a couple
of videos that you should be able to draw perfect spheres and
perfect cylinders. You may need to draw
dozens or even hundreds of shapes before you become comfortable and
competent with them. So now, Here is your project. I want you to draw 25
volumetric cylinders just as you saw demonstrated
in this lesson. The cylinders you draw
can be different sizes, different lengths, and different
orientations in space. They can be vertical,
horizontal, or tilted. Make sure you try drawing some cylinders where the
ellipses begin to overlap. And while you're
practicing today, I highly recommend finding some cylindrical objects
that you can have with you. While you're drawing,
you can hold them up and observe them to see how all of these components fit together on a real cylinder. This is one of the best
ways to understand how to draw cylinders
realistically on the page. Now, I want to
remind you that I am giving you the minimum
amount of practice. You want to increase your
skills more quickly, then try drawing 100
or even 200 cylinders. Remember, these are
fundamental skills, and you cannot practice
the fundamentals too much. I still regularly practice drawing spheres,
cylinders, and cubes. These forms are
at the foundation of everything else
you're going to draw. In addition to your
drawing project, I also want to encourage
you to go out into the world and find as many
cylinders as you can. One of the most important
skills is to be able to look at an object and simplify it into its basic three
dimensional shapes. It is such great practice to be able to look
around your environment, let your eyes fall on an
object and ask yourself, what three dimensional shapes
is this object made up of. By understanding how
to draw the shapes, you will understand how
to draw the object. Your goal is to start
seeing every object you look at in terms of the three dimensional
shapes that it is made of. Go do your projects, and I will see you back here for the next lesson where you're going to learn basic perspective
and how to draw cubes.
4. The Cube: S s s s sss. Welcome to Lesson three. In the previous two lessons, you learned how to
create the illusion of three dimensional form on the
flat surface of the page. You learned that all form, no matter how complex, can be simplified into basic three dimensional shapes like spheres,
cylinders, and cubes. Now you've already
learned how to draw spheres and cylinders. In this lesson, you're going to learn how to draw the cube. Now, in a human made environment,
cubes are everywhere. They are by far the most common three dimensional
shape you'll find. So right now, I want you to look around your
environment and see how many things you can find that were derived from cubes, boxes of all kinds, furniture,
appliances, architecture. The room you are currently in is almost certainly
derived from a cube. Now, in order to
properly draw a cube, you must learn
linear perspective. Now, we've been flirting
with the idea of perspective in the last
couple of lessons, but today we're going
to address it directly. So what is linear perspective? Linear perspective is a drawing
system that allows us to create the illusion of depth on the flat
surface of the page. It's particularly useful
when you're drawing objects that have straight edges that meet at right angles. Buildings, stairs, books, all of these things
require linear perspective. As do things like
vehicles, airplanes, cars, tractors, Many people get a little nervous when they
hear the word perspective. They fear that it
might be a little too complicated or too mathematical. But I don't want you to worry. I'm going to guide you
through the basics of perspective in a way
that anybody can learn. Today, you're just
going to learn enough perspective to
be able to draw a. Later on in this course, you'll be able to build on these foundational
perspective skills. But in this lesson, I'm
going to try to teach you the basics in a way that is
clear and understandable. So let's get started. Now, in order to
draw in perspective, the first thing you need to
understand is eye level. From here on out,
you want to consider every subject you draw in
relationship to your eye level. Whether you're low to the
ground or high up in the air, your eye level is always
at the level of your eyes. For a moment, I want
you to imagine a plane extending out infinitely
from the level of your eyes. Anything below the level of
your eyes is below eye level, and anything above the level of your eyes is above eye level. Objects below eye level operate differently than
objects above eye level. It's just something to think about when you first
draw an object. Is it below eye level or
is it above eye level? Now objects can also
be at eye level, which we'll talk about
in just a few minutes. Now most of the time,
you're going to be drawing objects that are below
the level of your eyes. Now in a drawing, eye level is represented by a
horizontal line. When an object is
below your eye level, you will look down on it and see the top of it as shown
here with this cube. Now, some objects may
be above eye level, meaning you will
look up at them. When an object is
above your eye level, you will see the bottom of it, as shown here with this cube. Objects can also
be at eye level. The top of an
object at eye level will be above the
level of your eyes, and the bottom of it will be below the level of your eyes. From this view, you
will tend not to see the top or bottom
planes of the cube. Eye level is often referred
to as the horizon line. Now, in reality,
the horizon line is the line where
Earth meets the sky. The horizon line, if visible, will always appear to
be at your eye level. When drawing, you can use these two terms interchangeably. Both eye level and horizon
line refer to the same thing. Now in a drawing, the
eye level can be raised, giving the impression that
you're up in the air, or eye level can be lowered to give the impression that
you're very low to the ground. It all depends on what kind
of drawing you want to do. But for now, we'll
place the eye level in the middle of
the picture plane. Now, imagine yourself to
be standing looking out over a vast flat landscape
with no mountains, trees, or buildings
obstructing your view. All you see is earth and sky. The line where they meet is, of course, the horizon, and as you know,
the horizon line always appears to be
at your eye level. Now imagine a straight path that extends out in front of
you for miles and miles. We intuitively understand
this simple picture. In reality, we understand
that the sides of the path would actually be
parallel to one another. If we were to walk a
mile down this path, it would not narrow. The path is the same width at every point as far into the
distance as we can see. But from our view from the path, the path appears to narrow
the farther away it gets until it meets the horizon line where it appears to
vanish entirely. This point where
the path appears to vanish is called the
vanishing point. This simple diagram is an example of a drawing done
in one point perspective. In one point perspective, we use a single vanishing point. In a one point
perspective drawing, any line that is parallel
with the edges of the path will converge at
the same vanishing point. This is true for lines above eye level or below eye level. Understanding these basic
concepts is the first step to understanding how to draw a cube in one
point perspective. Now, let's talk about the cube. A cube consists of six sides. Each side is a square. Each square fase
of the cube meets the other square fases
at a right angle. So to learn how to draw
a cube in perspective, we first need to understand how a square works
in perspective. So I have a square right here. Now, when the square
is facing us directly, we see it as a perfect square. The vertical edges
remain vertical and the horizontal edges
remain horizontal. We don't need to account
for perspective. But watch what happens when I start to lean the square back. It's going back
into perspective. Now, the front edge of the square is closer to
us than the back edge. Therefore, the back
edge becomes smaller. Now to compensate for this, you'll notice that the edges of the square appear to angle
in toward one another. Now, if we were to extend lines back from the
sides of the square, they would eventually appear to converge at a vanishing point. Now, I'd also like
you to notice that now our square
appears much shorter. So I'm going to flip the
square up one more time, and I want you to watch again what happens when it goes
back into perspective. Pay attention to the
height of the square. Watch what's happening. It appears to get shorter
and shorter and shorter. Now, keeping all
of this in mind, let's take a look again
at cube at our cube. Here, we see the front plane of the cube facing us directly, and it appears pretty square. But the top plane of the cube is going back
into perspective. The sides of the top
plane of the cube appear to angle in
toward one another, just like we saw
with the square. Let's pause here for a
moment and talk about the term three D. It's
a term we hear a lot, but it's really important to understand what it
actually refers to. So the term three D refers to the three dimensions of
space. What are they? The first dimension is width. To depict the width
of an object, we draw lines going
side to side. This is the left and
right dimension. Now the second
dimension is height. To depict height, we draw
lines traveling up and down. Now, on a flat two
dimensional sheet of paper, depicting width and
height are easy. In fact, when we talk about a piece of paper as
being two dimensional, these are the two
dimensions we're referring to, width and height. Now, the third
dimension is depth. Depth gets a little trickier. If width is the side to side dimension and height is
the up and down dimension, then depth is the back
and fourth dimension. Depth depicts things coming toward you or going
away from you. Now to depict objects with depth requires
linear perspective. Now, obviously, a flat
two dimensional sheet of paper has no depth. Linear perspective
helps us to create the illusion of depth on that
flat surface of the page. So with all of this in mind, let's get back to our
view from the path. Now, let's place a cube
right on top of our path. This cube is below eye level, so we see the front
plane and the top plane. In one point perspective, the front face of the
cube is facing us directly and appears
perfectly square. There is no need to
account for perspective. This square simply has
a width and a height, but the top plane tilts back
and goes into perspective. The sides of the
top plane travel back to the vanishing point. Now, because the
sides of the path and the sides of our cube are
parallel to one another, they appear to travel back
to the same vanishing point. Here we have a one point
perspective drawing of a cube directly in front
of us below eye level. Now in just a few minutes, I'm going to demonstrate
how to draw all of this. But first, I want you to
understand these concepts, so you understand why
we draw this way. Now, let's remove the path
and just focus on the cube. The cube has a height, the up and down
dimension in a width, this side to side dimension. Now, width and height are the two dimensions
we are referring to when we talk about the two dimensional
surface of the page. Depth is the third dimension, the back and fourth dimension. Depth is how we create
the illusion of things traveling towards you or
retreating away from you. Depth requires the
use of perspective. Now here we see a cube
identical to the first, but flipped and placed
above eye level. We now appear to be looking up at it and can see
the bottom plane. Objects above eye level can appear to be
hovering in the air. This cube is constructed in exactly the same way as
the cube below eye level. If you can draw a
cube below eye level, you can draw a cube
above eye level. We can also use one
point perspective to depict cubes off to the side. Now from this point of view, we can see the three
planes of the cube, the front, the
top, and one side. Note that we now
have three lines going back to the
vanishing point, the two sides of
the top plane and the line for the bottom edge of the side plane of the cube. A quick note here that no
matter how you turn a cube, you will never see more
than three sides at a time. Here is a cube that is off to one side and is at eye level. Notice that here we see
only the front plane that is facing us
directly and one side. We see neither the top nor
the bottom of this cube. As long as the front face of the cube is facing us directly, we can use the single
vanishing point to draw cubes at any size and at
any location on the page. One point perspective is a very simple representation
of space that is excellent when you're
drawing objects that have their front plane
facing you directly. But what happens when we
want to turn this cube? Now there is no plane
facing us directly. To draw a cube from
this viewpoint requires a second
vanishing point. This means that we are now drawing in two
point perspective. Now, to help us
understand how to draw a cube in two
point perspective. First, let's look at how a square behaves in
two point perspective. I'm going to begin by leaning this square back just
like we did earlier, so it goes into perspective. But now I'm going
to turn the square so the front corner
is closest to you. Does it appear as a square
anymore? It does not. It's more of a
diamond shape now. Now, a square like this has
two sets of parallel lines. The first set of parallel
lines are here and here, and the second set of parallel
lines are here and here. Now, each set of
parallel lines has to travel back to vanishing points that are far off to either side. These two parallel
lines would travel back to a vanishing
point on this side, while these two
parallel lines would travel back to a vanishing
point on that side. Now let's take a look
at the cube again. Now, we can see
this occurring on the top plane of the cube. But a cube is not a flat square. A cube is a three
dimensional object. Now we have three sets
of parallel lines. Let's take a look at each
set of parallel lines. First, we have the
vertical lines. Now, in two point perspective, the vertical lines are simply
going to be drawn vertical. The three verticals, of course, are here, here. And here. Now, the next set of
parallel lines are going to travel back to a vanishing
point on this side. We can start at the
base of the cube. This edge, this
edge and this edge will all appear to converge at a vanishing point
over on this side. While this edge, this edge and this edge will appear to converge at a vanishing
point on this side. Every line on this cube
that is not vertical is going to travel back to one of these two
vanishing points. Now let's get back
to our diagrams. For the demonstration of
one point perspective, we were standing
in the middle of the path looking toward
the distant horizon. But now let's imagine
we are standing in between two perpendicular paths looking toward
their intersection. Now each path has its
own vanishing point, one on the far left, and one on the far right. This is what we call
two point perspective. At the intersection
of these paths, we find a square in
two point perspective. Now, let's place
a cube on top of the square at the intersection
of these two paths. This cube has three sets
of visible parallel lines. To properly draw a cube
in two point perspective, you must understand which lines go back to which
vanishing points. Again, I'm going to
demonstrate how to draw all of this
in just a moment. First, let's talk
about the verticals. In a two point
perspective drawing, A vertical lines simply remain vertical and do not go
back to a vanishing point. These three lines
will go back to the vanishing point on the left. These three lines will go back to the vanishing
point on the right. When you put all
of them together, you get a cube properly drawn
in two point perspective. We can use these two
vanishing points to draw cubes anywhere
in between them. We can use them to
draw cubes below eye level above eye level. Or at eye level. Notice that a two
point perspective cube drawn at eye level only has two sets of lines going back to each vanishing
point instead of three. This is because we do not see the top or bottom
planes of this cube. Now before we get to our
demonstration today, I want to give you a quick note about three point perspective. I want you to think back to
the lesson on the cylinder. We talked about the idea
that the top plane of the cylinder is closer to your eyes than
the bottom plane, and therefore, the top
plane appears larger. Now we see the exact
same thing on the cube. This cube is below eye level, which means that we
see the top plane. But the bottom edge
of the cube is further away from our
eyes than the top. This means that the top is going to appear larger
than the bottom. Now on a real cube
where the top of the cube appears slightly
larger than the bottom, the sides of the cube angle inward toward each
other just slightly. Now, if we extended lines downward from this
cube, eventually, they would converge at a vanishing point far
below the picture plane. This now gives us three
vanishing points. This is what we call
three point perspective. Now, if we were to
draw a cube like this, the vanishing points on the left and the right would
be very manageable. We've been demonstrating
that today. But the third
vanishing point would be so far below
the picture plane, it would be very
impractical to draw actually sending lines
to that vanishing point. To properly depict
a cube like this, we can slightly angle
the sides in in our drawing without actually sending them down to a
third vanishing point. We can give the impression of three point perspective without actually drawing with a
third vanishing point. Now, including these edges, slightly angling in
toward one another is just a way to give your drawing an extra sense of realism. It's a subtle effect, but if you're interested in absolute realism
in your drawings, this is an important
element to include. If you look closely
at this cube, you will see that the edges here are not
perfectly vertical. You can see them angle inward toward each other just slightly. Again, it is subtle, but if you look closely,
you can see it. Now unless you're doing drawings with
extreme perspective, either where you're
far below looking up or far above looking down, then drawing using an actual
third vanishing point is very impractical
because it would be so far below
the picture plane. If we want to give
the impression of three point perspective without actually using the
third vanishing point, we can angle the edges of the cube inward just slight Now, if we were to follow
these lines down, down, down, then somewhere, far below the picture plane, they would converge at a
distant third vanishing point. Now, you can see
from this diagram, how far below the picture plane the third vanishing
point would actually be and how impractical
it would be to use. But we can give the
impression of a drawing and three point
perspective by slightly tilting the lines of our
cube inward so that they would appear to converge at
this distant vanishing point. This is a subtle effect, but one that I use often. I'll just give your drawings
an extra sense of realism. Now, I know I've given
you a lot of information, but now it's time to get
to a drawing demonstration where you'll learn
how to put all of these ideas into practice. The very first thing
we need to do is draw a horizontal line to
represent our eye level. Now, the longer a
straight line is, the harder it is
to draw straight. I'm going to be using a ruler. I want you to feel free to use a as well during this lesson. I want to make sure
that my line is perfectly horizontal
and when I'm ready, I'm going to draw a light Horizontal line. Now the reason I'm keeping
this line light is because this is just
a construction line. In a finished drawing, we don't necessarily
want the viewer to see the line that
represents eye level. This is going to
be a demonstration of one point perspective, which means I need to
place the vanishing point. I'm going to place
the vanishing point directly in the middle. I'll be using my to
measure and I'm going to place my vanishing point
directly in the center. Again, I want to
be able to see it, but I'm going to draw
it pretty lightly. So now that we've
drawn a line for eye level and a vanishing point, we're ready to
construct the cube. This first cube we're
going to draw is going to be below eye level, and I'm going to place it directly underneath
the vanishing point. So I'm going to be drawing
this square free hand. I'm not going to
be using a ruler. So first, I need to draw the front face of the cube that is going to be
facing us directly, and this is just going
to be a simple square. Here's the line for the top of the front face of the cube. Here's a line for the bottom. To draw this square, I'm using the same method that I taught in the beginner's
guide to drawing. Now that I have the
top and bottom edges, I can place the sides. Remember, we want this
to be a perfect square. So I am going to make some very light first attempts here just to see if this
creates our square, and I can make any adjustments necessary before I darken
any of these lines. Remember, in a perfect square, all four sides are
the same dimension. So I can use my pencil to see if the lines on the side are equal to the lines on
the top and bottom. So this square is just
slightly too wide, so I'm going to bring these
lines in ever so slightly. Okay, I've made my
second attempts at these lines on the side. So now let's see if these lines on the sides are the
same distance as the lines at the
top and bottom of this square. Yes,
they appear to be. So now we've drawn
a perfect square. So this is the front
plane of the cube, and it is facing us directly. In a one point
perspective drawing, it appears as a perfect square. Because we want to draw a
cube that is below eye level, we are going to see
the top of this cube. But remember, the
top of the cube is going to be
going away from us. So the first step in creating
that illusion is to draw perspective lines
from each corner of the cube to the
vanishing point. For each corner at
the top of the cube, I have drawn a line back
to the vanishing point. Now, if we leave the
drawing like this without placing the
back edge of the cube, it makes it look like
we have a block that is extending infinitely
toward the horizon line. But of course, we
want this drawing to appear to be a perfect cube. So we need to draw the
back edge of the cube. Now, for this drawing
demonstration today, I'm going to simply use
my eyes and feel it out. So this is feeling right to me. It looks to me like this line
is giving the illusion that we are looking down upon a cube that is slightly
below eye level. Now, if you're uncertain when
you're practicing today, you can move this
line up or down to see what kind of different
illusions it gives you. But I'm feeling this is pretty close to what
I wanted to be. Of course, we've drawn
all of these lines very, very lightly, but now we
are ready to darken them. Remember, we only want
to darken the lines for the cube that we want
to be seen by a viewer. Here I will darken the
front plane of the cube. Remember, I'm drawing
this free hand. They don't need to be perfect. That's totally fine. If you want perfection, you are always welcome
to use a ruler. Here I have darkened
the lines for our cube in one point
perspective below eye level. Now, I want to show
you how to draw a cube that is not directly
below the eye level, but one that is off to the side. To do this, I'm going to draw another square to the
right of my original cube. It's going to extend
these lines out and draw a square using the same method I demonstrated
just a moment ago. So again, before we move on, we want to make sure that
this square for the plane that is facing us is
a perfect square. Now, again, we're
drawing free hand, so when I say perfect, I mean as close as you
can reasonably get. So I think this is
working pretty well. Now, when a cube is off
to the side like this, we're not only going to see
the top plane of the cube, but also one of the side planes. So first, I'm going
to draw lines of perspective from each
of these three corners. Now, these lines are going
to be a little longer, so I am going to use
a ruler for this. Remember, it is up to you
when you want to use a ruler. I'm going to start with the
top right edge of the square, draw a light perspective line back to the vanishing point. I'm going to move on to
the top left corner of the square and draw a light line back to
the vanishing point. Finally, I'm going to go to
the bottom left corner of the square and draw a light perspective line
back to the vanishing point. Once again, if we were to
leave the drawing like this, it would appear that we
have a block that is extending infinitely
toward the horizon line. But that is not
what we want to do. We want to shape
this into a cube. First, I need to place this
back edge of the cube. From where it
intersects this line, I can drop a line straight down. So this is going to
be a vertical line. So now we have all of the lines necessary to complete our cube. Remember, we're just
going to darken the lines that we want
seen by a viewer, just going to darken
the edges of the cube. So here we have a cube in one point perspective
that is off to the side so we can see not only the front
face of the cube, but the top plane as
well as a side plane. So hopefully, this
has given you a sense of how one point
perspective works. Now, you can use this
exact same technique to draw one point perspective
cubes above eye level as well. In fact, with a
drawing like this, all we need to do is turn
the paper over to see this. By simply turning
the paper over, we can get a drawing that now appears to have two
cubes above eye level. Again, to draw cubes
above eye level, you can repeat this
exact same process. Now, one point perspective works great when we
are drawing cubes when we have the front
plane facing us directly. But what happens when we
want to turn the cube? So in order to draw a
cube that is turned, we need to use two
vanishing points. Now, I've already drawn my horizontal line
representing eye level. When you are drawing in
two point perspective, I recommend placing
your vanish points as far off to the sides of
your paper as you can. The closer the vanishing
points get to one another, there will start to dist. So I'll place one
vanishing point here, and the other
vanishing point here. Now, to start a drawing of a
e in two point perspective, we're going to start with
its vertical front edge. First, I'm just going to draw the vertical line for
the vertical front edge, and I'm making it longer
than I need to be. So now I'm going to mark where the top of the
vertical front edge of the cube is going to be. So this line establishes the placement of the vertical
front edge of the cube. It also establishes the
dimensions of the cube. We've decided where
the bottom and top of this vertical
edge is going to be. So from the very top of
the vertical front edge, we are going to extend perspective lines back to
both vanishing points. Now, this is a long line, so I'm going to
be using a ruler. I am also going to draw perspective lines to
the vanishing points from the bottom of this line. Once again, using my ruler. Next, we need to place
the sides of the cube. Now, this cube is centered directly in between
the vanishing points. So first, I will
place the right side. Next, I will place
the left side, drawing very lightly at first. Now, for this drawing
of a cube that is directly in the center
of the vanishing points, we want these sides to
mirror one another. Make sure that the distance from the vertical
center edge of the cube to the right side is the same as the same distance
to the left side. We've now properly drawn the two front
planes of the cube. But now we need to draw
the top of the cube. Now, this is where people
can get a bit confused, but with practice, this
will become intuit. So I'm going to extend
a perspective line from the corner of this cube back to the vanishing
point on our right. Once again, I will
be using my rule. For the back right
corner of the cube, I will be extending a line back to the vanishing
point on the left. Where these two lines intersect gives me the back
corner of the cube. I am now ready to darken
the lines that I want. When we're drawing
a cube like this, you'll note that we have
three sets of lines. First, we have these
vertical lines. These are all traveling
in the same direction, and in two point perspective, they all remain
perfectly vertical. Now we have two
more sets of lines, and it's critical
that you understand which lines go back to
which vanishing points. The bottom right
edge of the cube is going back to the
vanishing point on our right. The top right edge
of the cube is also going to the vanishing
point on our right. But here, the back left edge of the cube is also going to the vanishing
point on the right. These three lines are going back to the vanishing
point on our right. The remaining lines are going to the vanishing
point on the left. The bottom left
edge of the cube. The top left edge, and the top right edge are all going back to the vanishing
point on our left. So here we have our final cube
in two point perspective. I've darkened the lines
that I want seen by a viewer to make the
cube appear solid. Now if we want to draw a cube
that is off to the side, once again, we can use
the exact same steps. We will start with the vertical
front edge of the cube. We will determine
the bottom of it, as well as the top of this line. From here, we will extend perspective lines back
to the vanishing points. From both the top of this line as well
as from the bottom. Next, we need to place
the sides of the cube. Remember, we want to give
the illusion that this is a perfect cube where each face of the cube
is a perfect square. Now, of course, in perspective, they're not going to
appear as perfect squares, but that's the illusion
we want to create. With the cube off to the side, you'll notice that we
see of the face on our right and more of
the face on our left. We're going to move this
line out just slightly. Notice that the
side of each cube meets the perspective lines. Once I have the sides of
the cube established, I can draw the remaining
perspective lines back to their respective
vanishing points. Remember, the line from the top right corner goes to the vanishing
point on the left. And the line from
the top left corner goes to the vanishing
point on the right. So we have our
lightly drawn cube. Now I can darken the lines that I want seen by
a viewer to complete the construction of this cube in two point perspective below
eye level off to the right. Now, in a drawing like this, I have left all of the construction lines
visible on the page, and that is completely fine. As you're practicing,
I think it's a really good thing
to be able to see how these
illusions are created. So I don't see any problem with leaving these lines
right on the page. Now, I want you to notice
that I did not use a ruler as I darkened
the edges of the cube. This gives them a hand drawn
quality that I really like. But again, if you require
perfect accuracy, you can always use a ruler. And of course, just like with one point
perspective drawings, this technique works just as
well if we turn the paper over The same steps work just as well to draw cubes that are above our eye level. These steps are
interchangeable no matter where you want to draw a
cube on your picture plant. Now, of course,
there is a lot more to learn about
linear perspective, but these are the basics. Now later on in this course, you're going to build on
these foundational ideas to understand perspective
in a much deeper way. But for now, you've learned
enough to be able to draw a cube in one and
two point perspective. So now let's get you
to your project. For today's project,
I'm going to have you copy two diagrams. The first diagram shows cubes
in one point perspective. You'll find cubes above and below eye level and
off to each side. The second diagram shows cubes
in two point perspective. Once again, it contains
cubes both above and below eye level and
cubes off to the sides. Now, as you're copying
these diagrams, go through the same steps that you saw me
demonstrate today. Now, if you feel like you need to watch this lesson again, that is completely normal. It is very common
that students go back and watch these
lessons again and again, particularly when
we're dealing with complex ideas like
linear perspective. So feel free to
go back and watch the diagrams and the demonstration
as often as you need. I also want to remind you that, just like you did with the
cylinder in the sphere, find a real cube in your environment
that you can have with you while you're drawing. I don't want these ideas
to just be theoretical. I want you to observe
them in your actual life. Reality is constantly
in perspective. This is how the world works, and this is why we learn to
draw in linear perspective. It is to create the illusion of three dimensional reality on the flat surface of the page. Speaking of the third dimension, if you want an extra challenge, I have a third
diagram you can copy. This third diagram depicts cubes in three
point perspective. Now this diagram
is very similar to the diagram showing cubes
in two point perspective. But in this diagram, all of the vertical lines
appear as if they would converge at a vanishing point far below the picture plane. If you're looking
to practice more, I highly recommend
trying to give the appearance of three
point perspective. Now, I know I've given you
a lot of information today. So now go do your practice, and I will see you back
here in the next lesson.
5. A Simple Still Life: See se see. Welcome back. This
is lesson four. In this lesson, you're
going to learn how to set up and draw a
simple still life. Your still life should consist
of a spherical object, a cylindrical object,
and a cubicle object. In this lesson,
you're going to be drawing these objects
from observation, meaning you're going
to set them up, look at them, and
draw what you see. Drawing from observation is
one of the best ways to train your brain to think and draw in terms of
three dimensions. By practicing this way, your drawings will
have a greater sense of depth and volume. In this lesson, you're
going to see me demonstrate how to draw
a simple still life from start to finish by simplifying it into basic
three dimensional forms. Now, today, you're not going
to see me do any shading. I'm going to be focusing on
the contours of the objects. My goal is to create a
linear drawing that depicts these objects in
three dimensions on the flat surface of the page. Here is the still life you'll
see me draw from today. It consists of a box, an orange, and a candle. At least that's what
most people see. But at this point, you
should see a cube, a sphere, and a cylinder. This skill of being
able to translate complex form into basic
three dimensional shapes is like a superpower. Once you're good at it, this skill will unlock
nearly every other subject, allowing you to draw
nearly anything you want. Now, it may seem
obvious that a candle is a cylinder or that
an orange is a sphere. But with a bit more experience, you will come to see
everything like this. Hopefully, by the
end of this course, everything you look at, you will understand in terms of basic three
dimensional forms. Everything. Objects,
people, plants, and animals are all made up of these basic three
dimensional forms, primarily spheres,
cubes, and cylinders. By understanding how to
draw these basic forms, you will understand how to draw nearly any subject no
matter how complex. Now, when you're ready
to draw something, the first question always
is, how do we begin? Now, if you went through my
beginner's guide to drawing, you should know that
we tend to begin with the largest shapes and work our way down to the
smallest shapes. The box is the largest
object in this composition, and the other objects
are arranged around it. The orange is leaning up against the box and the candle
is on top of it. For this composition, I think it makes sense to
begin with the box. Drawing different kinds of subjects often requires
different strategies. So I'm going to be dividing today's demonstration into
two different sections. In the first section,
I'm going to show you how to
construct the box. In the second section, we're going to focus on
the rounded objects. So let's get into it. Let's take a look at this box. It should be obvious
that this box is a cube. You can see that this cube is
in three point perspective. I also want you to note that
the vanishing points for this cube are far off to the
sides and are not visible. But you can still see
that all of these lines appear as if they would converge at their respective
vanishing points. Now, in the previous lesson, you learned how
to draw a cube in proper perspective
using vanishing points. But when we want to
draw a subject like a box that fills more
of the picture plane, it becomes impractical
to draw using vanishing points
because they would be so far off to the
sides of the drawing. How do we properly draw a box in perspective without the
use of vanishing points? Most accurate way to do this
is to use angle sighting. To understand why, let's explore the box a
little further. A box is made up of straight edges that meet
at angles at the corners. Each corner is a point in space. Each point in space is a specific distance and direction from every
other point in space. To properly draw a cube, we must accurately capture the proper relationships
between these points. Angle sighting will help us
accurately draw the angles of the edges of the box so that even without the use
of vanishing points, it will appear to be in
three point perspective. I introduced angle sighting in my beginners
guide to drawing, the first course in the
drawing lab series. Angle citing involves holding your pencil up to
the subject you're drawing and tilting it until it matches whatever angle
you're trying to draw. You then carefully bring your pencil down
to your drawing, making sure you do
not change the tilt. This allows you to see what
that angle would look like in your drawing and check it for
accuracy once it's drawn. Now, if you need a refresher in how to use your pencil
for angle citing, I highly recommend revisiting lesson seven in my
beginner's guide to drawing. So assuming you're familiar with angle sighting, let's move on. In this lesson, we're going
to build on this skill. You're going to learn a
technique called triangulation. Triangulation is the process of using angle sighting
to locate a point in space by triangulating
its distance and direction from two known
points in your drawing. For example, if you know
the location of two of the bottom corners
of a box and you want to know where the
front corner of the box is, you can use angle sighting
to triangulate its location. I'm going to demonstrate all of this in depth in today's demo. Angle sighting and
triangulation are the most common forms of measuring that I
use when I draw. Now, in today's demo,
you're going to see me measure
nearly everything. I leave very little to chance. Now, you are not required to do this much measuring
in your own drawings. I want to make sure
you understand how to measure like this if you
choose to. All right. So let's get to
today's demonstration. We're going to begin
by drawing the box. So I'm set up and I'm ready to begin my still life drawing. Although I'm not going to be rigorously going through
the five questions, I'm still going to apply
the basic principles. I'm going to be starting with
the largest forms first. I'm going to be
very interested in placement, size, and axis. So whenever you're sitting
with a blank page in front of you and a desire
to draw a subject, the first question is,
where do you begin? For this drawing, I'm
going to begin with a box. The box is the largest
form in this composition, and the two other objects
are placed around it. The orange is in
front of the box, and the cylinder
is on top of it. I want this drawing
to be accurate, which means I need to measure. Now, although I'm going
to be drawing an orange, a box and a candle, this process can be
used for any subject. First, I'm going to
start with the box. Where on the page do I
want to place the box? I know I'm going to
need enough room for all three objects
in the drawing. This means that I'm
going to need to leave room above the box
for the candle. I'm going to begin by placing the lowest corner of the box. This is also the lowest point
in the entire composition. I wanted to be low on the page, but with some room underneath. Now, as you know, I'm
going to be using triangulation to
construct this box. When triangulating, wherever
we put the first point, it's going to be correct. I just need to place it in a way that works
for the drawing. I'm going to place this
first point right here. It's low on the page, so we'll have plenty of room for the box and all of the
other objects above it. We now have our first point. Next, I want to construct
the lower edges of the box. Now I'm going to
extract the angle of the lower right edge of the box from the
actual still life. I'm going to get the angle
on my pencil and slowly bring it back to the drawing just as you've seen
me demonstrate. Once I have the
angle on my pencil, I want to get a sense of
how it looks on the page. Once I'm ready,
I'm going to make my first attempt at that angle. Now I've drawn it
very lightly because I don't expect that it's
going to be correct. Before I go on, I'm going
to double check the angle. I never want to assume that I've got it right
the first time. Once again, I'm going to
bring my pencil up to the lower right edge of the box, get the angle on my pencil and bring it back to my drawing. I think this is
looking pretty good. What I have at this point is a single line going
off into space. Next, I'm going to use the
same technique to find the direction of the lower
left edge of the box. I've got the angle
on my pencil and I've brought it down to my page. Once I get a sense
of that angle, I'm going to make my
first light attempt. And of course, I'm going to
go back and double check. Again, I have the
angle on my pencil and I'm going to transport
it down to my paper. That angle is
looking pretty good. So I am going to leave it there. Now at this point,
I want to note that while you're learning
this technique, it's very common for your
first attempt to be incorrect. That's totally fine. If you see that you have not
drawn the angle correctly, simply make a second attempt
and a third, if necessary. Keep measuring back and
forth from the subject to your drawing to make sure that you have the proper angles. Although these first
two angle sites of this demonstration
went very well, I'm confident that at
least one of them will be off and you'll get to see
me correct my errors. At this point, I have two
lines meeting at an angle. We have the location of the
lowest corner of the box, but at this stage, I could make the drawing as big or
as small as I wanted. If I were to make
the box enormous, or if I were to
make it very small, this angle would
remain the same. So now let's find the lower
right corner of the box. Now I can put this corner
anywhere along this line. Wherever I put it is going to establish the scale
of the drawing. If I place the lower
right corner here, we'd have a small
drawing of a box. If I place it way over here, we'd have a much larger box. For the second point, as long as it is on this line, it is going to be correct. I'm going to place the
lower right corner of the box right here. Now, as soon as I
establish that point, the rest of the proportions
of the drawing are locked. Every new thing we
draw needs to be in proper proportional relationship
to this line segment. Remember, the first point, we just got to decide
where it went. Wherever we put it on the page,
it's going to be correct. We get to make that decision. Next, we capture the direction of the bottom edges of the box. Then we decided where to place the lower right
corner of the box. As soon as we did that, we have two points
in our drawing. Now that we have two points
established in our drawing, we can use them to
find any other point. Now I want to find the top
front corner of the box. To do that, I'm going to need to draw the front vertical edge. Using the same method
I've just showed you, I'm going to make
my first attempt. That line could use a
little bit of work. It is more or less correct. Now that I have drawn this
front edge of the box, I know that somewhere
along this line is the location of the front
top corner of the box. How do I determine where on
this line it needs to be? Well, I'm going to use the second point that we
found and triangulate. I'm going to go back to my
still life and I want to find the angle from our second point to the point that
we're trying to find. Once I have that
angle on my pencil, I'm going to transfer
it back to my drawing. And wherever this
line intersects here will give me the
location of that third point. So here we have it. And before I move on, I'm going to double
check to make sure that I have
the correct angle. Looks pretty good. Now I have three known points. We just got to decide where
to put the first point. Then after we found the direction of the lower
right edge of the box, we got to decide the location
of the second point. Now, we could have
put this second point anywhere along this line. But as soon as we place it, it locks the proportion
of the drawing. Every other point in the
drawing needs to be in proper proportional relationship
to this line segment. We found the location
of the third point by first drawing the front
vertical edge and then figuring out the angle
between these two points on the actual still life and transferring it
back to the drawing. Now we can use the
same technique to find every corner of the box. Using the same technique, I'm going to draw the
right edge of the box. Now, I've double
checked my angle and it's a little bit off. I need to move this line over
to the left just slightly. I'm going to make my
second attempt here. I think I moved it a little
too far to the left, so I'm going to bring it
back just the tiniest bit. I'm going to draw these lines longer than I think
they need to be because I'm not sure yet where on this line the corner of
the box is going to be. Before I move on, I
want to knock back my first and second attempts and leave the third and
correct attempt. I know somewhere along this line is the correct location of the top right corner of
the box. How do I know? I'm going to go back to the
still life and get the angle between the front corner of the box and the top
right corner of the box. Once I have that
angle on my pencil, I'm going to transfer
it back to the drawing. Once I have a sense of where this new line intersects
the right edge, I'm going to mark that
location in my drawing. Here is the top right
front edge of the box. Now, before I move
on, once again, I want to double check to make sure I've got
the right angle. That's looking pretty good. Now, already, I want you to note that these two lines appear as if they would converge at a distant vanishing point
far below the drawing. This is exactly what we want. Hopefully, at this stage, you understand how to
use triangulation. You can pick any
two known points and use them to find the
location of a third point. I'm going to demonstrate
this one more time. I want to find the location of the left upper
corner of the box. Using the angle sighting
method that I've taught you, I'm going to find the direction of this top left front edge. I've got the angle on my pencil. I'm going to bring it
down to my drawing. I'm going to note
what it looks like, and then I'm going to
make my first attempt. I'm going to make it
very lightly because I don't expect that it's
going to be correct. I'm going to double
check this angle, and I'm finding that
it's a little bit off. So I'm going to
note the difference in the angle between the line that I first drew and
the line of my pencil. I'm going to make
a mental note of how much I need to
change this angle. So I need to move this
angle down just slightly. Now I'm going to make
my second attempt. I'm going to draw this
just slightly darker. I can tell which is
which. I'm going to knock back this line here
just a little bit. Once again, I'm going
to get the angle on my pencil from the
still life itself. Double check it
against the drawing. It's looking very close. Now, I know that somewhere along this line is the location of the top left
corner of the box. How do I figure it
out? I'm going to triangulate its location
from a known point. Now I'm going to go back
to the very first point, the bottom corner of the box. I'm going to get the
angle on my pencil and slowly transfer
it to my drawing. Now where my pencil crosses the line is going to be the
location of that point. I've made a mental note
about where that line intersected and I'm going
to put that point here. I'm going to double
check my measurement. I see that I can move
it over just slightly. Now I'll check one more
time to ensure accuracy. That's looking very close. So now I have the top
left corner of the box. Now, all of the
remaining sides of the box are blocked by
one of our objects. But we can still infer where
the rest of the edges and corners are because we can
see part of each edge. So Using angle sighting, I'm going to find the back
right edge of the box. I'm going to make this line longer than I think
it needs to be. So even though I
can only see part of this line of the
actual still life, I know what direction it's going and I can extend that line. I'm going to use the same
method I've demonstrated to now find the back
left edge of the box. Now, assuming that
I have properly angle cited these lines, where they intersect will give me the back corner of the box. I can do the same thing
with this edge here. So even though we can't see this corner or this corner
in the actual still life, because we can get the
direction of these lines, we can still construct
the entire box. Before we move on, I'd
like you to note that these three lines give
the appearance that they would converge at a
vanishing point far to the left. While these three lines
give the appearance that they would converge in a vanishing point
far to the right. Our three verticals appear
that they would converge at a distant vanishing point
far below the drawing. Even though I have not used vanishing points
to construct this box, it is still in proper
three point perspective. I did this by using
angle sighting to triangulate the location
of each corner of the box. Now let's move on
to the next object. Now, what you just saw me demonstrate was
pretty technical. I used angle sighting and triangulation to construct a box that is in proper three
point perspective without using vanishing points. I wanted you to see what this technical approach to drawing looks like
and how to use it. However, it's important
that you understand that drawing does not have
to be this technical. When I'm drawing on my own, I often measure
things more by eye. But part of my job as an
instructor is to make sure you understand the entire
range of ways to draw. How much measuring you do
when you are drawing is, of course, entirely up to you. Some people measure a lot, some people measure very little. It is your choice. Now we're going to focus on
the two rounded objects, the orange and the candle, or as you know them, the sphere in the cylinder. Now, even though these forms don't have many straight lines, we can still use angle sighting and triangulation to
help us draw them. For example, we can use
triangulation to help us find the rounded corners of the ellipses at the top
and bottom of the candle. Now that we've drawn the cube, we can use triangulation to
find the top right corner of the ellipse by triangulating its location from any two
known points on our cube. Like these two, for example, even though the sphere
has no obvious points, we can still use angle sighting to determine the direction from the bottom
corner of the box to the bottom edge
of the orange. Now, it's not a specific
point in space, but it is still
useful information. Now it's time to
demonstrate all of this, so let's get into it. Now that orange and the
candle are similarly sized, so you could choose to draw
either of them at this point, but I'm going to work on the
cylinder for the candle. Now, I just use triangulation
to construct this box. Now triangulation makes a lot
of sense for constructing a box because we have straight
lines meeting at angles. But we can also use triangulation to draw
other kinds of objects. For example, I know
that the candle is going to be sitting
on top of this box. But how high is it going to be? I can use triangulation
to figure out where the upper
corners of the candle are. So I want to know the tilt
of the line from this corner of the box to the upper
right corner of the candle. Now even though there's not an actual edge connecting
them like we saw in the box, we still have two points in
space that we can measure. So I'm going to hold
my pencil up to the still life and
get the direction of the line from the
top right corner of the box to the top right
corner of the candle, and I'm going to slowly
transfer it down to my drawing. I'm going to make a mental note of the direction of my pencil, and then I'm going to
make my first attempt. To double check that line. Looking good. I know that somewhere
along this line is the location of the upper
right corner of the candle. How do I figure out where? I'm going to go to one of our known points
and triangulate. Now I'm going to hold
my pencil back up to the still life
and I want to get the angle between the
upper left corner of the box and the right
corner of the candle. I'm going to make a mental
note of where my pencil crosses the first line we drew, and I'm going to make
my first attempt. I'm going to draw this line
and before I officially establish this as the
upper right corner of the candle, I'm
going to double check. Looking very close. I have used these two
points to triangulate the location of the upper
right corner of our candle. Now, I'd like to pause here for a moment and talk about
an important idea. When we were angle
citing the box, every line we drew ended up being one of the
edges of the box. But these two lines are
just meant for measuring. We do not want these lines to appear at the
end of the drawing. These are called
construction lines. They're used to
construct the drawing, but they are not part
of the drawing itself. We can knock back our
construction lines to make sure they don't
get too confusing. But while you're
learning, I actually recommend leaving them
somewhat visible. Show your process. Now I know where the upper right
corner of the candle is. I know that this
upper right corner is the corner of an ellipse. I know that the axis for the ellipse is going to
be perfectly horizontal. I don't need to
measure anything. I can just draw that line. Now I know that somewhere along this line is the upper
left corner of the candle. How do I figure out where? I'm going to triangulate it. Now at this stage, we have many known points we could use. I'm going to measure the angle
from the upper left corner of the box to the upper
left corner of the candle. Once again, I'm
going to get that angle from the still life and transfer it
down to my drawing. I'm going to make a
mental note about where the pencil crosses the
line when I'm ready, I'm going to make
my first attempt. I'm going to double
check to make sure that I've got
the right angle. It's looking good. Now I have the top left
corner of the candle. Once again, this
construction line does not need to be seen
at the end of the drawing. Once you're done with
it, if you want to, you can knock it
back a little bit. Now, whenever we want
to draw a cylinder, we know that it has
a vertical axis. I'm going to go ahead and
draw that vertical axis, and it should be placed right in the halfway point between
the two upper corners. The vertical axis for the
cylinder looks like it's going to align with the
front edge of our box. Now I want to draw the
ellipse at the top. Now, if you want to, you can establish the exact proportions of the ellipse by comparing the height of the
ellipse to its width. This is something I taught in depth of my beginners
guide to drawing. But I feel pretty
comfortable measuring by ey. So I'm going to
make the motion of the ellipse and once I'm ready, I'm going to make
my first attempt. This is looking pretty good. I feel like I can
come back at the end of the drawing and refine
this a little bit, but I think it's
working well for now. Notice that the upper
portion of the ellipse and the bottom portion more or
less mirror one another. Once I have the ellipse at the top of the cylinder
for the candle, I can drop the
vertical edges down. Now, the vertical
edges of the candle need to appear to go down to the same vanishing point
as the sides of our cube. They're going to taper
in just slightly. Now, I know that somewhere along this line is going to be the bottom right
corner of the candle. Now, I feel pretty comfortable
placing this by eye. I can see by looking at the still life that the
lower right corner of the candle is about halfway between the front edge of
the cube and the back edge. Remember, you always have
the choice of measuring something with your pencil or
just using your eyes alone. Once I have the lower right
corner of the candle, I can draw a
horizontal axis line for the ellipse at the bottom. Where that line intersects the left side of
the candle gives us the location of the left
bottom corner of the candle. And of course, now I can
draw the lower ellipse, making sure that it is more open than the
ellipse at the top. I've made my first
attempt here and now I can darken it just a little bit. Now, remember, I don't want the back edge of the ellipse to be seen at
the end of the drawing. I only want the front edge
of the ellipse to be seen. So I'm going to darken this
front edge just slightly. Just to bring it forward, and make sure it
is more visible. Now we have our cylinder
for the candle. Once again, I want
to note that I am showing all of my
work in this drawing. I'm drawing every form
as if it is transparent. Now, at the end of this drawing, I'm going to go back and darken the lines I
once seen by a viewer. But I think it's
important to show the entire construction
process as you're learning. Now, the only shape we have left to draw is the
sphere for the orange. I know that we're going to start out with a simple circle. I know that it is
going to be placed in front of the left
plane of the box. How big do we want it to be? Well, there are a number of ways that we can establish this. One thing we can do is take a proportional measurement
from the still life itself. So I'm noting that the
width of the sphere is about the same as the width of the ellipse at the
top of the cylinder. This is useful information. I can also see that
the contour of the sphere of the
orange is intersecting both the vertical left side of the box as well as
the lower left edge. Now I can determine
the exact place that the contour for the sphere
intersects these two lines, by, of course, using
angle sighting. Now at this stage,
I've demonstrated this process a number of times. I don't think I need to take you through each and every step. If I want to know
where on this line, the contour of the sphere
is going to intersect, I can get the angle from
another known point. Using angle sighting, I have
captured the angle from the moment the sphere intersects to this corner of the box. That tells me that
the location where the sphere intersects
this line is here. I've used the same point to
triangulate the location, where the sphere
intersects this line. Now, let me show you another
useful way we can use angle sighting to figure out
the location of objects. Now, angle sighting
and triangulation work great when we're drawing objects with straight
edges that meet in corners. But a circle has no
corners, it's round, but that doesn't mean that
when drawing routed objects, angle sighting is useless. Let's say that I
want to figure out the location of the
bottom of the sphere. Well, I can go to the still life and figure out the direction between the lower corner of the box and the
bottom of the sphere. Even though it's not going to give me a point on the sphere, it will establish
that lowest edge. This line is the direction from the lowest point of the box to the lowest point
of the sphere. Here I'm using an
enveloping technique. I've figured out the angle
from the top left corner of the candle to the
edge of the sphere. Here you've seen me use angle sighting in a
number of different ways. So I know that the
sphere is going to intersect the edges of
our box here and here. I know where the very bottom
of the sphere is going to be in relationship to the
lowest point of the cube. I've also figured out
the direction between the top left corner of the cylinder and the
top of the sphere. I've used an enveloping
technique to figure out the furthest point in relationship to the top
left edge of the cylinder. So with all of this in mind, I can start to draw the
circle for the orange. Just going to make my
first light attempt And when I'm feeling a
little more confident, I can start to darken
it just slightly, making sure that my
sphere is circ that. Now, I'd like to call your
attention to something. Even though I didn't use the enveloping
technique specifically, we've arrived at what
amounts to the same thing. We have all of the
lines that envelope the entire still life
into one simple shape. Now, as I'm darkening
this circle, I want to remind you
once again that I have done a lot of measuring
in this still life. But you always have the choice of how much
measuring you do. If you want a lot of accuracy, then you can measure a lot. But if accuracy isn't
as important to you, you don't have to
measure this much. It is always up to
you to figure out how much measuring to do
in a still life like this. But I wanted to show
you a lot of measuring, so you at least
know how to do it. If when you're
drawing on your own, you don't want to use this
much measuring, that is fine. But if accuracy is
important to you, now you know how to get a lot of accuracy into a simple
drawing like this. Now, to complete our drawing of the sphere for the orange, we need two axis lines. Once again, using my pencil, I'm going to extract
the angle from the actual still life and
get it into my drawing. Even though I'm not demonstrating
the entire process, you now understand
what it looks like to extract an angle from the still life and bring
it to your drawing. Whether you see me do it or not, this is a technique that I'm
using over and over again. So here I'm drawing the
perpendicular axis line. So now we have two axis lines dividing the sphere up
into equal sections. Now I want to call
your attention to some of the details
on the orange. Notice that where the stem was, we can find a number of
lines traveling outward. These lines perfectly follow the ellipses that
we're about to draw. So first, I'm going to
draw this ellipse here. Again, I'm going to
start off very widely. I want to make sure that each side of the ellipse
is mirroring the other. I think that's
working pretty well. I want you to note how
open this ellipse is. Now, the perpendicular
ellipse is much more close. It's a very slender ellipse. We're going to draw
that much more closed. So now we have our entire
still life laid out. Have rigorously
constructed each shape. We angle cited every edge
and corner of the box. We use both angle sighting
and our knowledge of perspective to properly
draw the cylinder. Finally, we drew a
proper volumetric sphere that includes both a
latitude and longitude line. Now at this stage
of the drawing, you can start to darken the lines you want
seen by a viewer. This allows the construction
lines to drop back a little bit so we can focus on the
actual shapes of the subject. Darkening a drawing like
this is so much easier once we have the basic
under drawing established. We can simply glide our
pencil around the edges. Here, we only want to darken
this front edge of the box. I'm going to go around
the entire drawing and darken the final lines. Again, I want to
note that these are all hand drawn lines. None of them are perfectly
straight, and that's fine. Want to darken up all
visible edges of the cubes, but of course, you
don't need to darken the edges of the cubes that have gone behind other objects. To darken the edges
of our cylinder. In particular, I want to darken this bottom edge down here. Now, I want to note that this is not a perfectly
drawn still life. Remember, perfect accuracy is nearly impossible
in a hand drawing. But I do want you
to see how close we actually got with using these kinds of
measuring techniques. These are the kinds of
measuring techniques that I use every time I
sit down to draw. Now I know this may seem like a lot of measuring
to some of you, but I promise, the more you practice these kinds of
measuring techniques, the more intuitive they become. Now at this stage, you
are welcome to go and knock back some of
your process lines. But I do want to note
how important it is to at least go through this
process of drawing all of them, of showing your work as you
construct to still life. This trains your brain to see
all of these relationships. So there you have it, a properly drawn
still life that is in perspective and using all of the techniques that
you've learned about in the last few lessons. Now you know how to bring all of this knowledge and all of these skills together to do
a drawing from observation. There you have it, a still life that is in proper perspective. We know because we
have measured it, and we've used
everything we've learned about cylinders,
spheres, and cubes. We've combined that
knowledge with triangulation to construct a properly
drawn still life. Now, for this
drawing, I have left these subjects as
their simple shapes. I have not turned the
cylinder into a candle. I have not turned the
sphere into an orange. But hopefully you can see how easy it would be to do that. This process that you've
just seen demonstrated does the vast majority of the work
of drawing these subjects. At this stage of the drawing, it would be so simple to
add the lid of the box, to draw the segments
of the orange and to place the location
where the stem would be. But hopefully, this is
solidified in your mind, how important it is
to understand how to draw these basic
three dimensional forms. Even though this still
life was simple, every subject you draw, no matter how complex
is going to be a combination of these
simple basic forms. If you know how to draw
a sphere, a cylinder, and a cube, you can figure out how to draw nearly anything. Again, I know this is a
technical approach to drawing, but it's so important that you understand how to
draw like this, whether or not you choose
to in your own drawings. The more you actively
measure using your pencil, the more accurate your
drawings will become, whether you're measuring or not. Again, measuring
trains your mind. I encourage you
to practice this. Now it's time to get
you to your project. Or your project today,
you're going to draw your own simple still life. It should consist of
a spherical object, a cylindrical object,
and a cubicle object. For spherical objects, you can use all kinds of
fruits and vegetables, a globe, or balls from many
different kinds of sports. Remember, it doesn't need
to be perfectly spherical. For example, my orange today
was not a perfect sphere, but it still works. For a cylinder, you can
use cups or glasses, a paper towel roll or a. Or of course, anything else you have in your environment
that's cylindrical. For a cubicle object, you can use boxes of
any kind or books. And remember, your cubicle
object does not need to be a perfect cube where all
sides are perfect squares. It is completely fine if
your cubicle object is taller than it is wide or wider than it is
tall like a book. So once you have
your three objects, it's time to compose them. I want you to set
them up together. I'd like you to place some
objects in front of others. This allows you an
opportunity to draw them transparently to really think through their three
dimensionality. Now, this is very important. You want to find a place for your still life where it
will not be disturbed. You don't want friends or
family members to come in and pick up part
of your still life while you're in the
middle of a drawing. I have had it happen where I've been drawing and a family member has just come and
picked up an apple I've been drawing and
taken a bite out of it. It does happen. You might even
want to put a sign up that says, do not disturb. Let anybody that you live
with or that might come over know that you have a still life set up and that they
should not touch it. Now, at this stage, don't
worry about lighting. We're not doing any shading. So the light doesn't
matter all that much. You just need enough light
for you to be able to see your still life and for you to see the paper
you're drawing. Now, if you're drawing from
an easel or a drawing horse, you can set your
still life up on a small table a few
feet away from you, or if you're drawing at a table, you can lean your drawing
board up against the table and place your still life on the
same table in front of you. You may need to
explore and experiment a little bit to find the
right setup for you. But remember, you want
to be able to see your still life right near the edge of
your drawing board. For example, if
your drawing board is leaned up against a table, you want your still life
to appear right above it. Or if you're drawing at an easel and your still life
is to the side, make sure that it is immediately
6. Boxes and Beyond: If se si si se si. Welcome to lesson five. Now that you have some
basic perspective skills, we're going to build on those
skills and show you how to draw more complex
rectilinear forms. Now, this lesson marks
a shift in the course. In the first four
lessons of the course, you learned how to draw the basic three dimensional volumes, the sphere, the cylinder, and the c. Now, from here on out, we're going to focus on manipulating
these forms, on slicing them, carving them, and combining them to
create more complex forms. Remember, everything that
you could possibly want to draw is made up of these basic
three dimensional forms. Once you can translate these more complex
forms into basic forms, you'll know how to draw them. Now, my hope is that by
the end of this course, you will be able to simplify any subject down to
these basic shapes. In this lesson,
we're going to teach you to draw more complex forms, starting with the cube. Today, you're going to see me do two different demonstrations. Each demo is going to focus on a different set of
perspective skills. For your projects today, you are going to create
the same kind of drawings that you are about
to see me demonstrate. Both of these
demonstrations are going to rely heavily on
linear perspective. Now you should already be familiar with the basics
from lesson three, but we're going to go
beyond that in this lesson. In the first demonstration, you're going to see
me build with blocks, not just cubes, but blocks of
many different dimensions. Some will be tall and slender, others will be
shorter and wider. By stacking these blocks
and combining them, we'll be able to
create much more complex, almost
architectural compositions. Of course, all of this will be drawn in proper perspective. In the second demonstration, you're going to
see me carve into blocks to slice through them and to remove segments in order to create new and more
complex forms. Now, before we get into
today's demonstrations, there are two concepts that
I want you to understand. First, you need to know how
to go beyond the cube and how to create rectilinear
forms of any dimension. Now, for simplicity's
sake today, I'm going to be
drawing primarily in two point perspective. That means that the
vertical lines will remain vertical
and do not need to appear as if they
were converging at a distant vanishing point
far below the picture plane. Now, a cube is defined by having six identical square sides. But we can change
the dimensions of the cube in any of the
three planes of space. A cube can stretch toward one vanishing point
or the other. Or it can get taller. Now because these forms
are not technically cubes, we can refer to them
as boxes or blocks. I tend to use these
terms interchangeably. But regardless of the dimension
of these boxes or blocks, they will still follow the exact same rules of perspective that
you've learned so far. Once you understand this, you can draw blocks of any
dimension and at any location. Let's learn how to
find the center of any plane of any cube or
block in any dimension. To do this, let's start off by looking at a simple square. If we draw two straight
diagonal lines from corner to
corner of a square, we get the location of
the center of the plane. This will work with any
rectangular shape as well. But when a cube or block
goes into perspective, the planes change
their shape and get smaller as they get
further away from us. Nevertheless, we can use this same technique of drawing
diagonal lines from corner to corner to find the center of any square or rectangular
plane in perspective. Once we've done
this, we can then divide any plane
into equal parts by sending lines
through the center of a plane and back to
the vanishing points. We can then place vertical lines through the center
of the side planes. Once this is done,
we can then use these lines to
remove segments of the blocks to create new and more complex forms
in proper perspective. So now that you understand
these concepts, let's talk about today's demos. Now, today, we're going to
be drawing from imagination. We're not going to be
observing anything. We are going to be inventing these blocks on the
page as we draw. Now, if one of your goals is
to draw from imagination, then doing these kinds of creative perspective drawings
is an essential first step. But even if you only want to
do observational drawing, then this is still
an essential skill. Remember, you need to
be able to translate complex form into these
more basic forms. To do that, you will often need to imagine a box
around a subject. Whether you eventually
want to draw from imagination or from observation, then being able to invent boxes and perspective
is an essential skill. Let's get to our first
demo, building with blocks. For this demonstration,
I am going to be building with
blocks in perspective. You'll see me draw a series of blocks stacked on
top of one another. Now, this isn't
something that I'm going to be observing
and drawing. I'm going to be drawing
from my imagination. I'll be inventing these
blocks as we go along. For this demonstration,
you're going to see me draw perspective
lines using a. But when I darken the lines
for the blocks themselves, you'll see me do that fan. I would recommend you try it this way during your project. All right. Let's get to it. You'll notice that
I've already drawn a horizon line
representing eye level, and I've drawn my
two vanishing points as far off to the sides
as I could get them. This will minimize distortion in my perspective drawings and give me plenty of room to draw. So now we'll get started
with my first block. First, I need to draw
a vertical line. This line will represent
the front edge of my box. You can see that I'm
drawing it free hand. Now I want to determine
the very bottom of this line as well as the top. This line is going to be the
front edge of my first box. Once I've drawn it and I've established the bottom
and top of this line, I can now send perspective lines back to their respective
vanishing points. This part of the process should be pretty familiar
to you by now. I'm going to lightly draw perspective lines
from both the top and bottom of this line, first to the vanishing
point on the right, and next to the vanishing
point on the left. I'm drawing these
lines very lightly. Remember, these
perspective lines are just construction lines. They are here to help
you draw in perspective, but they are not intended to be seen at the
end of the drawing. Next, I'm going to draw
the sides of my box. So here is the
vertical right edge, and here is the
vertical left edge. Now, for this demo, I'll be drawing in two
point perspective, just to keep it simple, but this same process will work in three
point perspective. But because I'm drawing
in two point perspective, all vertical lines
will remain vertical. At this point, I'm
not attempting to give the illusion that they will converge at
a vanishing point below the picture plane. Now, as soon as I draw
these vertical edges, we see two planes of the box. We have this longer plane on the right side and this shorter
plane on the left side. To complete this box, we only need to draw
two more lines. From the top and
bottom of this line, we already have
perspective lines going back to the vanishing
point on the right. The only perspective
line we need is from this right top corner to the
vanishing point on our left. This process should already
be very familiar to you. Next, I need to draw a line from the top left corner of the box to the vanishing
point on our right. Once this line is drawn, we have finished
our first block. Now, before I darken
any of these lines, I want to draw another
block on top of this one. But for this next block, I wanted to only be half the
width of the first block. V lightly, I am going
to find the center of this right front
plane of my first box by drawing diagonal
lines corner to corner. This gives me the
center of this plane. Now, I can project a vertical line directly
through the of this plane. This divides this plane in half. But instead of stopping at
the horizontal front edge, I'm going to extend
this line up. I bring this right
to about here, and I'm going to place the front quarter of this
new block right here. So from here, I need to draw perspective lines back to
both vanishing points. So these lines are going to represent the top front
edges of the box. For the right side, I
simply need to project this line upward until
it hits this line. To complete the rest of the box, I need to send a
perspective line from the bottom front
corner of the box back to the vanishing
point on our left. Now, when you're
drawing in perspective, the order that you draw these lines does not
matter too much. What does matter is that you get all of them
down on the page. For the left edge of the box, I'm now going to project a line straight up
from this corner. So at this point, you can see that I have the
right front plane of the box as well as the left
front plane of the box. To complete this drawing, I now need to send a
perspective line from this corner to the vanishing
point on our left. And from this corner to the
vanishing point on our right. Now, before we go any further, I'm going to start to darken the lines that I
want seen by viewer. I'm going to darken the
edges of our blocks. So I'm going to leave the
construction lines light. But the edges of the box
are going to be darkened. Again, you'll note these
are free hand lines. They are not perfectly straight, but that is fine. I like these drawings to
have a hand drawn character. I think it's a lot
more interesting. Now, in just a moment, I want to project a
block forward in space. I'm not going to
darken all of this, but I am going to darken most
of the edges of the block. So hopefully you can really start to see the
illusion emerging. Hopefully you can
start to feel in this drawing that this plane
is flat and horizontal, but at this line, suddenly, this plane goes
vertically upward. Now, before I darken much more, I want to project part of
this block forward in space. Again, I'm just inventing
here as we go along. I'm not planning this out. So what I'm going to do
is I'm going to find the center of this plane. Once I know where the center is, I can send a line back to the vanishing
point on our right. So now I've divided this
block into two equal halves, one on top of another. Now, from this
part of the block, I want to project
another block forward. So I'm going to extend
this line outward. I'm going to make this the
front corner of a new block. So from right here, the halfway mark between the top and bottom
of this block, I'm going to extend
another line forward. To do this, I need to go
back to our vanishing point. Remember, every line that
isn't vertical is going to go back to one or both
of the vanishing points. So if this is the front
corner of the box, I need to drop a
vertical line here. Once I have the top and
bottom of this edge, I can send these lines back
to my vanishing point. Now, before I do that, I want to note that this corner right here actually fell on a line that is already traveling
back to the vanishing point. So I don't need to
draw this line again. But I do need a
construction line going from this corner of the block
to the vanishing point. Next, I want to figure out
where the top of this box is. To find that, I'm going to
extend this line out until it hits the front
edge of this line. Now I can drop a
vertical line down, and now we can see this block starting to come into focus. Once again, I'm going to
darken the edges of the block, leaving the construction
lines light. Again, these are not
perfectly straight, but that is fine. At this point, I can darken all of the edges of this form. Now, in addition to darkening
the edges of these blocks, I can start to knock back any construction lines
that I don't want seen. Using my needed eraser, I'm first going to press down
to lift any excess pigment, and then I can wipe it
across the surface of the page to remove any
pigment I don't want. Now, these lines are not
going to erase completely, but they will lighten
to some degree. This is the form
we've arrived at. Hopefully, you can really
start to feel that this part of the block is
projecting forward in space. It's coming in front
of this plane behind. I've created a new
and more complex form by stacking blocks on
top of one another. This kind of drawing
from imagination is such excellent practice when
you're learning perspective. I'm going to create one more
construction over here. For this one, I'm not going to narrate every step of the way. At this point, you should be pretty familiar
with this process. If you need any refreshers on how to construct these forms, I highly recommend going back in this course and
watching previous lessons. Now, one trick here is that
you don't need to draw every line all the way
back to a vanishing point. If I know that I want to stop the edge of this cube
or block over here, that I can just draw that part, confident that my ruler is going all the way back
to the vanishing point. This is a way you
can avoid getting too many perspective
lines in your drawing, which can get
confusing over time. Now you can see the
front left plane of this block emerging. Next, I'll draw the back edge. Once I've got these, I can send lines back
to my vanishing points. Instead of drawing
them all the way back, I'm just going to draw where
I know I will need them. So here is my new block. So before we move on, there's one more thing I
want to show you. Let's say that I want to stack another block on
top of this one. But the top of this new block is going to be at eye level. So I need to extend
a vertical line. I can extend a vertical
line here as well. So when the top or bottom
of a block is at eye level, the top appears straight. I'm going to pull
the right side of this box up from an
arbitrary place. So again, the top of this
block is at eye level, but you can see it
straightens out. From here, I want to
construct another block on top that is going to
project even higher. The top of this new block is
going to be above eye level, but the bottom of this new block is going to be at eye level, and therefore, it will
remain perfectly horizontal. I'm going to extend
this line up, and if I want the top of
this new block to be here, I need to send lines back
to my vanishing points. So you can see this
new block forming. For the right plane of this box, I have just extended
this line straight up. But I want the left plane
of this new box to only be approximately half of the
width of the block below. Once again, I'm going to darken
the edges of the blocks. Hopefully, you're starting
to get a sense of how powerful this kind
of construction can be. Again, this is such
great practice for understanding perspective. By inventing blocks like this and stacking them on
top of one another, you'll really get a sense of
the logic of perspective, and perspective is
nothing, if not logical. So hopefully, this gives
you a sense of how to construct with
blocks in perspective. At this point, you should
understand how to create your own compositions
by stacking blocks. Stacking blocks is
an additive approach to creating more complex forms. Now in the second demonstration, we're going to take a
subtractive approach. We're going to begin with
one block and carve into it, removing sections of it. This is a more subtractive
approach to creating more complex form.
Let's get into it. So here, you can see
that I've already drawn four blocks in
two point perspective. Each block has a
different dimension. Now, at this point, you
should be very familiar with how to construct these kinds
of blocks in perspective. So this allows us to get
right into the focus of this demonstration,
carving these blocks. So I'm going to begin with
this block down here. First, you'll see me use to draw diagonal
lines from corner to corner to find the center
of this front right plane. Once I know the
center of this plane, I can then divide this plane
into four equal units. To do this, I'm going to
draw a line that goes from the vanishing point straight through the center
of this block. To divide this plane
and half vertically, all I need to do is send a
line perfectly vertically. At this point, we
have this face of this block divided into
four equal sections. What I'm about to do is remove a section of this block
to create a set of steps. I want to remove this upper
left segment of the block. I want to remove it along these lines here. So
how do we do this? Once I remove this
section of the block, it's going to
create a new shape. It's going to create
a set of two steps. To do this, I'm going to start by drawing a
line that goes from the corner of this first step back to the vanishing
point on our left. Next, I'll draw another line
moving from this corner of the top step to the
vanishing point on the left. So where this line intersects
with the back left edge of this block gives us the new location of the
corner of this step. So from here, I'm going to draw a line back to the vanishing
point on our right. Again, I'm drawing all of these construction
lines very lightly, and I'm no longer extending the line all the way to
the vanishing point. I'm just drawing
the section I need. Now, when we extended
this line back, it also gave us the location of the top left corner
of this step. So now we need to drop a
vertical line straight down. Lastly, we need to
draw a line from this interior corner of the steps back to
the vanishing point. So now we have all of
the construction lines necessary to complete
this new shape. I am going to darken all of
the edges of this new form. Here is the bottom left edge, the bottom right edge, the front corner
of the first step back edge of this first step. The moment where this
step folds over. I'm going to darken each and
every edge of our new shape. Once again, I am
doing this free hand, so there may be some
minor imperfections, but that is totally fine. So here is our new shape. It looks like a
set of two steps. We know that it is in proper
perspective because we used perspective techniques
to first divide this plane into four equal parts and then remove a section. Every new line is either
vertical and not going to a vanishing point
or going either to the vanishing point on the left or the vanishing
point to the right. So I am going to erase some
of these construction lines. I'm not going to
erase them entirely. I'm just going to knock
them back a little bit to highlight the new shape. And one thing I like to
do sometimes is darken the area I removed.
Just a little bit. This gives us a sense of
what the new shape is. Now, let's move over to
the cube on the right. Once again, I am going
to find the center of this plane by drawing lines diagonally from
corner to corner. Next, I'll divide this plane
into four equal sections. I'll do this by first drawing a horizontal line that goes back to the vanishing
point on our left, and then drawing
a vertical line. Remember, because this drawing is in two point perspective, all of these vertical lines
are remaining vertical. We're not sending them down to a vanishing point far
below the picture plane. Now, instead of using
these square divisions, I'm going to draw
a diagonal line from corner to corner of
this upper right square. What I want to do now is remove
this triangular section. Where this line intersects this edge is going to
create a new edge here. I'm going to draw
a line from here back to the vanishing
point on our right. Of course, we need
to draw a line from this quarter to the vanishing
point on our right. Now, once again, we can see
this new shape emerging. To complete this
shape, I need to connect this corner
with this corner. So I'll just draw a line there. Once again, I can now start to darken the edges
of this new shape. Now, of course, I could darken these two edges and
keep this shape. But instead, I'm also going to carve out this other
side of the block. Now, because of the way
this shape is oriented, we don't need to create any new lines back to
any vanishing points. I'm just going to darken
this new edge created. So you can see
that this gives us the shape of a traditional
looking house. Once again, because we follow
the logic of perspective, we know it is properly
drawn in three dimensions. We really get a sense of
this plane being angled. Next, let's move up to this
block on our upper left. Go to begin by dividing this plane on our right
into four equal segments. At this point, this process should be very familiar to you. So I don't need to necessarily narrate every step of the way. Now, I want to remove a
block from this section, but to properly do that, I also need to divide this plane into four
equal segments. Once again, I'm going to draw
diagonals from corner to corner where they intersect gives me the center
of this plane. Then I can divide it with a horizontal and
a vertical mine. In order to remove this
shape from our larger block, I'm going to begin by
darkening the edges. So here is where I'm going to carve out of this larger block. So we know now that this is
going to be a new corner. We can already see
a line going from this corner to the vanishing
point on our right, so now we need to send a line to the vanishing
point on our left. To complete the
cutout of this block, we now need to send a line from this carter to the vanishing
point on our right. Where this line intersects gives us the edge
of this cutout. I am now going to darken all of the edges of this new shape, including the edges
of the initial block. Now, in order to complete the cutting out of this
section of the block, we need to see the interior
edges of this cutout. So from this carter, I'm
going to send a line back to the vanishing
point on our left. And from this corner, I'm
going to send a line back to the vanishing point
on our right. Where these two lines intersect gives us the interior
corner of our new shape. To complete the form, I simply need to draw
a vertical line. Finally, you'll see me darken the edges of this
interior shape. I'm going to knock back just a few of the construction lines. I'm going to knock
back just a few of the construction lines to make sure the new shape is clear. So hopefully, you can really get a sense of this plane going up. This plane going across. This is a believable and
properly drawn removal of a block from
this larger block. Now, the forms we carved out of these three shapes
were pretty simple. For this last shape, I want to demonstrate something with a little
more complexity. Once again, I'll
begin by finding the center of each
of the side planes. Again, I'm drawing
very lightly because I am planning on
carving up this pot. For this final shape, I'm just going to
be improvising. I'm going to cut this section of the block out on a diagonal. This is going to be the
new edge of this block. From here, I'm going
to send a line to the vanishing point on our left. Again, I am just
inventing this as I go. I also need to send a line from this quarter to the vanishing
point on our right. I'm going to darken the edges
of this new interior shape. How to complete this form, I need to draw a line from
this corner to this corner. Now we have removed a large
section of this block. Here is the new under
side of this plane, and of course, we
have this plane traveling up to meet it. But I'm not going to stop there. Now I'll remove this upper
left corner of the block. That stall dark in the
very bottom of this shape. I think I'd like to carve
some additional sections out of the back of this shape. So I'm going to divide
this section of the plane into quarters. Going to do this free hand. I'm going to remove a
block section out of the very back and a triangular
section as well. Now when you practice
this on your own, I want you to be inventive. Now, as soon as we cut off
this triangular section, we now have a new quarter. So to complete the form, I need to send a line back to the vanishing point on our left. Remember, every line is
either going to be vertical, go to a vanishing
point on the left or go to a vanishing
point on the right. The more you practice drawing
in perspective like this, the more obvious the
logic will become. At some point, it simply
becomes second nature. So here we have our
new complex shape properly drawn in two
point perspective. This kind of experimentation
with perspective is one of the best ways to train your brain in the
laws of perspective. Remember, there is a
logic at work here. The more you explore
and experiment, the more obvious this
logic will become. Now, this is a project that
has endless variations, but hopefully this demonstration has given you a sense of some of the more basic ways
you can carve out of a block as well as some
more complex ways. Now, before we get
you to your projects, I want to show you what
it looks like to do this drawing free hand without the aid of rulers or
vanishing points. Remember, most of
the subjects you draw are going to be
pretty large on the page, and it would be very impractical to draw using vanishing points because they would extend so far outside of
the picture plane. You need to be able to draw
boxes that appear to be proper three point perspective without the use of
vanishing points. So the last thing I want to
demonstrate is how to draw blocks by hand without the aid of rulers or
vanishing points. I'm drawing this block in
three point perspective, meaning that each set of lines is going back
to a vanishing point. Now, when we draw in
perspective by hand, we're going for believability,
not perfect accuracy. We're not using rulers
or vanishing points, perfect accuracy is
nearly impossible, but believability is achievable. If you notice, all three of these lines are going slightly
different directions. They appear as if they would converge at a point far
below the picture plane. You can see that this
edge is tapering in just slightly
as is this edge. Now if we were to extend
these lines down, in reality, I doubt they would all converge
at the exact same point, but the goal is believability. As long as you get
it close enough, it should work for your drawing. This is the true test of whether or not you
understand perspective. Can you draw a believable
block freehand? Now, because I'm not
using vanishing points, I'm going by my intuition. But again, the
goal here is to do a drawing that looks like it's in three
point perspective. So if we compare the tilt of this line to the tilt of
this line at the back, you can see that the line
of the back is tilted more. It appears that these two would converge at a distant
vanishing point. Now, these lines are
just educated guesses, but I think they'll
work well enough. The more you do drawings
like this by hand, without the use of
vanishing points or rulers, the better you will
get at drawing them when you don't
have those aids to use. Next, you'll see me divide each plane first into
four equal parts. Now at this point, you've seen
me do this ma, many times. I'll start off drawing, very lightly to make sure the lines are going in
the right direction. Again, these are
hand drawn lines. They're not going to be perfect. But the goal is
to get them close enough where they will
serve our purposes. You'll notice that I start by pantomiming and then very
lightly drawing the line. This is a skill that I taught in my beginner's
guide to drawing. No individual pass is a
perfectly straight line, but if we go over them paying close attention
to the direction, we can get pretty close. Once I found the center
of each face of the cube, I'm going to draw vertical
and horizontal lines. Now, it's important to note
that these lines too should appear as if they would converge at their respective
vanishing points. Again, to properly do this, you'll need to feel it out. Start them off by drawing
very lightly at first and then slowly darkening just a little bit once you
find the right angle. For example, I think this line needs to be tilted
in a little more. Again, perfect accuracy
is not achievable, but we should be able to get a believable block
divided into sections. So once we've drawn
a dividing line on one plane and we know where the center is
of another plane, we can send a line
straight through it, and that should be
at the proper angle. So here we have a full block drawn by hand in three
point perspective. I've found the center
of each plane and divided each plane
into four equal units. This is done by hand, so it's not as clean as the drawings I did
before with the ruler, but I think it's
working well enough. Now, let's start carving. I'm going to begin by carving off a triangle in this plane, and that, of course, will mean that we have
a new edge here. Again, I'm just inventing
these forms as I go along. This is not pre planned. I'm just exploring
with perspective. I'm going to stop this
division right here. So we now have a new
angled plane here. But this part of the
block is narrow going up. Now, in just a few minutes, I'll darken all of
these lines to make sure you understand the
three dimensional form. Next, I think I want to
carve out this block here. So I'm going to draw a straight
line going vertically up. I'll darken this line. And now this line will
need to go back in space. I need it to appear as if
it would converge with these other lines going
in this direction. Now we've sliced off this
section of the cube, and we have a new plane. Now, before we go any further, I'm going to darken these
lines just to make sure we have a clear idea at where
the edges of this form are. Now, whether you're
doing this by hand or using vanishing
points in a ruler, you can carve as
much as you like. For example, now,
I'm going to chop off this triangular
section down here. Now, because we
removed this block, this means that we have
a new created here. When you're drawing like
this, it really forces you to understand the form
in three dimensions. You were forced to figure out
the effects of cutting off one section of the cube and how that changes the three
dimensional structure. So we can see we have a
plane right here that goes across and we have this triangular section that's
coming up and meeting it. Now, I'm going to divide this section into
four equal parts. So to do that, again, corner to corner, to
find the center of it. Luckily, these intersect
right on this line, which is exactly what we would expect we draw a
vertical line now. I think I'm going to
remove this block here. I can extend this line. It appears that it would go to the same vanishing points as these other lines going
in that direction. And because we removed this, we're going to create a
new plane right here. This is what it
looks like to think through this kind of
form in real time. By playing with perspective, by exploring and
experimenting with its logic, we can create new forms. I am going to darken
the remaining lines. In doing so, I may find areas
that need some adjustment. But again, doing these kinds of drawings by hand and thinking your way through the
three dimensionality of the objects is
such great practice. I'm going to go back and darken the cut planes
just a little bit, just to make sure you
have a clear sense of what the cuts are and how
they affect the block. In each one of these
darkened areas, we have a new plane
that's been created. We've arrived at a
three dimensional form that makes sense. Doing these kinds of drawings free hand can be a challenge, but it is such
excellent practice, and I highly encourage
you at least to try it. I'm going to knock back some
of the construction lines so we can more clearly
see the new form. You don't have to do
this, but it can make it a little less confusing
when you're drawing. You're not going to get rid
of the construction lines completely, and that's fine. I actually like seeing
them on the page. I like seeing the logic behind how these forms
are constructed. But cleaning them up just a
little bit will help isolate the new form and allow you to see it that
makes sense or not. Here is our new form, drawn by hand believable
three point perspective without the aid of rulers
or vanishing points. Doing this kind of drawing
will really show you whether or not you understand
how perspective works. I know we've covered
a lot today, so let's get you right
to your projects. For this lesson, you're going to do two different projects. For your first project, you are going to create
your own composition by stacking blocks, just like you saw
me demonstrate. Now, for this project, I
recommend that you use a ruler to draw your
perspective lines and construction lines. But when you're ready to darken the edges of the final forms, try doing this free hand. For your second project, I want you to slice into
and carve four blocks. Each block should have
different dimensions. To do this, you'll
want to start by drawing four blocks in
proper perspective. Next, you'll find the center of each visible plane by drawing diagonal lines
from corner to corner. Next, you'll divide each plane
into four equal segments, just as you saw me demonstrate. You can use these
divisions to carve into your blocks and create
new more complex forms. You can do this by slicing your cubes along the vertical
and horizontal lines, or you can create and
cut on diagonals. For this project, I
want you to explore, experiment with form, that
when you make a slice, you may not always understand to draw in
proper perspective, but this is an
opportunity for you to think through
perspective problems. Remember, there are only so many places these lines can go. Lines will either be
vertical or they will travel back to one or the
other vanishing point. Now, of course, if
you cut on diagonals, things change a little bit. But if you need some review, go back and rewatch
the demonstrations. Now, once you've
done these projects, if you're looking
for a challenge, you can try to do the same
kinds of drawings free hand without the use of
rulers or vanishing points. Doing these kinds of drawings Free hand is the true test of whether or not you truly understand the principles
of perspective. Well, we have
covered a lot today. So go to your projects, and I will see you back
here for lesson six.
7. Natural Forms: Oh, Away. Welcome to lesson six. So far in this course, you've learned how to draw basic three dimensional shapes like spheres,
cylinders, and cubes. In the previous lesson, you learned how to draw more
complex straight edge shapes by slicing and stacking blocks. In today's lesson, you're
going to learn how to draw more natural
organic objects, by first simplifying them
into spheres and cylinders, and then by adding the
more naturalistic details. What do I mean by natural forms? A natural form is something
created by nature. To learn to draw natural forms, we're going to focus today
on fruits and vegetables. Natural objects, like
fruits and vegetables are made up of the same three dimensional forms that
you've learned about, like spheres and cylinders. Unlike human made
or machine forms, natural objects tend
to be irregular. So what are irregular forms? When we compare an
organic natural object like an orange to a
human made sphere, we can start to see
the differences. An orange is
essentially spherical, but it is not a perfect sphere. An orange is irregular, having many deviations from
a perfectly round sphere. To explore this further, let's head to the drawing board. In order to understand
irregular form, let's take a look at an orange. Now, an orange is
essentially spherical. To draw an orange, we can
begin with a simple circle. But of course, an orange is
not perfectly spherical. If we take a look around
the contours of the orange, we can see that some areas
are a flattened out. On the upper right
section of the orange, it seems to cut in a. The bottom left
edge of the orange does seem to be rounded nicely, curves right here and then flattens out just a
little bit again. The basic shape of the orange is a sphere and the contour
of the orange is circular, but it is not a perfect circle. We find irregularities
all over the place. In fact, that is what makes
an orange look organic. Perfectly spherical orange
would look strange. We expect some irregularities in the natural forms
that we encounter. If I were to have drawn this orange perfectly
spherically, it would look
strange to our eyes. Now, we can also find
irregularities where the sphere of the orange turns away from the light and
goes into shadow. On a perfect sphere, this line would be
perfectly curved. We would find one
long uniform curve. But on an irregular
object like an orange, we actually find a lot
of irregularities in the moment where the orange turns away from the light
and goes into shadow. We find indications of a number
of small lumps and bumps. Now, you'll notice that all
of these irregularities, all of these deviations from the basic sphere line
up on this curved line. But in order to properly
draw the orange, we need to capture
these irregularities. There is a lot more you need to know before we get to sheeting, but I wanted to use the
shadow of the orange to really highlight the fact that there are many
irregularities. As you're drawing today, you want to look at your
subjects to figure out what elements are going to
describe the basic forms, in this case, a sphere, but also where does
the form deviate? Where do we find irregularities? In your drawing, you want
to be able to capture the basic three
dimensional forms that your subjects
are made up of. In this case, we have a sphere. But we also want to capture the irregularities that make
it appear more natural. This tension is what's going to bring your
drawings to life. Ovoids are another
common deviation from perfect spheres that you'll see when drawing natural objects. An void is like an
elongated sphere. Whereas a perfect sphere
is derived from a circle, an ovoid is derived
from an oval. Ovods tend to be egg shaped, but they work the
same way as spheres. We can make them look more
three dimensional by adding latitude lines and
longitude lines. Just like spheres, ovoids also have their
own irregularities. When we look at
lemons, for example, we may see one end appears
more pointed than the other. This is incredibly common. And just like our orange, we may find areas that
are flatter or rounder. When we're drawing
natural objects, we want to look for
these irregularities. Now, I'm exaggerating
them slightly here, but you get the idea. Natural forms are
rarely perfect. But these
irregularities are what make them beautiful
and interesting. When you're drawing today,
you want to begin by capturing the most basic
three dimensional form. Once you've done that, you
can go back and add all of the beautiful
irregularities that make natural forms so
interesting to draw. Hopefully, at this point,
you have a sense of what irregular forms are and some of the deviations you
can expect to see. Now, in this lesson, we
are going to focus on natural forms that are primarily made up of
spheres and cylinders. Not only will these
forms be irregular, but they will also
be composite forms. A composite form or a
compound form is something that is made up of two or more basic three
dimensional volumes. Most natural forms
are composite forms. Now I'm going to take you
to the drawing board, where I'm going to
demonstrate how to draw a number of different kinds
of fruits and vegetables. Each object you're about to
see me draw will be made up of two or more basic three
dimensional volumes, like spheres and cylinders. While you're watching
this demonstration today, I want you to remember
that no matter how complex a subject gets, it can still be simplified into spheres,
cylinders, and cubes. Today will be your first step
in being able to look at an object and understand how it operates in three
dimensional space. And if you can simplify
something into its most basic three
dimensional forms, you can draw literally anything. So with all of this in mind, let's head to the drawing board. Here we have a butternut squash. I really love to work with butter nut squashes because they simplify so beautifully into basic three dimensional forms. But before we capture the three dimensional
forms of this subject, we need to break it down into its most basic flat shapes
just to get it on the page. The largest most basic shape of this squash is the
circular base. So we'll begin by drawing a large circle near the
bottom of the page. At this point, I just want
to get the basic shapes. It's not yet time
to capture all of the natural irregularities
of the organic subject. So we'll begin by drawing a
very light, simple circle. I'm going to make this
circle just a little bigger. There we go. Next, I need to
draw the top of the object. I'm going to extend two lines, one coming up from
the right side and the other coming up
from the left side. The squash appears to be curving just slightly to the left. So I'll want to capture that. But again, this is a
very simple drawing. Of course, for the top, we
have this rounded form. This is essentially
half of a circle. So now we have a
very simple drawing of the basic shape
of the squash. But there is nothing three dimensional about
this drawing yet. Despite the fact that it's accurately capturing the
contour of the object, it still appears flat. So our goal is to understand this object in terms of
its three dimensionality. So what three dimensional
forms do we see? This large rounded base
is, of course, spherical. In fact, take a look at the
subtle segments you can see running up over the
spherical form of the squash. You can see them curving
up and over the form just like the longitude lines that you learned about
earlier in this course. Now, this central shaft of the squash is, of
course, cylindrical. Just like the cylinders
we studied before, we can see that it
has straight edges. This half sphere sits like a
cap on top of the cylinder. Our goal today is not to do a naturalistic drawing
of our subjects, but to break them down into their three dimensional forms. We want to do drawings that communicate
three dimensionality. So I'm going to begin by drawing the cylindrical
shaft of the squash. We are above the squash
looking slightly down upon it, meaning that we can
see the top of it. This means that the
ellipse at the bottom of the squash will appear
curved like this. Now, you'll notice that
as soon as we do that, we have now broken the
two dimensions of space. This ellipse appears
to come toward us. And of course, we will also
find an ellipse at the top. So here we have established the cylinder at the
shaft of this squash. Now, hopefully, you can see that just by adding these two lines, suddenly the drawing appears to pop in the three dimensions. Now, it's important
to note that I cannot actually see these
ellipses on the subject. But in order to properly
draw a form like this, we must understand how
it is constructed. Now, as we drew this
ellipse at the top, not only do we draw the
top of the cylinder, but we also drew the bottom of the sphere that is capping
the top of the squash. Hopefully, you can now see this half sphere at
the top of the squash, the cylindrical shaft, and this more spherical
form at the bottom. Let's take this a
little further. Let's take a look
at the stem on top. Now, the stem on the top of the squash is like a cylinder. Here is the ellipse
at the very bottom, and we can see that the cylinder tapers just
slightly as it goes up, and then we are going
to draw the top of it. Now, again, this is an
over simplification. Obviously, the real stem has
a lot more detail to it. There are a number
of additional forms, but the basic form of the
stem is a simple cylinder. In order to understand
three dimensional form, we must first
simplify our subjects into their most basic
three dimensional forms. I think the half sphere at
the top is working well. I think the cylindrical
shaft is working well, but the circle at the bottom
still appear somewhat flat. I want to give some indication of its three dimensionality. To do that, let's take a
look at the subtle segments of the squash that curve
up and over the surface. Again, these operate just like the longitude lines that you learned about earlier
in this course. Now they are subtle, but
I'm going to pick two, and I'm going to
curve them up and over the surface of
the spherical base. I'm going to pick one on the
left and one on the right. Now, this should look
very familiar to you. These lines help communicate
the curvature of the sphere, not just the flat
contour of a circle, but the curves that move up and over the surface
of the sphere. They tend to appear
much more straight as they move up the shaft
of the cylinder. But once they hit the
half sphere at the top, then they curve once again. So hopefully, you can start to see how these concepts work together to communicate
the illusion of three dimensionality
on this subject. I'm going to do the same thing
with this line over here. I'm going to start
this longitude line moving up and over the
surface of the sphere. Once it hits the shaft
of the cylinder, it's going to straighten out, and once we get to the
more spherical cap, it's going to curve up
toward the very top. So again, we don't see this actual ellipse in
the reference photo, but the moment where
these lines go from being curved to being straight
happen right on this line. They organize themselves
on this imaginary line. These are the kinds of
things it is so easy to miss if you're not
looking for them. Now, of course, this is a very simplified drawing
of this subject. This drawing really focuses on the basic three dimensional forms that it's
constructed from. But once we understand
these basic forms, we can then go through
and start to draw the irregularities
that will make it appear much more natural. But again, the first
goal is to figure out how the basic forms
construct the object. Once we understand that, then capturing the
irregularities becomes a pretty simple process. But no matter what irregularities
we decide to capture, we still want to maintain these basic three
dimensional forms. They're going to
form the foundation of all of the irregularities. Again, we want to arrive at a drawing that has
a tension between the basic three
dimensional forms and these irregularities that make the object appear more natural. We can especially see
this in the stem. But if you'll note,
even the stem is made up of more basic
three dimensional forms. For example, here,
we see a sphere. This part of the
stem starts as more spherical and then moves
up into a cylinder, and we can even see a tiny ellipse at the
top of the cylinder. We can see something
similar over here. I want you to note how
well these basic forms ended up describing the
more complex forms. It doesn't take much to transition that simple cylinder
that we started with for the stem into the
more complex form that we see in the
reference photo. This is about as far as I'm
going to take this drawing. Again, today is not about capturing all of the complexity
of a natural object. I just wanted to show you how important it is to first
understand these forms in terms of their basic
three dimensional volumes before transitioning them to
more naturalistic drawings. So here we see the same squash, but now it's been laid down
and it's tilting toward us. This gives us a more
foreshortened view. Now, I've already drawn the
basic shape of the squash. You should be very comfortable with this part of the process. Now, from this
point of view with the squash a little
more foreshortened, I want you to notice
that you can actually see the ellipse indicated
in the reference. We can see a subtle
shift of light that runs right along the
line of this ellipse. Now, because this squash
is more foreshortened, the ellipse at the base
is much more open. We can see it's
curving much more. Other than that, the
form is going to be constructed very similarly
to the drawing we just did. Can give an indication of the ellipse at the
top of the cylinder. And of course, this
ellipse also gives us the base of the half sphere
at the top of the squash. I'm actually going to move this ellipse just a little bit. Now we've established
the cylindrical base as well as the half sphere
at the top of the squash. And just like before, we can add a cylinder at
the top for the stem. Because this is
more foreshortened, we are seeing a
more open ellipse at the top of the
cylinder for the stem. Now this is the type of drawing
I want you to do today. I want you to do
drawings that simplify your subjects into their most basic three
dimensional forms. The primary goal of your drawings today
will be to simplify your subjects into their most basic three
dimensional forms like spheres and cylinders. Hopefully, you can see what a good job this kind of drawing does at communicating basic
three dimensionality. Now once you've established the basic three
dimensional forms that your object is
constructed from, after that, if you want to, you can go and add in some of the more naturalistic details. Now, let's add some complexity. Here we're going to
be drawing a parsnip. Once again, I have captured
some of the basic shapes. Of course, here
we have a circle. The large end of this
form is very spherical. As it travels back in space, the lines get straighter. So here I am using the block in technique
to complete the. I'm drawing all of this, very lightly to begin. At this stage, I have drawn the basic forms of the subject. I've drawn a circle
at the front for the spherical end
of the parsnip, and I've used the
blocking technique to simplify the curves. But at this stage,
there's not much in this drawing that's communicating
three dimensionality. For the moment, let's leave this sphere at the front
of the object alone and let's focus on the forms that make up the parsnip as it
travels back in space. So what three dimensional
shapes do you see in the tail of this form as
it travels back into space. Hopefully, you can see
that it's constructed from a series of tapering cylinders that get smaller and smaller. Now, unlike the squash we
just drew, on this object, we can clearly see the
ellipses of these cylinders. First, I'll draw the ellipse
for this largest cylinder. Again, it's not a
perfect cylinder. It is tapering as it
travels back in space. It starts off large
near the front and gets smaller as
it travels back. Now we can see another
ellipse for this cylinder. This cylinder once again is tapering as it
travels back in space. Now, I'd like you to take a
look right here where this larger cylinder and the
smaller cylinder meet. Right here, there is
a bend in the form. This cylinder is traveling at a different direction
than this cylinder. As we follow the form, we get yet a third cylinder that is traveling back in space. Again, right here, we
find another bend. Just like before, as soon as we start to draw
these ellipses, it is as if the drawing suddenly becomes
three dimensional. These ellipses lead our
eye up and over the form. Remember, a contour only leads
your eye around the edge, but a contour leaves a
drawing looking flat. It needs these indications of three dimensional form to really give it a
sense of roundness. As we follow the form back, we can find some
additional ellipses. This cylinder appears to flare out and get bigger as
it goes back in space. Finally, we have a smaller
cylinder at the very end. Once again, I want to
note that we can actually see these ellipses on
the subject itself. But these are not the
only ellipses we see. If you look, you can see
lines running up and over the cylindrical forms
all over this subject. These lines start to
create a sense of texture, but also three dimensionality. Now, let's go back to
the sphere at the front. Even on the spherical
part of the form, we can see lines
traveling up and over, reinforcing the
roundness of the form. More indications of three
dimensionality we add, the more three dimensional
the drawing starts to look. With every ellipse we draw, the object appears just a
little more three dimensional. Now, let's take a look here. At the very top of this form, we have a circle. This circle represents
the depression where the stem of the form is. Now, this is very, very subtle, but if you look closely, you can actually see some
lines emerging from that stem. These lines just hint at the three dimensional
lines that would travel up and over the
surface of the sphere. These are another subtle way to indicate three
dimensionality. Now, I am exaggerating
them just a little from what I'm seeing in the actual reference photo, but that exaggeration
is just fine. We want to take
every opportunity we can to communicate
three dimensionality, even if that means exaggerating. Again, this is the kind of
drawing I want you to do. These drawings are
not about capturing every detail or texture, these drawings are all
about three dimensionality. We want to focus on
the things that make the object appear
three dimensional. Once you have
successfully captured the three dimensional
qualities of your subject, then you can go back and start to add some
irregularities. But remember, that three
dimensionality comes first. Even as you are adding the more naturalistic
irregularities, they should still help to communicate the three
dimensionality of your subject. If you look Every one of these textural lines starts as a contour and then travels
up and over the form. Everything about this drawing is communicating
three dimensionality. This is such a great subject
because we really see the ellipses traveling up and
over the cylindrical forms. Even parts of the drawing that appear a little concave end up diving inside the form and reinforcing the three
dimensional qualities. No matter how many subtle
details you decide to capture, you still want to reinforce that three
dimensionality of the form. You'll note that in
a form like this, even the discoloration
of the skin of the subject follows
these ellipses. These discolorations
three dimensionality. So once again, today, you are welcome to capture
some of these irregularities, but the goal is three
dimensionality. And any of the
irregularities you capture, you want to take the
opportunity to have them reinforce the three
dimensionality of your subject. So now we're going to
move on to something a little more complex,
a bell pepper. I've already
simplified the contour of the bell pepper
into this basic shape. I've also drawn the oval
where the stem will go, but so far, there is nothing about this drawing
that is three dimensional. So when we look at an
object like a bell pepper, what are the three
dimensional shapes we see? I think that the simplest
way to think about this bell pepper is
as one big cylinder. If we draw an ellipse, we can turn this form
into a large cylinder. Now, already, as
soon as we do this, this drawing appears to become
more three dimensional. But of course, this
larger cylinder is way too simple to
represent the bell pepper. Starting with this
simple cylinder, we need to break it down
into more complex shapes. Although there is not a single
correct way to do this, here's what it looks like to me. I'm seeing a number of
bulbous spherical forms. I'll lightly draw an oval shape to represent this
bulbus ovoid like form. Here we have another bulbous spherical form right next to it. Now, of course, these are not
perfectly spherical forms, but just starting off
simplifying them into circular or spherical
forms I think is doing a good job
representing the forms. We'll go around and
continue to draw these more bulbus
sphere like forms. But of course, these are
not complete spheres. Each one of these spherical
bulbus forms sits at the end of what appears
to be smaller cylinders. A bell pepper comes
in segments and each one of these segments has
a cylindrical appearance. For example, let's take a
look at this form here. Here, we have a bulbus
spherical form, but it attaches to a cylinder that runs down the length
of the bell pepper. At the other end, we also
have a more spherical form. We see the same thing here. We have a bulbus spherical
form at this end that attaches itself to a cylinder that runs down the length of the bell
pepper and once again, ends in a more spherical
form at the bottom. Now this larger segment
here is interesting. Remember, organic forms are irregular and they often
behave in unexpected ways. These two spherical forms here appear to almost be
connected to one another, and they both sit at the end
of this large cylinder here. Hopefully at this stage, you can really start to see the three dimensionality
coming through. This drawing is starting to
feel more three dimensional. If I were to draw a line moving around the form of
the bell pepper, we would want it to dip in
between these segments. We want to give the feeling that each one of these
segments bulges out, then dips in, then
bulges out again. Now this drawing is starting to feel much more
three dimensional. What about the stem? Well, hopefully,
you can see that the stem is also a
simple cylinder. Here is the base of the stem, and the cylinder comes out
and bends slightly downward. Can even see an indication
of the ellipse at the top. If we look closely, there's even a smaller cylinder
at the tip of the stem, and we can see an even
smaller ellipse at the top. Now, once again, this is a simplified version
of this subject. I'm not attempting
to capture all of the details and
irregularities. I'm focusing on the three dimensional aspects of the form. But hopefully you can start
to see how important it is to understand forms like this in terms of their three
dimensional aspects. The more we look, the more
it becomes obvious that organic natural forms
like this really are constructed from basic
three dimensional forms, in this case, spheres
and cylinders. The spheres aren't
always perfectly round, but hopefully you
can see how well these shapes represent these bulbous forms
of the bell pepper. For your project today, you don't need to bring your
drawings further than this. You're welcome to keep them
in the simplified form. But if you're looking
for an extra challenge, once you've simplified
your subject into more basic shapes, you are welcome to
go back and start to capture all of the
irregularities that make it appear natural. Notice that I don't even have to erase in order to do this. I can simply start
to draw right on top of these more basic
three dimensional forms. Once I've got the
basic forms drawn, these more complex organic
shapes become much easier. Every detail arranges
itself around these basic shapes and three dimensional forms that
we have all already drawn. I find this stage of
the drawing so much easier having already
captured the basic forms. Without much work, we
start to arrive at a much more naturalistic
looking drawing of this bell pepper. Hopefully, at this point, you understand how to
analyze and draw basic natural objects
by first simplifying them into their most basic
three dimensional forms. Once you can draw them as
basic three dimensional forms, then adding more
naturalistic details become so much easier. So now let's get you
to your project. For today's project,
you're going to draw a minimum of three
natural objects. You're going to
simplify each object into its most basic
three dimensional forms, which will mostly be
spheres and cylinders. Once you've done a simple, more geometric drawing
of these forms, you are welcome to add
more naturalistic details. But the main purpose
of this lesson is to give you
experience simplifying more complex natural forms into their most basic three
dimensional solids. Now, as you are drawing today, I want to remind you that
you may need to draw ellipses that are not visible
on the objects themselves. You saw me do this on the
butternut squash today. I drew the ellipses
to illustrate that the central shaft of the
squash was cylindrical, but I did not see those
ellipses on the actual object. Sometimes, adding ellipses that are not visible on the object is necessary to properly draw the basic three
dimensional forms. These are simplified
drawings that focus on the three dimensional
geometric forms that the object is made up of. The more naturalistic
details can come later. Now, it's very important that when you select your
natural objects, you're selecting
things that are at the right level of complexity. In orange, for example, is too simple, it's
not a composite form. But you also don't want to
get too complex too quickly. Objects like butternut
squashes, pears, avocados, bananas, strawberries, even mushrooms are great
for this kind of project. They are composite forms. They're made up of two or more basic three
dimensional solids, but they're also basic enough for you to get
a handle on them. Now, I highly encourage
you to go out and actually find real
fruits and vegetables. Don't simply draw
from photographs. This project works best when you draw from actual three
dimensional objects. Now, if for any reason you truly cannot get your hands on
any fruits or vegetables, you can draw from
reference photos, but I highly encourage
you to do what you can to draw from actual
physical objects. Well, thank you so
much for joining me. I will see you back
here for lesson seven, where you're going
to learn how to draw human made
and machine forms.
8. Human Made Forms: See set six see Welcome to lesson seven. In the previous lesson, you learned how to draw
natural objects by first simplifying them into their most basic three
dimensional forms, primarily spheres and cylinders. In this lesson, you're
going to learn how to simplify and draw made objects. Now, when I say made objects, I'm referring to things both designed and created by humans. In particular, we're
going to focus on objects that were
crafted with precision, either by human hands
or by machines. Just like natural forms, these human made objects can be simplified into spheres,
cylinders, and cubes. Human made objects, especially
if they were created by machines tend not to
have irregularities. If they have flat planes, these planes are
usually perfectly flat. Straight edges are usually
perfectly straight. The rounded parts
of these objects tend not to have
any irregularities. They are much closer to the perfect three dimensional objects you've been
learning about. When looking at human
made and machine forms, we tend to see much more
pure representations of the three dimensional shapes that you've
been learning about. Now, in this lesson,
you're going to see me draw objects that I
found in my kitchen. Kitchen items work great for
this project because they are very common household items that most people have around. But when you're doing
the project today, you don't need to limit
yourself to kitchen items. Now, before we get to
today's demonstration, there are a few ideas
I'd like to share. In the previous lesson, I introduced the ovoid, which is related to the sphere. Was a sphere is
perfectly circular, and ovoid tends to
be elongated and may be narrower at one
end, similar to an egg. Another very common form that I'd like to
introduce you to is the. The cone is another common
form you're likely to encounter when drawing both
hu made and natural objects. In many ways, a cone is similar to a cylinder.
Here we have a. Similar to a cylinder, a cone has a flat circular base, as well as straight sides. But unlike a cylinder, the sides of a cone taper
to a point at the top. You can occasionally find pure cones when drawing
human made forms. But more often than not,
they're going to be truncated, which means that the tip of the cone is going
to be sliced off. You'll see these truncated cones a number of times in
today's demonstrations. Now, once the top of
a cone is sliced off, it becomes very
similar to a cylinder. You can even think about these
truncated conical forms as cylinders whose edges taper
in toward one another. Again, you'll see me
demonstrate this today. Next, let's talk
about center lines. Many of the objects we will draw today will be symmetrical. Whenever you draw an object
that is symmetrical, I highly recommend beginning
with a center line. The center line should
be placed exactly down the center of the long axis of whatever subject
you're drawing. When drawing
symmetrical objects, starting with a center
line will make it so much easier to make sure that
one side mirrors the other. A center line will also
help you perfectly align any ellipses that
your subject might have. And finally, I'd like to bring boxes back into
the conversation. Now, in the previous lesson where you drew natural objects, we didn't use boxes. We primarily focused on spherical forms and
cylindrical forms. But some of the objects
you draw today may work best if they are first
simplified into a box. Now in the demo today, I'll be drawing the
handle of a cup. This strategy of first placing something in a box in order
to figure out how to draw it, will work with many
different kinds of subjects. Now, we'll talk more about this strategy in
the next lesson. But for now, I just want
you to ask yourself if any part of your subject would best be simplified using a box. Now in today's demonstrations, you'll see me draw a number of different kinds of objects. You'll also see me use a number of different
drawing strategies. So you've learned in
this course and some that I addressed in my
beginner's guide to drawing. I'd like to remind
you that there is no single correct way to
approach any of these subjects. What's most important is that you explore and experiment to figure out what
drawing processes and strategies
work best for you. If during today's
demonstrations, you feel like you need
to refresher on some of these more fundamental
drawing skills, I highly encourage you to revisit my beginners
guide to drawing. Remember, you cannot
practice drawing too much. Revisiting fundamentals is
always a fantastic idea. You never need to feel ashamed
that you're backtracking. I still practice the same
fundamental skills that I taught my Beginners
Guide on a regular basis. So if you feel you
might benefit from revisiting those earlier
lessons, feel free. Okay, let's head to
the drawing board. So here I will be
drawing our kettle. One of the things you're going
to see me do over and over again is starting off a
drawing two dimensionally. My first goal is to capture the basic shapes and
proportions of the subject. Once the basic shapes
have been captured, I can then transition the two dimensional drawing
into three dimensions. Right now we're going
to be drawing a kettle. This kettle has a number
of different parts. It has a spout, it has a handle, but the central volume of
the kettle is symmetric. Here we have a
simple center line. That's how we're going to begin. Remember, you want to keep
the center line light. We want to be able to
knock it back later on. Now, I can see my center
line isn't quite vertical, so I'm going to move it over just slightly till it's
perfectly vertical. Now, as always, these
are hand drawn lines. They're not going
to be perfectly straight, and that's fine. They will still be functional. Next, I want to work out the
basic shapes of the kettle. The large central volume of the kettle has two
different parts. It has a cylinder up top and this cone shape
at the bottom. I'm going to begin with the vertical sides of the
cylindrical part of the kettle. Now at this stage, I haven't yet made any decisions
about proportions, so I'm just feeling
out the drawing. Here is the vertical line for the right side of the upper
section of the kettle, and now I need to draw the vertical line for the left side. Now, here's where the center
line really comes in handy. Because I want this
center line to run up and down the center of the
bigger volume of the kettle, then I need to
draw the left side the same distance from the
center line as the right side. As always, you can
measure this by i or take a measurement
with your pencil. I'm going to make my first
light attempt and take a look. I think this line
needs to be moved over slightly to the left, so I'm going to make a second
attempt and re evaluate. Now, I want you to
note that I've made these lines longer than
I think they need to be. That's because I haven't yet established where the
top of the kettle is or where the cylindrical part
stops and the cone begins. At this stage, these are
just construction lines. Now, I want to draw the
cone shape for the kettle. These lines for the
left and right side of the cone section are
going to be tilted. Now, when you're drawing
from observation, I encourage you to use
your pencil to find the exact tilt of the lines of your
subject you're drawing. I taught this technique in depth in my beginner's
guide to drawing. So if you need a reminder
for how that works, I highly encourage you to
visit that beginner's guide. I'm going to draw
the right side. I have measured to figure out what the tilt of this
line needs to be. Right here where this
vertical line and this tilted line come
together, I have an angle. This angle marks
the divide between the cylindrical section of the top and the conical
section at the bottom. I know that eventually I'm going to draw an
ellipse right here. I'm going to draw a
horizontal axis line. First, it's going to provide the axis line for the ellipse that I will
eventually draw here. But it also helps me to
know where to extend the line for the left side of the lower section
of the kettle. So now I'm going to draw the
left side of the kettle. Now, remember, this
object is symmetric, which means the left
and right sides need to mirror one another. This center line makes it
so much easier to compare the sides to make sure they
are mirroring one another. Now I want to draw the axis
line for the ellipse at the top and the axis line for
the ellipse at the bottom. Now, remember, in my
beginner's guide to drawing, I taught you how to measure To figure out exactly where the corners of this
ellipse should be, you can use proportional
measuring or you can use angle sighting,
which is what I will do. I used my pencil to figure out the exact angle between this
corner and this corner. And where that line crossed
this vertical line, gave me the location of the ellipse at the
top of the kettle. I was able to simply
extend that line across. Again, if you need any
reminders on how this works, I encourage you to revisit my beginner's guide to drawing. Using the same technique, I have found the location
of the bottom ellipse. Eventually, I'm going
to draw the ellipse that will make the bottom of
the kettle appear rounded. This is the axis line
for that ellipse. At this stage, we have
the basic shape of the kettle and the three
axis lines for the ellipses. But so far, nothing in this drawing appears
three dimensional. Now it's time to bring
this drawing into three dimensions by
drawing the ellipses. I'm going to begin with
the ellipse at the top. As always, you can figure
out how open the ellipse is by using
proportional measuring or you can cite it by Ii. I'm simply going
to cite it by i. With the help of this axis line, I'm going to make the motion of an ellipse that appears to be the right
amount of openness, and when I'm ready, I'm going to drop my pencil down and draw it. No single pass made
a perfect ellipse, but they coalesce into
a workable shape. Now, I want you to
note that this drawing is pretty messy right
now, and that is fine. Remember, this is just
a construction drawing. Later on, once I have all of the shapes and
proportions worked out, I can go back in and darken
only the lines I want. Now, I think this ellipse could be just a little bit more open, so I'm going to go ahead and open it up
just a little bit. Now the ellipse at the bottom of this cylindrical section will be approximately the same width
as the ellipse at the top, but it needs to be just
slightly more open. Once again, I'm going
to make the motion. And when I'm ready, I'm going to drop my pencil and
make that shape. Now, this axis line did not end up being right in the
center of this ellipse. You can see that the
upper section is a little bigger and the lower section
is a little smaller. So I'm going to make
one more attempt. There we go. That
looks right to me. Again, this ellipse is the
same width as the one above, but it is more open. Now, as soon as I
draw these ellipses, the drawing starts to
appear three dimensional. Hopefully, you can feel
that sensation when a drawing goes from two
dimensional to three dimensional. Now I need to draw the
ellipse at the bottom. Using this as an axis line, I have drawn another ellipse. This ellipse is going to capture the bottom
of the kettle. Again, this ellipse
is not perfect, but I think it will
work just fine. I can go back later and
smooth out all of the curves. So now we have constructed the basic three dimensional
volume of the kettle. Next, I want to draw the
spout and the handle. To do this, I'm going to
use the block in method. I'll begin with the spout. I simply want to capture the direction that
the spout is going. Because I'm using the
block and method, I am translating the curves
into straight lines first. Now, looking at my subject, I can see that I've made
this line too tilted. It needs to be moved
slightly this direction. This is incredibly
common while drawing. It's not a big deal at all. Just simply make
a second attempt. By the time the drawing is finished and you've
darkened the lines, these kinds of extra lines
will barely be noticeable. And we'll draw the very
end of the spout here. And now, I need to complete the two dimensional shape by
giving it some thickness. Now, at the very
end of the spout, we have a small ellipse. Once I blocked it in,
it's very easy to go back and add the curves. And I can see at the very end, we have this small
triangular spout. Now, even though it's slender, this entire spout is, of course, a cylinder and ends
with an ellipse. It's these small details like
this ellipse at the end of the spout that show that this is a three
dimensional form, not merely a flat shape. Next, I'll use the
same techniques to construct the handle. First, I'll block
the handle in with straight lines before
adding the curves. I made this a little too thin, so I'm going to thicken
it chest a little bit. And I'll use my eraser
to knock back that line. Now I'll add some of the curves. These two appear to meet at
an angle, not at a curve. Once again, this is
just a flat shape. To give it some dimensionality, we need to add some ellipses. The handle consists of
course of three cylinders, one here, one here,
and one here. Because we're looking
down on the kettle, we are going to see
the full ellipse at the top of the handle. Now because this is small, I don't feel like I need
to draw an axis line. I feel comfortable just
drawing the ellipse. Now I need to add the
ellipse at the bottom here. You can see as soon as
I draw these ellipses, suddenly the handle begins
to look three dimensional. From here, I can finish
the drawing by adding the handle at the top and the cylinder
that it rests upon. When I'm ready, I can darken the lines I want
seen by a viewer. As always, this is a
free hand drawing. The lines are not
going to be perfect, and that is fine. Hopefully, now you're really
starting to get a sense of the three dimensionality
of this subject. At this stage, every
part of this drawing has been considered in terms of
its three dimensionality, and I'm only darkening the lines that I on
seen by a viewer. From here, I can add as many
small details as I like. I can be confident
that the drawing is going to appear
three dimensional. I have worked out all of the
three dimensional volumes. So from here on out, I
would be comfortable taking this drawing as
far as I wanted to go. But I can be confident
that no matter what sheeting or details
are added to this drawing, it will still appear
to be three dimension. A few final notes
on this drawing. It is very important
when you're learning to leave your construction
lines, show your work. Leaving all your construction
lines visible helps you to train your mind to think in
terms of three dimensions. Now, I don't always draw this many axis lines or construction lines when I'm
not drawing for students. But I've done this kind
of drawing so many times that I visualize the
construction lines in my mind, even though I don't physically draw them. I don't have to. This has become how I think
about every subject I draw. So hopefully, this gives
you a sense of how to construct this kind of
three dimensional object. So with all of this in mind, let's head to the
next demonstration. For this demonstration,
we're going to be working on a coffee cup. I chose a coffee
cup because it has two features that you may run into while doing
today's project. I want to show you how to draw the rim of a cup as
well as a handle. Let's start with the rim. I've already measured
the ellipses using the proportional
measuring techniques that I taught in my beginner's
guide to drawing, and I measured the width to height relationship of the
entire cylinder of the cup. Now, a basic cylinder
has a flat top, but of course, a cup
is fallowed out. So I'm going to show you how to create that illusion using line. Create this illusion, I'm
first going to darken the outer contour of the
back edge of the cup. Starting at the side,
I'll add some dark lines. Here we have the darkened back
edge of the coffee mouth. Now, of course, this
light line represents the location of the front
edge of the cylinder. Not only does the cup
need to appear hollow, but the rim needs to appear
to have some thickness. We know that this is going to be the front edge of the cylinder, and of course, it's going to be the front edge of
the coffee cup. To give the rim some thickness, we're going to draw
a second ellipse right inside the edge
of the cylinder. I'm going to start off lightly before darkening this
line just a little bit. Now, as we get to the
corner of the ellipse, we're going to let
this line fade out. I'm going to do the same
thing on the other side. The corner of the
ellipse is going to start off lighter and then darken as it approaches
the front of the cylinder. This is how you create the illusion of the
rim of a coffee cup. Hopefully, you can
see that illusion already appearing
in this drawing. The back edge of the
cylinder gets darkened and the front of the inner
ellipse gets darkened. Now, let's move
on to the handle. Now, in order to draw the
handle of a coffee cup, I'm going to place it in a box. Imagine we had the
handle on its own, and we were going to
place this handle in a box that was
just the right size. By placing the handle in a box, we can understand
the perspective. First, I'm going to construct a simple box that extends
out from the coffee cup. So here I'm drawing the
line that captures where the handle starts and
ends on the coffee cup. Both the top and bottom
of where the handle meets the coffee mug will
line up on this line. Next, I'll extend
the box outward. Here I'm just
trying to construct the first plane of the box. This line represents the end
of the coffee cup handle. So now we've constructed the plane of the box
that is facing us. So now that we've drawn
this face of the box, we can construct the rest of it. Here we have the very top of the handle where it
meets the coffee cup. Now I can draw the top
right edge of this box. As I'm drawing, I want
to make sure that the box is in three
point perspective. You should be very comfortable
with this task by now. Here is the bottom
edge of the box. Here is the back edge of the
far right side of the box, and of course, the
top plane of the box. In order to draw this
complex form of the handle, I've started off with a basic
familiar shape, the box. In order to construct
the handle, I'm going to first shape just the side of the handle in this first plane
that we drew. I'll begin where the
handle meets the mug. Curve it around and then
come down to the bottom. Paying close attention to how the handle is
curving around, trying to capture the shape. So hopefully, you can
see that the side of the handle perfectly fits within this box
that we've drawn. I'll extend this line down and complete the
rest of the handle. Let's start at the very
top of the handle. I'm first going to extend this edge back toward
our vanishing point. Next, I'm going to draw the
back edge of the handle. It's going to follow the
back edge of the box, and then I'm going
to curve it around. Going to hit the back edge of
our box before coming down. Here, I'm going to extend a line that appears
to go back in perspective and that curves up to meet the back
edge of the handle. This should give the
appearance that this part of the handle is disappearing
as it curves underneath. Now let's move to
the lower section where the handle meets the muck. This line is also going to
go back into perspective. Now we can draw the back edge of where the handle
meets the cup. Once we have constructed this side of the handle
that is facing us directly, then we can use
perspective established by the box to figure out where
the rest of the lines go. We can see just a tiny bit of the underside of this
connection popping out here. Again, this line
is going to go in the same direction as the box. We can also see a tiny bit of the handle poking
out right here, again, that line to is going
to go back into perspective. The same as all of these
other parallel edges. By first, placing this
handle within a box, we were able to figure out how each plane of the handle
operates in perspective. As this three dimensional
handle curves through space, the box helps us remember
what each plane is doing. It helps us to make
a clear distinction between the side
plane of the handle, the top plane, as well as
the back of the handle. And we can see each
part of the handle curving through space in a realistic three
dimensional way. Once this is done, we can
darken up any remaining lines. Now, as always, these
lines are not perfect. They are hand drawn and
they look hand drawn. But hopefully you can
see what a good job this drawing does of communicating
three dimensionality. We can really start to feel
the thickness of the rim and the three dimensional effect as the rim disappears as it
goes back into space. We also get a strong
sense that the handle of this cup is in
proper perspective. As you're drawing any subject, ask yourself if first
placing it in a box will help you figure out how to create the illusion
of three dimensions. Of course, once you're done
with your construction lines, you can always use an eraser to knock them back
if you so choose. But once again, remember,
as you're learning, I encourage you to leave your construction lines at
least somewhat visible. Just seeing the
construction lines tells the story of how
the drawing was made. Vewing drawings with construction
lines can help train your brain to see how
to draw these objects. So in this demo, we're
going to take a look at some variations on
rims and handles. Now, I've already taken
the liberty of drawing in the large round vessel
portion of this picture. I've also drawn in the ellipse, where this cylindrical portion meets this larger round portion. Finally, I've blocked in both the handle and the top
of the rim of the picture. Now at this stage, you should be familiar with all
of these processes. So let's start with the handle. Now in the previous
demonstration, you saw me place
the handle within a box to help inform
the perspective. But of course, you
don't have to put a handle in a box in
order to draw it. So I just want to show you a different strategy
you can use. Remember, my goal is to provide you with as many drawing
strategies as I can. It's up to you to experiment to figure out which ones
will work best for you. Now, one of the most
challenging parts of drawing a handle is to give the illusion that it
is turning through space. With a handle like this, we
have three visible planes. We have this top plane
of the handle here, as well as a side plane. But as the handle
curves through space, this top plane disappears, and as it disappears, the underside of the
handle becomes visible. So let me show you what I mean. I'm going to begin with this
contour for the handle. I've already blocked it in, meaning that I've simplified the curves into straight lines. Remember, blocking in something
helps you structure it. By blocking in curves, we can give the curves
a greater sense of structure and understand
how they curve. So beginning here,
I am going to draw a curved line as the handle
curves through space. I'm also going to draw
the top of the handle. Again, I am going to curve it and follow it around
as the handle curves. So now we have the two edges
of this part of the handle. But in order to
complete this illusion, we need to divide this top
plane from the side plane. I'm going to use a
very light soft line to draw the side
plane of the handle, and that is going to
curve all the way around. Next, I'm going to draw the contour of the
handle on the left side. Letting the block and guide me, I'm going to curve this line. You can see here that it is
joining this outer contour. In order to complete
the illusion that this handle is curving
through space, I need to complete the
side plane of the handle. Here is the side plane of the handle that
we've established. Here is the outer contour. But this line dives
inside the form, and now I'm going to use
a light soft line to continue to draw the side
plane of that handle. As soon as I do that, the illusion of three
dimensions pops into view. Now, a lot of this illusion
is created with line quality. When this edge of
the side plane of the handle is an outer
contour, it's dark. But once it goes
inside the form, I let it get lighter. Similarly, when this edge of the side plane of the
handle is an outer contour, it's dark, but once it
comes inside the form, I allow it to get lighter. Now I need to
complete the handle by drawing this back edge. Again, letting the
blocking guide me, I'm going to draw a curved line. I want you to note
that I have not erased any of the
block in lines, but as soon as I draw
the curves over them, they almost entirely disappear. That's what a good
block in does. Hopefully, you can
really get a sense of this shape curving
through space. We can see this top
plane of the handle curve up and over and disappear. As it disappears, we see the underside of the
handle become visible. Now I'll darken the contour of the vessel just a little bit. Really want to give this sense that it is in front
of the handle. So as you're constructing
a handle like this, you want to follow each contour very carefully to make sure you can create that illusion of a form that is turning
through space. Next, let's go to the
rim of the picture. Once again, you can see that
I've already blocked in the basic outline of the top
of the rim of the picture. Now, in the previous
demonstration, when we drew the coffee cup, the rim was very simple. But this rim has a curved lip
for the water to pour out. I'll begin on the left side
and draw the outer contour. I'm pretty confident of
how that's going to work. This line is nearly straight, but we can see some
subtle curvature that I want to capture. Right here, we see
a more acute curve. I'm going to connect
that line to this more subtly
curved top of the rim. At this stage, I'm simply
following the outer contour. We have a slightly concave curve here before this
line curves outward. And moves underneath this lip. Again, you can see
what a good job the blocking did
simplifying this curve. But you'll notice the
line for the curve of the lip dissipates
as it goes inside. It nearly disappears. If we look up here, we can see a new line. This is going to give
the rim some dimension. As this lower contour for the rim dissipates
and then disappears, we have a new contour
take prominence. So I'm going to draw
it lightly first, and I'll go back and darken
it in just a moment. Again, we've got
some subtle curves here that I want to capture. Now that I've drawn it lightly, I'll go back in and darken it. Now, if we follow this line, it doesn't meet up with
the outer contour here, it actually moves
inside, and again, helps give the rim the
illusion of some thickness. As we follow this inner
curve of the rim, it too dissipates
and disappears. Again, much of this illusion is created with line quality. We have a number of outer
contours that once they dive inside the form and
become inner contours, they dissipate and disappear. We can create that illusion
with light soft lines. We see the same thing happening here with the left
side of the rim. This line comes in, dissipates, and disappears, and we see this with the inner contours
of the rim as well. This line dissipates and
disappears as does this line. When you're ready, you can
darken any lines you want to. To create the illusion of a
solid three dimensional form. Now, in this course, we are
not addressing shading. But once you get your
drawing to this place, hopefully you can
see that shading becomes a much more
straightforward process. In this demo, my goal was to
show you another strategy, another way to approach
rims and handles. I also wanted to demonstrate a common variation you may
see when drawing rims. Now, it's important to remember, there is no single correct way to draw any particular subject. My goal is to introduce you
to a number of strategies. When you are drawing the
subjects that you want to draw, you understand how
to approach them. Before we get you
to your project, I want to show you
one more variation. Here, we see a
transparent object. Transparent objects are
fantastic to work with because we can see the entirety
of all of the ellipses. When we're drawing
the bottom ellipse on an opaque object
like the coffee cup, we only see the bottom
of that bottom ellipse. But when drawing a
transparent object, we see the entirety
of each ellipse. This helps us to really
get the sense of how the ellipses open
up as they go down. In this object, each ellipse
is a different width. But regardless of the width, as we go down the form, each ellipse gets more and more open with the most open ellipse
being here at the bottom. Now, once again,
I've sketched in the basic forms of
this subject already. But I'd like to point
out a few things. Here we can see another
variation on a rim, and in particular, this form
has a triangular spout. To properly capture this, we need to draw the rim at the proper thickness
at each moment. This is something to pay close attention to when
you're drawing. How thick is an object, and how do we communicate
that thickness? We can also see how
this triangular spout extends down into
the conical form. Remember, even minor
variations like this give you another opportunity to explore how three dimensional
forms work in space. Another unique feature
of this object is this blue wooden color
that is around the center. We can see the edge of this form where it's
been sliced open. This gives us a unique look at the three dimensionality
of the object. We can see where this
collar rounds out and gets thicker and
then gets thinner, and then rounds out again
and gets thicker at the top. It helps us to understand why the contour of the collar
looks the way it does. We can see this form becoming more rounded on the side here. Of course, we can
see it disappear behind the glass of the cone. As you're selecting
your objects today, really try and find
different kinds of forms, forms that you can recognize, but that will also offer you unique opportunities to explore
three dimensional forms. In one sense, this object is very similar to objects
that we've already drawn. But from another perspective, we are seeing the familiar
forms of cylinders, spheres, cones, and cubes being played
out in different ways. Going back to this wooden color, we can see that this
form is very much like a cylinder that's been
wrapped around here. There's another cylindrical form that appears to be wrapped
around the bottom. If you look closely, you can see indications of the ellipses. These two cylindrical
forms are connected in the center by a
concave cylinder. Again, these are all
variations on a common theme. The upper chamber of this
form is an inverted cone. The lower chamber of this
object starts off as a truncated cone before
morphing into an ovidal form. Now, reminder again that as
you are practicing today, you want to keep
your drawing simple. For example, you've
noticed that I've edited out the tie
around the collar. Now while you're practicing, you're welcome to try to
draw some of these details. Just remember, the
goal of today is to draw well crafted three
dimensional objects. It's much more
important to capture the simple three
dimensional forms than it is to add a lot
of complexity in detail. With all of this in mind, let's get you to your project. So hopefully at this stage, you have a good
understanding of how to draw human made or
machine made forms. Nearly every form you
encounter should still be made up of the same basic three dimensional forms
that you've learned about. So now let's get you
to your project. For your project today, I want you to select and draw a minimum of three
human made objects. Remember, when I say human made, they can be crafted with precision by hand,
or by machine. Now, in today's lesson, I
focused on kitchen items, but remember, you can draw any human made forms
that you have access to. Look around your environment,
see what you can find. Perhaps you have
access to a hair dryer or a vase or plant
pot or maybe a lamp. Any of these forms will work. Children's toys actually work great for these
kinds of projects. But you need to make sure that they are at the right
level of complexity. You want them to be complex enough to be a bit
of a challenge, but not so complex, they
become overwhelming. Just like the natural objects that we drew in the
previous lesson, these human made
forms that you draw from today should
be composite forms. They should be constructed
from a minimum of two different three
dimensional shapes. Remember, the goal
of this project is not to do detailed
finished drawings. The goal is to do well crafted three dimensional drawings
of composite forms. Focus on the simple three dimensional forms
that you've learned about, spheres, cylinders, and cubes. Of course, your objects may
also include cones or ovoids. As always, I'd like
to remind you that I'm giving you the minimum
amount of practice. If you want to improve faster, I suggest drawing more
than three objects. As you're starting to see, nearly every subject you draw is going to be made up of these
three dimensional forms. Starting off with
more basic forms is how you build up your skills. Once you get good
at properly drawing these more basic three
dimensional forms, you will be ready for
more complex forms, including the human figure. Well, thank you so
much for joining me. I will see you back
here for lesson eight, the final lesson in this course. In Lesson eight, you're going to learn how to take everything
you've learned so far and bring it together to draw much more complex subjects.
9. Complex 3D Forms: See se si se site. Welcome to the final lesson of drawing in three dimensions. This is a very
challenging course. In it, we've addressed some of the most technical aspects
of the drawing process. But you've stuck with
it, and here you are. This point, you are
no longer a beginner. You're creating drawings that
go far beyond the basics. I know this course
has been a challenge, but drawing in three dimensions
is the gateway you must walk through in order to enter
a wider world of drawing. In this lesson, I'm going to introduce you to some
additional tools and techniques that
will allow you to draw much more complex subjects. We're going to
build on everything you've learned in order to increase the complexity
of the objects you draw. So far, we focused mostly
on pretty simple objects. But of course, many, if not most of the
subjects that you'll want to draw are
much more complex. Now, learning to draw in three dimensions
is a huge topic. No course could cover
every single aspect of it. But my goal is to give you the most essential tools
and techniques that will allow you to solve three dimensional drawing
problems on your own. Now, before we get
into the lessons, there's one more thing
I want to address. I'm assuming that you've already gone through my beginner's
guide to drawing. In that course,
you learned how to simplify subjects into
their most basic shapes. You also learned how
to finish drawings by darkening lines and adding
detail and texture. In today's lessons, I'm
going to focus on how to draw subjects properly
in three dimensions. I'm going to assume
that you already have an understanding
of how to darken them once you've developed your three dimensional drawings. Three dimensionality is
the focus of this course. So assuming you're ready,
let's get into it. So far in this course, we've drawn objects from
very common viewpoints. When we've drawn a cup or a tea kettle, they've
been upright. But remember, you can turn an
object any way you want to. I want to encourage you to draw objects from
many viewpoints, not just the most common ones. Turn objects on their
side or upside down. This will help you understand how they are constructed
three dimensionally. It'll help train
your brain to think of these objects in the round, not simply from the
most common viewpoints. So to see what I mean, let's take a look at a few drawings. Here, we see a number of
T cups that I've drawn. These T cups have been
drawn from many viewpoints. They appear to be
turning in space. Note that the geometry of
these T cups is very familiar. If you look closely, you can see light lines indicating the
spheres that I initially drew. The shape of the T cup is a allowed out sphere with
a handle on the side. Now that you can even
see the axis lines that I used for the ellipses. There's nothing in
this drawing that you don't already
know how to draw. The only difference is that these t cups have been
turned and tilted, but they are drawn the exact same way you would
draw an upright t cup. Next, let's take a look at
some drawings of a top hat. Top hat is essentially a cylindrical form with a
flat rim around its base. The cylindrical form flares
out a little at the top. Once again, you can
see that I've turned this top hat in all directions. It's drawn from many
different viewpoints. Now, when we draw spherical
and cylindrical objects, we can tilt them by simply
tilting the axis line. But drawing box like forms that are tilted
is a little different. So far in this course, we focused on boxes that
have been up right. When a box is up right, we've been using a
horizontal horizon line. The verticals of these boxes are perpendicular to
that horizon line. In order to draw a
box that is tilted, all we need to do is visualize or draw a
tilted horizon line. The tilt of the box will be determined by the tilt
of the horizon line. Can use this technique to draw boxes in two or three
point perspective. One of the best ways
you can practice this is to draw tilted
boxes freehand. To do this, you simply need to visualize a tilted horizon line. For each of these boxes, I visualized a
different horizon line. But the process for
drawing these boxes is exactly the same as what you've already learned
in this course. They're just tilted. Now, when
you draw boxes free hand, remember, they're not going
to be perfect. That's fine. We're going for believability,
not perfection. Remember, if you ever
struggle with this, you can always draw an actual horizon line and draw the tilted box in
relationship to it. Once you have this skill, you can draw more complex
box like objects. Here's some drawings of
single serving milk cartons. Once again, I have drawn these from multiple
points of view. So, moving forward, as you're learning to draw
in three dimensions, draw objects from
many points of view, not just the most common ones. And for box like objects, try drawing them
free hand without the use of a horizon line
and vanishing points. Your boxes should still correspond to the same
rules you learned, but you don't need to draw vanishing points or perspective
lines in every drawing. The more you practice this, the more believable your
free hand boxes will become. Another strategy that I
highly recommend is to do orthographic drawings before you start your final drawings. Ortho means straight and
graphic refers to a drawing. So Orthographic drawings are drawings done from
straight on viewpoints. They're drawings that
just show the front of an object or a side or the top. They don't have any perspective. So why am I
encouraging you to do flat drawings in a course focusing on three
dimensionality. To help you understand
this, let me demonstrate. When you are trying to draw any object in three dimensions, I recommend doing some
orthographic drawings. So what are
orthographic drawings? They are drawings that depict a three dimensional object from a number of two
dimensional views. I'm about to demonstrate
exactly what this means. One object you're
going to see me demonstrate today is
a pair of binoculars. Now, to do
orthographic drawings, it works best to have the
actual object on hand. So to begin, we're simply going to investigate the object. We want to get a sense of
its basic proportions. I can immediately see
that this pair of binoculars is a little
wider than it is tall. So for my orthographic drawings, I'm going to start with a box that is slightly wider
than it is tall. Now, it's important to note that these orthographic drawings do not have to be good drawings. There's simply an opportunity to explore the subject
we're about to draw. Of it as a thumbnail sketch, a preparatory drawing,
merely a learning aid. So one thing that
I'm noticing is the distance between
the two lenses of the binoculars is equal to the distance from one side
of a lens to another. This means that I can divide this distance into
three equal parts. I'm just going to do this by I. Again, these do not need
to be great drawings. So once this is
divided into thirds, I know that the central area
is going to be left empty, and these two sections
are going to be occupied by the lenses
of the binoculars. I just want to look
at this area here, going to draw a horizontal line across that is going to represent this break
in the object. So this section
appear is where I'm going to place these shapes. Now I can start to sketch in the basic geometry
of the binoculars. This is going to be an
incredibly simple sketch. Again, these do not need to
be really good drawings. If I divide this section
approximately in half, this will give me the
approximate location of these larger shapes here. Again, I'm just doing quick, simple sketches just to get
an idea of the basic shapes. You'll notice that in
this type of drawing, once again, there
is no perspective. I'm simply focusing on the basic two dimensional
shapes that make up the object. It allows me an opportunity to notice all of these
small details in shapes and
relationships and work them out before I do it
in a perspective drawing. Now, of course, this kind
of exploration would not be possible if I didn't have the objects
sitting right here. Again, this is
another reason why I highly recommend that when
you're learning to draw, you draw from observation, you draw from real objects
as much as possible. Once I have this simple
view roughly worked out, now I want to draw it
from another view. I'm going to draw the pair
of binoculars from the side. So I'm going to move
these proportions over. I'm just going to extend this
line and this line over. And I want to make this new box the same width as
one of the lenses. This is because when we view the binoculars from the side, we can see that this
is the greatest width. I'm also going to
bring this line over. Once I have this line, I can begin drawing the cone of this section of
the binoculars. As I'm doing this
simple drawing, I am learning quite a bit about the basic shapes and forms
of these binoculars. For example, I'm learning that these parts of the
binoculars that you look into are not aligned directly with the cone
from the side view. They are placed
back just slightly. That's not something
I would have guessed. I can see this portion of the binoculars here sticking
up on the right side, but not on the left underneath. Finally, I'm going to
drop this line down, and I'm going to do one more
drawing of the binoculars. Focusing on the lenses. I'm going to drop down
these lines here, which divide this last box
into three equal parts. Of course, I know that
I need to draw circles in this part of the box and
in this part of the box, representing the lenses
that we see out of. So here are the basic
orthogonal views for these binoculars. Now, while we're on this topic, I'd like to show you another
quick orthogonal drawing I did of another subject we're going to be
drawing today, a chair. This was an incredibly
quick drawing done in cheap ballpoint pen. This is a crude, quick drawing. But remember, these do not
have to be good drawings. They are just a way to work
out the basic shapes in two dimensions
before attempting to draw a subject in
three dimensions. So as you are preparing to draw any subject in
three dimensions, I highly recommend doing
quick orthogonal sketches. Now, the more experience you get drawing in
three dimensions, the less you need to rely
on things like this. But especially as
you're learning, this is such an excellent
way to get your mind prepared to draw any object
in three dimensions. So now that you understand how to do orthographic drawings, I'd like to talk about
today's demonstrations. Today I'm going to
demonstrate how to draw much more complex objects. Our subjects today
will be a chair, a pair of binoculars,
and a mixer. Now, I'm not going to go through the entire drawing
process start to finish. I'm just going to focus on how to draw them properly
in three dimensions. That's what this
course is focusing on, and that is the most important
skill for you to learn. Once you figured
out the perspective and how to make it look
three dimensional, darkening the lines
is much easier. Remember, in this course, we're not getting
into any shading. We're simply focusing on three
dimensional line drawings. Now, I'd like to remind
you that there is no single correct way to
draw any of these subjects. My goal is to simply show
you how I might approach it. The tools and techniques
I'm going to show you can be applied to subject. But I wanted to do some drawings of different kinds of subjects. The chair is made up of
mostly box like forms. The binoculars are cylindrical, and the mixer is a combination of spheres,
cylinders, and cubes. Now, remember, the
goal today is not a full demonstration
start to finish. I'm just trying to teach you strategies that you can
apply to any subject. All right, let's head
to the drawing board. So our subject here is
a vintage modern chair. This chair is made up of mostly straight lines
that meet at angles. So it's an excellent candidate for angle sighting
and enveloping. So I'm going to begin
enveloping at the ground plane. I want to find the location of all three visible
legs of the chair. I'll start by drawing this line that connects the front leg and
the back right leg. Next, I'll draw a line from the front leg to the
leg on the left. Next, I'll send a line
up from the back leg on our right to the
back of the chair. I'll continue this
process until I've created the entire
envelope for the chair. Remember, I taught
this technique in depth in my beginner's
guide to drawing. So if you need any reminders
on how this works, I highly recommend
revisiting that course. So each time I
create a new angle, I'm paying attention to its relationship to other
angles in the drawing. So as I'm trying to
figure out where the left corner of the
seat of the chair is, I'm paying particular
attention to where it is in relationship to
this angle down here. So as I'm enveloping, I'm not only paying attention to the direction of the
line that I'm drawing. I'm also paying attention to
the specific distance and direction created from
all of the other points. I'm also paying
close attention to the relationships between
each of the angles. I want to know exactly what this angle is from here to here. I want to capture the
angle from here to here. I may not be drawing
these angles, but I am visualizing them to help me get the right
envelope on the page. Once I've completed my envelope, and I've used angle
sighting to make sure that the relationships between
the points are all accurate, I can start constructing
the actual chair. I'm going to begin by constructing the box for
the seat of the chair. I'll begin by using
angle sighting to figure out the tilt of each
edge of the seat. Now, of course, the seat is
not a simple block shape, but I can begin by drawing a simple box and
then carve out of it. Now, of course, I'm not drawing using perspective
lines right now, but I am visualizing the box
in perspective as I draw it. When combined with
angle sighting, this is an excellent way to construct believable
boxes in perspective. So after carefully constructing
each edge of the box. So once I've constructed
the outer edges of the box, I can add the interior lines. I want to make sure my box is
in three point perspective. So you can see that these
two lines appear to be going back to a vanishing
point over on the left side, as does this line over here, just like you learned about
earlier in this course. These lines appear to be diminishing toward a vanishing
point far to the right. This line appears to
be traveling back to a vanishing point on
the right as well. Now, to capture the
proper perspective, you may need to make
some basic adjustments as you see me doing here. The goal is to create a
believable box in perspective. Now, of course, the shape of the cushion is more
complicated than this, but I have simplified it. To complete the shape
of the cushion, I am going to slice
off this section here. This gives us the basic
side view of the cushion. Now, as soon as I slice
this section off, this means that I
need a new line that runs along this plane. And I want to make a
few adjustments to make sure everything is
in proper perspective. Now, you can see I'm trying to draw all of this very lightly. If I were drawing on my
own and not teaching, I would make this even lighter. This has given us
the basic shape of the seat of the chair. Next, you'll see me do something very similar for the
back of the chair. I'll start with
the outside edges before filling in
the interior lines. Note that right now, this is a two dimensional shape. But once I add the
interior lines, it will appear to pop
into three dimensions. Once I establish the
bottom and the side plane, suddenly, we appear
to have something that looks more like a block. Notice that this
block is a little wider at its base
than at the top. I feel comfortable just
drawing this rather than starting with a full
right angle block and then carving out of it. Once that's been constructed, I can use angle sighting to capture the directions of
the legs of the chair, as always making any adjustments that I need to along the way. So this is how the process goes. Each step of the way, I'm using angle sighting
and my knowledge of perspective to construct the
chair in three dimensions. Once I've got the legs, I can use the same
technique to capture the direction of the
arm of the chair. Now, this is a unique chair. I only has one arm. You can see these lines are
not perfectly straight, but they are straight enough. Once I've captured all of the angles of the basic
shapes of the chair, I can start to add detail. So here is the more detailed
drawing of this chair. Notice you can see all of the process lines I used to
construct it on this paper. In my beginner's
guide to drawing, I covered how to start
to darken your drawings. This course, though,
is focusing on perspective and three
dimensional drawings. So I want you to see how I've
used the line quality here. I've used darker lines
around the edges and lighter lines to show the plane changes
within the contours. Note that rather
than simply drawing dark lines over the straight
edges of my initial boxes, I've used softer curved lines. This gives a sense of the softness and
puffiness of the chair. I pay particular
attention and use dark lines to draw
the folds of fabric. I've tried to create the
sensation that the fabric is pulled taut at the
corners of the chair. I've tried to draw very, very straight lines for the
wood pieces of the chair. These are not perfectly
straight ruler lines, but I think they do a pretty
good job at separating the wood areas of the chair
from the leather areas. But underneath all of these more detailed
lines and marks is a solid foundation that has been properly drawn
in perspective. So for this demonstration, I'm going to draw a
pair of binoculars. Now, this is a very
complex object, but I can simplify the entire thing by
placing it in a box. This first line captures
the tilt of the line that runs right underneath
the two ellipses for the lenses of
the binoculars. I use the same technique to capture the line on
top of the lenses. Notice that these
two lines appear to subtly converge as they
travel toward the left. The perspective isn't the lot because this is a small object, but it is detectable. Next, I want to capture
the direction of the line at the very
back of the binoculars. Once again, you can see this
line appears as if it would converge at the same vanishing
point far to the left. Next, I'll construct
the rest of the box. Now, the binoculars do narrow
as they go toward the back. So the back edge of the box is going to be
a little imperfect, but I'm going to
construct the box that would contain the
entire pair of binoculars. I'm going to construct
the box very, very lightly to start. Making any adjustments
necessary as I move along. Once the box is completed, I can begin to carve out of it. Now, as you know,
it's important to start with the
biggest shapes first. The biggest most
prominent features of the binoculars are these large cylindrical
lenses at the front. Now, because I'm drawing
these from life, I have access to the
real pair of binoculars. I was able to investigate them before I started
this drawing. What I learned is
that if I divide this front plane into
three equal squares, the ellipses of the lenses would occupy the right square
and the left square. Earlier in this course, you learned that you can
divide any plane in half by drawing straight diagonal
lines from corner to corner. Where those lines intersect will give you the
center of the plane. So once I've divided this
plane into two equal parts, I can divide it into thirds
using this technique. I'm going to draw a
line from the bottom, right corner up to the very top of the
center of this plane. I'll do the same
thing on this side. Only this time starting from
the bottom left corner, going to the center
of this plane. Now, if I draw a
vertical line from this intersection and
this intersection, gives me three equal
sections in perspective. So I'm going to use
my eraser to knock back these construction
lines just slightly and leave the lines that divide this front
plane into thirds. I'll darken them just slightly to make sure
they are visible. Again, this is something I am
just doing while teaching. If I were drawing alone, I would not darken
these divisions. But hopefully, you can see we
now have three equal parts. We know that the
cylinder for the lens on our right is going
to start here, and the cylinder for the lens on the left is going
to start here. So now I can start to draw
my ellipse in this square. Notice that the ellipse
is going to touch each of the edges of this
shape and perspective. Once I've refined the shape for the ellipse of
the right lens, I can move over to
the lens on the left. So now I've drawn
the ellipses for the two cylinders that house the lenses
of the binoculars. At this stage, I
can now start to construct the rest
of the cylinder. I'll begin by
extending lines from the ellipse back to the
vanishing point on the right. Notice that these
lines are going in the same direction as
the lines for the box. Next, I'll extend lines back to start to construct the
rest of the cylinder. Now, the cylindrical form for the lenses do narrow
as they go back. I'll do the same thing for
the cylinder on the left. So I'm going to draw an axis line running down
the center of the cylinder. As I construct the cylinder, it will help me make sure that the entire
cylinder is symmetric, that one side mirrors the other. I'll do the same
thing on this side. Next, I can begin to construct the ellipses for the back
end of the cylinder. Notice now that the drawing is starting to appear
three dimensional. Now I'll construct the
ellipse back here. Now, for this section
of the binoculars, it narrows even more. Again, I want to make any
refinements necessary. Notice that as the
ellipses go back, each one gets slightly
more open than the last. You can see that this line is
more curved than this one, and this line is more
curved than this one. It's subtle, but
it is noticeable. With these basic cylindrical
forms constructed, the binoculars are really popping into three
dimensions now. These shapes in the back are
interesting because they are flat here and then
round at the bottom. We don't really have a name
for this kind of shape, but we can construct it
in three dimensions. Again, this shape is
curved at the edges, here, and then here underneath, and it flattens out here. It's almost like a triangular
form with curved edges. Here, the form curves right into the ellipse
of this cylinder. We can construct the same kind
of form on the other side, but remember it's
going to be mirrored. So now the simple forms are
really coming together. We can continue this process for each section of the binoculars. This is the axis line for
the cylinder in the center. This is the axis line
for the ellipse. At each step of the way, I can use the same tools and techniques that you've
already learned to construct smaller and smaller
shapes of the binoculars. Remember, draw everything
lightly and simply at first. It's important to note
that these simple parts of the drawing are actually some of the most
difficult parts. But once you construct these basic three
dimensional forms, the details come much easier. The trick is to first commit
to getting the big shapes properly drawn in perspective before adding any of
the smaller details. Just like with the chair, once you have the
basic forms drawn, you can darken the lines. Now, of course, this is
a hand done drawing, and you can find small
imperfections all over the place. But for the most part, the perspective is
starting to work. Once these largest forms
are worked out and drawn, you can add smaller
and smaller details. For example, once I have
this larger cylinder drawn, I can then draw the small
divisions that go on top of it. I want you to notice that each
of these divisions follows the same direction as the perspective
lines established at the very beginning
of the drawing. Every detail, no
matter how small works to reinforce the three
dimensionality of the subject. Even these tiny demarcations
on this wheel in the back go in the same direction as the perspective established at the beginning of the drawing. Now, this drawing is far from
finished, but hopefully, this gives you a strong sense of what this process can do. Now that we're nearing the
end of this demonstration, I want you to take notice of the first initial
box that we drew. Notice that the binoculars
appear to fit inside that box. At each step of the way, from the axis lines of these large cylinders for the lenses to the
smaller details, all of these lines follow the perspective we
established initially. Remember, there's no
single correct way to construct any object. But hopefully, this demonstration
has given you a sense of how to think your way
through perspective problems, and how to draw more and
more complex subjects properly in three dimensions. Well, hopefully, those
demonstrations have given you some strategies that you can use when you're
drawing on your own. Now here is one more strategy
that I'd like to recommend. In addition to doing
orthographic drawings before you draw a
subject in perspective, I also recommend doing
construction sketches. Just like the
orthographic drawings, these can be very
simple drawings. But construction
sketches attempt to work out the basic shapes and forms that an
object is made up of before you attempt
it in a real drawing. You can begin with
orthographic drawings. But then try and construct the form simply in three
dimensions in a sketch. These are just like
thumbnail sketches. They are simple and intended
just to work out a problem. They do not need to
be good drawings. So now, let's head to the drawing board so I
can show you how I used construction sketches to help me figure out how to
draw part of a mixer. So here on the left is a drawing that I've been working
on of a mixer. Now, this drawing is
not yet complete, but I wanted you to see
all of the lines and marks that I'm using to figure out the geometry of this form. If you look closely, you can see the vertical and
horizontal axis lines of multiple ellipses. You can see that I've drawn many aspects of the
mixer transparently. But before I began this
drawing of a mixer, I did some orthographic
drawings in my sketchbook. Here, you can see the
orthographic drawings that I've done of the
head of the mixer. Before I attempted to draw
the head and this drawing, I wanted to get a sense of all of the shapes and
forms that made it up. I wanted to get a sense
of the basic proportions. Here's the side view of
the head of the mixer. Here's the top view, and here's the front view. But in addition to these
orthographic drawings, I also drew some three dimensional
construction drawings. I wanted to figure out how these three dimensional
forms fit together. Drawings like this help me understand the three
dimensional forms of the subject simply before I attempt them in a
more finished drawing. So now, I'd like to take you
through my thought process. I'm going to begin by drawing
a simple perspective box. This plane on the
left is going to be slightly taller
than it is wide, and this plane on the
right is going to extend well out
into the distance. I want to make sure that
this simple box appears to be in basic three
point perspective. This center line is going
to remain vertical. This line on the left
side is going to converge just slightly as is
this line on the right. I want these three lines to appear to converge in a vanishing
point far to the right. And these three
lines to appear to converge at a vanishing
point far off to the left. Now, at the core of the head of the mixer is a basic block. I'm going to draw
that block now. Note that all of these lines of the block I'm drawing
are going to go back to the same vanishing points I established with
the larger block. I'm going to darken the lines of this visible
plane of the box. While leaving the
interior lines lighter. Now, on top of this box, we have a half of a cylinder. Of course, to complete
the cylinder, we need to draw this arch
on the back as well. So here we have half of a circle and half
of a circle here. We can connect these to
create the illusion of a half cylinder resting on top
of this initial block. So now we have what appears to be the shape of a loaf of bread. Now, I want you to
notice that when we place this cylinder
on top of our box, it removes a good portion of the top section of
our initial block. This means that the contour
of the top has been lowered. So this gets us closer to this shape of the
head of the mixer, but we're not there yet. At both the front and back
of the head of the mixer, we can see part of a sphere as well as
part of a cylinder. So to give you a
sense of what I mean, I'm going to draw a basic
cylinder down here. Again, these are
quick rough drawings. We're just trying to work out the basic shapes
and proportions. Once I have this basic cylinder, I can draw a half
sphere on top of it. So hopefully, you can see
how I arrived at this shape. Now, imagine that I took a knife and cut through this form, cutting it essentially in half. Let's imagine that
we took this half on the left and placed
it right here. The bottom of this shape is cylindrical while the
top is part of a sphere. Now, let's imagine we took this other half and
put it on the back. The resulting shape
would look like this. Now I'm going to
darken the contours to accentuate the final shape
of the head of the mixer. So hopefully, this gives
you a sense of how we can think through three
dimensional forms. And if you look closely at
this drawing on the left, you can see much of the geometry that
I've worked out here. I learned how to construct this shape through
more simple drawings, and I applied that knowledge
to the finished drawing. Starting off with flat
orthographic drawings is a great way to get
to know your subject. But doing three dimensional
construction drawings will help you even further. This allows you to
work out all of the basic forms of
your subject in three dimensions
before attempting to apply it in a more
finished drawing. Remember, these don't
have to be good drawings. They just have to
be informative. They just need to help you work out the forms of your subject. So we've covered a
lot in this lesson. I've encouraged you to draw objects from many
different viewpoints. I've shown you how to do simple orthographic drawings
of a subject. I've given you different
strategies you can use to draw different
kinds of objects, and I've shown you how you can use simple construction
sketches to figure out the three
dimensional geometry of a subject before you
attempt to draw it. My goal in this
lesson was to take everything you've learned so far in this course and to build on. Now, it would be impossible
for me to show you how to draw every single
object in perspective. But hopefully at this point, you have the tools and
techniques you need to start solving three dimensional drawing problems on your own. The best thing you can
do now is practice. So with that in mind, let's
get you to your project. For your project today, I want you to draw a minimum
of three complex objects. I really want you to
challenge yourself today. Now, what you draw is
entirely up to you, but pick subjects that
you find fascinating. Now, I recommend increasing the complexity of your
subjects as you move along. Once you have your
three complex subjects, try drawing the
easiest one first and slowly work your way up to
the most complex object. You have a whole series of tools at this point to help you figure out how to draw any
subject in three dimensions. And remember, as
you're practicing, you can draw these objects from many different viewpoints. After you do an object from
a more common viewpoint, turn it on its side or
turn it upside down. Remember, this will train
your brain to think about these subjects in the round
as three dimensional objects. As you're doing today's
project, remember, you can always begin with
orthographic sketches or construction sketches
to help you figure out the three dimensional
geometry of your subject. Keep these drawings simple and work your way through
the geometry. Try to break apart
your subject and understand each of its three
dimensional components. Now, you are never
required to start off with orthographic sketches
or construction sketches. They're just a tool for you to use if you are struggling
if you need it. But I often find it very helpful to first grapple
with the geometry of a subject in a simple
drawing on a cheap piece of paper before I get out the
nice white drawing paper. Now I want to talk to
those of you who are interested in drawing
the human figure. This form of three
dimensional drawing is one of the best ways you can prepare yourself
for figure drawing. The human figure is one of the most complex
subjects you can draw. Learning how to simplify
the human figure down to its most basic three
dimensional shapes is an incredibly powerful tool. Once you can do this,
all of the details and complexity of the figure
make much more sense. So for those of you who want to move on to figure drawing, learning how to draw
these basic three dimensional forms is critical. Going through a course
like this is one of the best things you can do to
prepare for figure drawing. So now that we're at
the end of this course, there's one more thing
I'd like to ask of you. From here on out
every drawing you do, I want you to think about as
a three dimensional object. I want you to draw as if you
are sculpting on the page. This shift from two
dimensional drawing to three dimensional
drawing is one of the most powerful
changes you can make. It is what truly separates the beginners from
more advanced artists. Well, again, I want
to congratulate you. I know this has been
a challenging course, but here you are at the end. Thank you so much for
spending this time with me. If you've enjoyed this course, if you've gotten
something out of it, then I hope to see you in my third course in the
drawing laboratory series. In this third course, you're going to learn all
about line and mark making. You're going to learn how to be expressive with your lines. You're going to learn how to describe all kinds of
tactile sensations. You'll learn how to
give your drawings more depth using line. You'll learn how to
draw lines that are filled with emotion
and information. And finally, the
fourth course in my drawing laboratory series
will teach you how to shade. Shading is one of the
most sought after skills. But the course that you've just completed is critical for
understanding shading. When we shade, we're trying
to create the illusion of light falling on three
dimensional objects. But of course, in order to shade three dimensional objects, you need to learn how
to draw them first, and that is what
you've just done. So thank you so much for
joining me in this course. It has been an honor and a
privilege to work with you, and I hope to see you
in future courses.
Brent Eviston, Master Artist & Instructor
