Today I started drawings for the beginning perspective class over on the WetCanvas site. One initial exercise was to draw a horizon line, and then draw various boxes in perspective both above and below the horizon line, the point being to get an idea of how the planes of objects change depending on how you look at them. It seemed simple enough, so I diligently drew a few boxes before moving on to the next task. Except for the horizon and perspective lines, I freehanded everything else since I still want to get in more practice on drawing straight lines.
I’ve found that while I’m fairly good at keeping my lines straight, I’m not so good at getting them at the exact angle I want, so they end up looking not so straight as I strain to get them headed where they are supposed to go. I’ll keep at it!
Next, I was to find four boxes of anything around the house and draw them with both accurate detail and perspective. I happened to have the box for my Nintendo 3DS handy, so I set it at an angle that required two vanishing points on the horizon line and went to work on it. Again, I freehanded the actual box. It didn’t take long, so soon I was already looking around to find another box and rested my eyes on a small trunk or chest that I had up on a shelf in the room. I place it on a nearby table and turned it in a direction that needed only one vanishing point.
As an aside, a vanishing point is a point on the horizon line to where all the sides or planes of an object point as they “vanish” into the horizon. I know I just drastically mangled that definition, but if you look at my drawing of the boxes above and below the horizon line, you can see where I’ve marked HL for horizon line, and VP for vanishing point and you’ll hopefully get the idea of what these are if you didn’t already know.
Back to the chest. The chest had very simple lines, so perspective wasn’t a problem for me at all, but drawing all of the little studs was kind of a pain. With the exception of the studs on the very top, they are numerically correct, if not completely uniform…oh, and possibly a bit lopsided too. I suppose that adds character, right?
More perspective drawings yet to come!
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