THE POINT

Welcome to THE POINT.

In this section of my blog,  I am going to present tips or tricks to help you have more successful drawings.

Today’s DRAWING TIP is for those who are struggling with perspective, particularly if you are not using a ruler.  

A first instinct of artists is a tendency to straighten out drawings, whether that’s through gestural life drawings or three point perspective.  We must fight this urge!  For perspective drawings, we need angles working together.  Parallel lines in a perspective drawing can prove to be disastrous and are known to flatten out drawings.  They can ruin the illusion of depth in your drawing.

If you are not drawing in one point perspective, your vanishing points most likely are not going to be visible on your page.  You need a guide… a FAN of lines.

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By maintaining a FAN of lines, you can easily check your angles.  As soon as one line breaks the FAN things can fall apart quickly.

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Think of a triangle.  Two angles converge to a point (vanishing point).  If you were to split the triangle in half, you would be within the FAN angle of the two triangle sides. If you’re off – it should be easy to see.

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So, that’s the tip!  Keep your angles within the FAN.  If you don’t erase your lightly drawn guidelines until you finish your drawing, you will always have a FAN to reference.  

Let’s look at it in practice. Here is a quick 3-point perspective drawing I did of a tower building blocks.

If we look at the bottom brick’s angled lines in red, we can see them converging to a vanishing point high in the picture. If we were to create an inside line that does not work within the FAN, it should be easy to see.

But, when we split the FAN, we can see a more correct structural line.

Likewise, when we try to add a top to the same brick, it should be clear as to when the angles are not working.

I hope that helps.  

Stay tuned for more Drawing Tips.  If there’s something specific you are struggling with, or would like to know more about, leave a comment below and I’ll address that in an upcoming post.

I cover perspective in my online Drawing Essentials class. If would like to learn more or work on it together. To sign up, visit our website http://www.kablooiestudios.com or call (407) 902-9195.

Draw Masterfully,

Mr. Vinny