Where in the world has time gone? I found this post in my drafts that somehow never made it onto my blog.
The Springfield Art Guild
SAG) invites a guest speaker to our monthly members' meetings.
A year ago I volunteered
to do a hands-on presentation on basic perspective. When putting the presentation together, I had to consider the
wide range of the audiences' drawing skills knowing many of them have been
drawing for years and hoped everyone would
enjoy a simple quick refresher.
I was not able to include some great tutorial videos I found on the internet so I wrote the
following article for our newsletter to share the sites of those videos too.
More Perspective Drawing tips
Perspective drawing, a
technique used to transform 3-dimensional images on a 2-D plane.
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This article is to follow up to our SAG’s
February 8, 2017 meeting with more tips on perspective drawing and techniques. What’s great about perspective is it is a
learned skill that everyone can do with practice.
My challenge for the February meeting was to
create not only a program for all levels, but to craft exercises that could be
done in an hour and a half. I decided focus
on the basics of perspective with exercises on:
1) how to use perspective to
find the eye level (horizon line) in a photograph; 2) drawing using one point perspective;
and 3) using two-point perspective to draw simple boxes above, on and below the
horizon line.
The great thing about drawing simple
boxes in one and two point perspective is they can be used as the bases for
creating buildings, bridges, cylindrical objects, and much, much more.
Do
you paint/draw from photographs? If so, why
is it important to determine where the eye level/horizon line is before you get
started drawing or painting? If you know
where it is that can help you figure out why a painting/drawing might not be
working. Then the question is once you
establish eye level/horizon line are you looking at the BOTTOM of everything
above that line and the TOP of everything below eye level? Sometimes, it is as simple as that.
With
time limitations, I was not able to share tips on how to draw stairs or size figures
in a scene using perspective. Some
participants asked me for diagrams on how to draw round or cylindrical objects
like bike and car tires which I’ve included here.
I
have found a few tutorial videos I think will help anyone struggling with those
issues. First, I would like to give a
shout out to all the artists who share their knowledge through online videos on
everything imaginable including perspective.
I could (and probably have) spend weeks reviewing videos. I learn
something new every time I watch a video. For this article, my criteria was to
find videos that are fairly short and have simple lessons that we can try
ourselves, but there are so many really good videos on perspective and I could
only choose a few. I encourage everyone
to find and watch other tutorials too.
Click
on the titles of the videos to link to the sites.
2.
Drawing Round or
Cylindrical Objects: Knowing the tips on how to do this will
really help you if you are drawing things like bikes or vehicles in your
artwork.
3.
Interlocking
Geometric Designs: A
fun exercise to try.
a.
Abstract Geometric
Designs by Artyfactory.com provides Free Art Lessons and is an interesting website that
provides great tips on perspective.
4.
How to Size People
and animals in Scenes: The
tips you’ll find in these videos take the guessing out of how to do it.