Managed to finish with Day 5 of Week 5 of The Art & Science of Drawing and with this, Week 5. Three more weeks to go.
Proportional Comparison
- before drawing, analyze your subject
- do some simple measurements to determine
- width to height ratios
- find some useful unit
- try to find some simple shapes (ovals, lines, rectangles) and how they relate one to the other
Drawing
- start with the biggest shape or the bounding box
- choose your unit
- use your unit to draw the rest of the box
- try to draw other lines or curves that you can determine by measurements alone
Angle sighting
- using points determined during measuring step, triangulate other points
- not every aspects needs to be measured in order to be drawn
- it’s up to you how much you want to measure
- once a point is triangulated, you can draw lightly some context
- this way you don’t have to remember what the point is about
- you can move freely all over the drawing and come back later for corrections
- move back and forth between measuring and drawing
- at some point, you’ll have enough points so that you can only draw, knowing everything is in proportion
- if you are unsure of something, go back to measuring
Closing thoughts
- there is no single measuring recipe that you can apply to all your drawings
- use the recipes as soft rules and adapt them to your subject and style
- you now have a toolkit of measuring techniques, but it’s up to you how you use them
- use proportional measurements when you want to know how big or small a thing is in relation with another
- use angle sighting when you want to know the location of a particular point
Assignment
- find 3 objects of moderate complexity
- not too simple
- not too complex for your current skill level
- measure and draw each subject using the tools and strategies you’ve learned
- experiment with different strategies of using the tools:
- start with a light sketch and then measure
- start with the measurements
- leave the measuring lines on the page
- you can erase wrong measurement lines
- in future projects you can erase the measuring lines, too
