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the first steps.....
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Message
Posted
It'll probably bore you, so I'll keep it short :) I've been a "flat painter" my whole life, and now I want to change that. I need more depth, dimension, and perspective—in short: perspective. Math, geometry, and perspective drawing have always been very difficult for me; my brain works differently somehow...now I've found someone online who might be able to really help me understand it, a Yadegar Asisi. He's published a series of vlogs, and I think I've already taken small steps. For almost two weeks, I've been drawing small exercises every day and following his tutorials.
Yesterday I was able to finish this little sketch, a 2-point perspective. I'm a little proud of myself, since before that I was only able to draw a cube freehand in the usual view, and that was it!
I hope I keep at it and it becomes clearer to me. The trigger for me to finally learn this was recently when I went outdoors to do a bit of urban sketching, drawing a few house facades. And (apart from the wooden man, which irritated me massively), I wasn't able to draw these facades. I just didn't understand the lines; my eyes didn't see them. So I had to take a photo and then draw it at home. That was the trigger. Yes, a boring thread, but it's over now. :)
Posted
Definitely NOT boring Tanja , it’s always good to see and hear how people develop their drawing skills . Some are lucky and it seems to come easy to learn other like yourself have to work hard at learning , but it’s important to keep trying .
Your sketch is really good , some tricky angles in there but you have managed them really well. Do give an update and show us some more as you progress , you will find it becomes easier, you soon will be adding all the different angles , perspective etc without thinking about it to much . Practice , practice then practice again.
Posted
Thank you for the encouragement, Paul, and for not finding it boring. :) Yes, I definitely belong to the "hard work, no pain, no gain" faction when it comes to perspective. :) .....back in high school, when I was about 12, my best friend at the time could draw the most amazing cubes from all perspectives (it was one of the exercises I never mastered), and I felt small and stupid back then – and to this day, I still can't do it. So I'll keep practicing and show something here and there in this post. :)
here the very first steps in that tutorials/lessons...my left brain hemisphere is even worse than the right in spatial vision
here the very first steps in that tutorials/lessons...my left brain hemisphere is even worse than the right in spatial visionEdited
by Tanja G.
Posted
When you do a drawing, can you immediately tell if the perspective is off? You must be able to, or you wouldn't have identified a need to train yourself; well if you have noticed, you're well on the way to solving the problem - there are many books available on perspective; some of them have more to do with technical drawing than what you're likely to want, but even those are worth a look. We can suffer from bad experiences at school, and be convinced we can't do it, and never will be able to. Mental arithmetic was my bugbear - still is, but practice resolved most of the real issues: you're doing the right thing by applying yourself to your perceived weakness - practice is the key to most things. And there's one good thing about learning perspective - you're unlikely to get really bad advice; whereas you can't say that about an awful lot of online advice. YouTube has a lot of videos, if you prefer to watch demonstrations rather than read about them; combining the two would probably be best.
Posted
These are good Tanja, and free-hand too, especially the stacks.
It's quite strange that many decades ago I was very good at perspective: choose my vanishing point/s, get out the ruler and away. But I couldn't draw curves. Now I struggle to draw a straight line, and can just about manage curves, with some attempts.
Posted
I'd like to thank you all very much for the valuable input! Robert, yes, you're right. If I can already see that something isn't right in perspective, I already have the right path in mind. :)
Yes, Alan, tonal values are half the battle! There isn't a single area I don't need to study, so I should never get bored.
Posted
Tonal values aren’t difficult to grasp, just a bit of practice and mainly common sense!
You will master it…
Here is a simple sketch that I did recently, I tend to really emphasise tonal values by using the extremes on the tonal scale - I’ve got hundreds of examples on my gallery under sketches.
Here, I’ve used the toned grey paper as my mid-value, this can be helpful when starting to learn about values.
Edited
by Alan Bickley
Posted
Tanja it is great to hear you are finding ways to explore what has been a challenge for you.
Has anyone suggested that if you print out some photos that have clear perspective angles in them (rather than landscapes and beaches etc) and draw over them (directly or tracing) and aim to find the vanishing points for that scene, the method may help you...because it helps you get a feel for the main angles and how they are related, either to each other or vanishing points?
It is a slight 'reverse engineering' way of getting practise and feeling your way around a scene...thereby helping you when it comes to making your own scene.
Posted
Tanja it is great to hear you are finding ways to explore what has been a challenge for you. Has anyone suggested that if you print out some photos that have clear perspective angles in them (rather than landscapes and beaches etc) and draw over them (directly or tracing) and aim to find the vanishing points for that scene, the method may help you...because it helps you get a feel for the main angles and how they are related, either to each other or vanishing points? It is a slight 'reverse engineering' way of getting practise and feeling your way around a scene...thereby helping you when it comes to making your own scene.Hi Gerry, I'm already doing this exercise. I look for photos of cityscapes and draw vanishing points, horizons, etc. (digitally in Photoshop) to train my eye. Thanks for your input anyway! It's really good.
Posted
Tonal values aren’t difficult to grasp, just a bit of practice and mainly common sense! You will master it… Here is a simple sketch that I did recently, I tend to really emphasise tonal values by using the extremes on the tonal scale - I’ve got hundreds of examples on my gallery under sketches. Here, I’ve used the toned grey paper as my mid-value, this can be helpful when starting to learn about values.Yes, your drawings are adorable!! I really love them! I've never really had trouble with tonal values, and I'm not lacking in common sense either. Your drawings serve are perfect examples.
Edited
by Tanja G.