by You Can Draw In 30 Days The Fun Easy Way To Learn To Draw In One Month Or Less (pdf)
• Two black fine-point Sharpie markers and two black ultrafine-point Sharpies.
• A box of clear overhead “Write-On” transparencies (make sure that the box says, “Write-On,” not the ones that are made to be run through a copier).
• One roll of any kind of tape (I prefer white ¾-inch or 1-inch correction whiteout tape, but low adhesive blue painter’s tape works fine, too).
• A lightweight portable easel or two cardboard boxes (any kind of cardboard box will do; I have had good success with the white file storage boxes that fold together with a lid).
Using the whiteout tape, secure one sheet of clear plastic Write-On Film to your clear clipboard. One small piece of tape on either side of the transparency will do just fine.
Grab your black Sharpie pens and step outside.
Once outside, find an interesting tree. Stand still, close one eye, and look at the tree through your plastic clipboard. Move around the borders of your clipboard to LESSON 21: TREES
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frame the entire tree. Place your easel or stack several of the white empty storage boxes at this spot. Hold your plastic frame comfortably while you look through the frame with one eye closed, and trace what you see with your black Sharpie. If you are having trouble holding your clear clipboard up at arm’s reach while tracing with the other hand, ask a friend to stand still in front of you for a minute or two. Use her or his shoulder as your easel. Keeping one eye closed, concentrate on the outlines, edges, shapes, and lines. As I’ve mentioned before, all of history’s great artists, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt, have traced from nature to learn how to really see what they wanted to draw.
If you’d prefer to stay inside, sit at your kitchen table with a plant or a flower in a vase in front of you. Experiment by placing the flower very close to your clipboard and then moving it far away. As you draw these images with one eye closed, notice how our drawing laws (overlapping, shading, shadow, and horizon lines) come to life.
This clear clipboard is an idea I dreamed up twenty-five years ago when I was drawing a picture of my friend’s pet collie. I was having a difficult time capturing the soft expressive eyes and the wonderful flow of the collie fur. (This was way before digital pictures instantly zapped from your cell phone to your printer, and all I had handy was a wide plastic straight edge.) I remember doing this technique directly on the straight edge. I was able to draw only a sliver of the collie due to the width of the straight edge, but it was enough for me to solve the problem. At that time I had no way to quickly transfer the image to paper, so I just wiped it off.
Years later, my friend Michael Schmid created a wonderful exercise for his art classroom. He constructed a standing framed four-foot-by-four-foot clear plastic partition. He would have students sit on either side with nonpermanent Vis-à-Vis overhead markers (which are used to draw on overhead projector transparencies and can be wiped off).
The students would take turns closing one eye and sitting very still while tracing the student sitting on the other side of the partition. Mike thought of a clever way to transfer a student’s work to paper. He would wet a blank sheet of white paper with a wide sponge. Next, he would carefully apply the wet paper to the drawn image on the plastic surface, smoothing it down with his hands, being careful not to smear the image on the plastic. Then, he would slowly peel the wet paper from the plastic surface. Voilà!
The student’s beautiful drawing was successfully transferred to the paper.
Since then I’ve developed this very easy clear clipboard technique to teach students this fun way of observing/drawing/tracing from the real world around them. If the weather does not permit you to go outside to stand in front of a tree, try sitting at your kitchen table with a plant or a flower in a vase in front of you. Experiment with this by placing the flower very close to your clipboard and then moving it far away. As you draw these images, you’ll be reminded of all the drawing laws you have been learning, right there in front of you, in the real world! Watch how overlapping, shading, shadow, and horizon pop from the real world to your two-dimensional plastic surface.
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Student examples
Take a look at how these students practiced this tree lesson in their sketchbooks.
Notice how their different styles are beginning to emerge, just as yours is!
By Tracy Powers
By Michael Lane
By Suzanne Kozloski
By Michele Proos
LESSON 21: TREES
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L E S S O N 2 2
A ROOM IN ONE-POINT
PERSPECTIVE
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H ave you ever wondered what your room would look like if you moved your bed and dresser? Or how your family room would look if you rearranged the couch, chairs, and entertainment center? Has the enormous effort involved in moving everything around just for a “look-see” ever dampened your enthusiasm for a project? This is a wonderful lesson in learning how to draw a room, hall, or foyer in one-point perspective so that you can interior decorate to your heart’s content!
In this lesson I will explore one-point perspective, which is a drawing technique involving alignment of all objects to a single focal point in a picture. This technique is also referred to as a vanishing point. Don’t confuse this with two-point-perspective drawing, even though the principle is similar. In two-point perspective you use two vanishing points to position your drawings with specific alignment to create depth.
I’m not going to detail how to draw the furniture in this introduction. Honestly, we could spend another entire book of lessons just focusing on drawing furniture, windows, drapes, stairs, doorways, and other interior design details. For this introduction, let’s just focus on drawing a really great three-dimensional space that you can fill with your imagination.
1. Let’s begin this lesson by drawing the back wall of a room. Draw two horizontal lines lining up with the top of your sketchbook page and two vertical lines lining up with the bottom of your sketchbook page. Keep your vertical lines straight up and down and your horizontal lines straight across. This is very important.
2. Draw a guide dot in the
center of the back wall.
4. Lightly sketch another guide line diago-
nally through the opposite corners of your
room, directly through the center guide dot.
3. Lightly sketch a guide line diagonally
through the corners of your room, directly
through the center guide dot. I used the
edge of a scratch piece of paper as a
straight edge, but feel free to use a ruler.
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5. Leaving the center guide dot,
6. Lightly sketch in the position of the door. Notice erase your extra lines.
how we are using the drawing concept size. The near edge of the door is drawn larger to create the illusion that it is closer to your eye. Draw the floor, walls, and ceiling, always keeping in mind how size affects depth.
7. Using the center guide dot as your reference 8. Draw a window on the opposite wall by
point, sketch a guide line from the top of the
blocking in the position with two vertical lines.
near edge of the door all the way to the center Remember to draw the near edge larger.
vanishing point. This center guide dot will be the focal point of nearly every line in this drawing.
LESSON 22: A ROOM IN ONE-POINT PERSPECTIVE
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9. Once again, referring to your center guide
10. Horizontal and vertical lines are used to
dot, draw the top and bottom edges of the
illustrate thickness in one-point perspective
window. Pretty cool, eh?
drawings. Draw horizontal thickness lines for
the doors, windows, and stairs.
12. This step is a very important part of
this lesson. Using the center guide dot as
11. Now draw a vertical line to define the
your reference point, lightly sketch in the
thickness of the window. Is the window in a
top and bottom of the window. Voilà! You
three-foot-thick stone castle wall or a much
have created a window in one-point per-
thinner brick or wooden wall?
spective! Now let’s work on the stairs.
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13. Using the back walls as your reference
lines, draw horizontal and vertical lines to
create the far edge of the stairs. Do you
remember in step 1 how I stressed the
importance of those first horizontal and
vertical lines? Well, this is why. All of your
remaining horizontal and vertical lines must
be parallel to the first ones, or your drawing
will visually collapse.
14. Time to use the center guide dot again.
Line up each corner of each step with your
center guide dot. I’ll be referring to this as
“line alignment” in future lessons. Draw
light sketch lines out from the center guide
dot as I’ve illustrated.
15. Clean up your extra sketch lines.
Sharpen all the edges to really bring your
drawing into focus. I’ve shaded the draw-
ing with the light coming from the
outside left window and the ceiling lights
off. If the ceiling lights were on, where
would the shading be? I’ve added floor-
boards and a row of ceiling lamps. Redraw
this one a few times, experimenting with
different doors and windows.
LESSON 22: A ROOM IN ONE-POINT PERSPECTIVE
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Lesson 22: Bonus Challenge
By Michele Proos
This sketch was drawn from one of my online animated tutorials at www.markkistler.com. I was inspired by one of my favorite M. C. Escher drawings.
Take a look at M. C. Escher’s one-point-perspective drawings online. You will also see many two-point-perspective drawings, a really cool technique that we will be discussing in a later lesson.
Lesson 22: Bonus Challenge 2
Grab your plastic clipboard and black fine-tip Sharpies from Lesson 21’s Bonus Challenge. Tape a sheet of plastic Write-On Film to your clipboard, as you’ve done before. Settle yourself anywhere in your room. Sit at your desk, on your bed, on the floor, wherever you are most comfortable and in a position that gives you the best view of your room. Using your lightweight portable easel, or a few cardboard boxes, position your clipboard so that when you look through it with one eye closed, the back corner wall is a vertical line, matching closely with the vertical edge of your clipboard.
Trace everything that you see: the edges of the walls, ceiling, floor, windows, and furniture. Make sure not to move the clipboard once you start to trace. Place your 176
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drawing on a scanner, and print a copy. Use your pencils to shade your print, adding multiple tones and values where you see them in the room. Notice the real-world nook and cranny shading, the shadows, and see how placement, overlapping, and size really do impact your visual world. Is this fun or what?
Take a look at how Michele used the clear clipboard method to draw her room.
The illustration below on the left is her ink on clear transparency tracing, and the illustration on the right is her example of copying the transparency on regular paper, then adding shading and details to the print. Cool!
By Michele Proos
LESSON 22: A ROOM IN ONE-POINT PERSPECTIVE
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Student examples
Here are two different outcomes from two students completing the same lesson.
I just love seeing these results!
By Tracy Powers
By Marnie Ross
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L E S S O N 2 3
A CITY IN ONE-POINT
PERSPECTIVE
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By learning to draw a room in one-point perspective in the previous lesson, you practiced the important basic skill of creating a single vanishing point. Let’s take this idea a step further and draw a downtown city block in one-point perspective, where all the buildings, sidewalks, and road seem to “vanish” at a single point in the far distance.
Take another look at the drawing of the city on the previous page. Looks really fun to draw, right? It is! And it’s a lot easier than it looks. In this lesson I will be reinforcing your understanding of several laws of drawing: size, placement, overlapping, shading, and shadow—as well as the principles of attitude, bonus details, and constant practice.
Defining Perspective
In drawing, perspective is used “to see” or create the illusion of depth on a flat surface. The word “perspective” is rooted in the Latin word spec, meaning “to see.” Other words rooted with spec include “speculate” (to see possibilities), “spectator”
(one who sees an event), and “inspector” (one who sees clues).
1. Draw a horizon line with a guide dot placed in the center.
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2. Similar to the guide lines you drew to position the ceiling, walls, and floor in the one-point perspective room, draw these guide lines to position the buildings and the road.
3. Draw a vertical line where you want your buildings to start on the left side of your paper. Then draw a vertical line where you want your buildings to end, also on the left side of your paper. Make sure to keep your vertical lines straight ç
so that they match the edge of your sketchbook. Feel free to use a ruler or straightedge to draw the lines. When I draw small one-point perspective illustrations, I often sketch freehand, without a straightedge. Try drawing this lesson both ways, with a ruler, then freehand. Which is more enjoyable for you?
The ruler drawing will appear hard-edged and precise, whereas the freehand won’t be as technical looking, but it will have your special hand-drawn stylistic feel. I hesitate to suggest that students experiment with using a straightedge é
in this lesson because some students tend to become dependent on this tool. Please understand that the straightedge is just another drawing tool in your quiver, just as the blending Stomp is an extremely helpful tool. If need be, however, you can draw just fine without it.
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4. Now do the same for the right side of your drawing. Draw vertical lines to indicate the position of the buildings.
5. Make sure that the buildings’ top and bottom lines match up with your vanishing point.
6. Draw horizontal lines, matching the horizon line (your eye level) from the top and bottom corners of each building on the left side of the drawing.
This
is the moment when your drawing really snaps off the page!
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7. Draw the horizontal thickness lines on the buildings on the right side of the drawing.
8. Draw the road and the center divider lines. Shade the building block forms. I’ve positioned my light source at the vanishing point, so I have shaded all the surfaces facing away from the vanishing point.
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Lesson 23: Bonus Challenge
This lesson was inspired when I was crossing Fifth Avenue in New York City. I looked down the middle of the street and saw the towering buildings, the river of yellow taxis, and even the crowds of people on the sidewalks, all lined up in one-point perspective!
I stopped in my tracks and thought, “What a great drawing lesson this is . . . ” when a taxi blared his horn and yelled at me to get out of the street!
Another inspiring moment for this lesson was when I was shopping at the grocery store, rolling down the canned vegetable isle and . . . “Whoa! Major one-point perspective lesson!”—all 10,000 cans are all lined up to one vanishing point!
It’s really very cool. Oh! I just remembered another great location for one-point inspiration—the library! All the books on the shelves are in wonderful one-point perspective rows! You should try this yourself next time you are at the grocery store or the library. It makes the idea one-point perspective crystal clear!
Redraw the lesson below, and add a ton of extra ideas. You can see how I’ve added doors, windows, and a few neighbors. Have fun with this one. Draw awnings, stoops, and maybe a flower box or two. Details truly are the spice of life!
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Lesson 23: Bonus Challenge 2
