erosennin

Yup! You could certainly do this, and it would be very time efficient to get a cool copy down fast. Very much the way you want to go if you just want to make a copy. In fact, I'd go a step further and use a light board. The point of the exercise is to get you in the habit of putting things in proportion yourself, though. So, for this one, I wouldn't recommend it. It is definitely a good thing to keep in mind, though.

Second exercise, Proportion and Perspective

Gotta be up front about this one. This is an exercise our prof gave us in the second week to weed people out of the class. It's long, and it's tough, but it really changed the way I look at things. But before I get to that here's a couple terms and techniques for ya.

Mondrian Tool A mondrian tool can be just about any straight object. You ever see a portrait or picture of an artist holding their pencil or paint brush straight out at arm's length, one eye closed? They're using it as a mondrian tool to measure objects in front of them. For us, our mondrian tool is going to be our ruler so we can precisely measure the objects we want to draw. Hold your ruler vertically or horizontally in front of you, at arm's length, and close one eye. Slide your thumb or your index finger up and down the ruler to mark the end of the object or space. Don't worry about the numbers on the ruler, just the mark you're at. Always close the same eye when measuring, and don't try to measure diagonals, only verticals and horizontals. There is one other important aspect to using a mondrian tool, and that is a-

Vanishing Point A vanishing point is exactly that. It is a point on your horizon line that everything appears to be going toward or into. Imagine you are standing on a railroad track. At a certain point, the tracks seem to meet. That is your vanishing point. The vanishing point also serves as the point from which you will measure every distance in this exercise, both vertical and horizontal. More details on that in a little bit.

Horizon Line Your eye level. Your vanishing point will be somewhere on your horizon line. Things below the horizon line appear to travel up toward your horizon line and vanishing point, while things above it seem to travel down.

Techniques for drawing from observation: Don't draw with your wrist! Keep your hand relaxed, you don't have to have a death grip on your pencil. Try and draw from your shoulder and by swiveling your hips, your lines will magically become more straight. If at all possible, you want to secure an easel for this project.

When you are drawing from observation, ideally you want to stand as if you are going to shake hands with your paper, your elbow ever so slightly bent, and your hand falling roughly in the middle of the page. Whether you are standing or sitting, you don't want to set up in such a way that you tend to slouch or have to twist around to see what you're drawing, since this will make your back and neck hurt after less than an hour.

There is an easy way to do this project that takes much less time, but at the moment we're not so interested in easy as we are in getting the big picture down, so we're going to do this the hard way first. Once you've got this down, though, you'll be able to draw man made environments no problem, real or no.

What you will need A pencil, an eraser, a ruler that is at least 12" (preferably 24"), a piece of masking tape, a drawing board, a sheet of paper that is 18"x24", and a long hallway, like at a school. A hallway at home will work too, but it'll probably be less interesting. As a matter of interest, spiral staircases are hard to draw in this style. This exercise does not lend itself well to curves.

Once you've found your hallway, mark your eye level with your masking tape at the end opposite from where you will be drawing, somewhere near the middle. If you will be sitting down for this exercise, drag your seat up, sit down, and mark your eye level. Now set up a fair deal away, but make sure you can still see your piece of masking tape. Your masking tape now marks exactly where your vanishing point for the drawing is in the real world. Exciting!

Now take your ruler, and make a straight line horizontally across the middle of the page. Doesn't have to be exact, just close to the middle. If you are sitting down, you may want to make the line a wee bit lower.

Now look at what side of the hall you are standing or sitting on. If you are standing to the left, use your ruler to draw a straight vertical line slightly to the left, if your in the middle, down the middle, and if you're on the right, on the right side of the page. Draw faintly, but dark enough that you can easily see your marks.

The point at which your horizontal and vertical lines meet on the page is your vanishing point for your drawing. Now we need to start measuring. I mentioned earlier that you will be measuring everything from your vanishing point. Here's how: For measuring things above or to the left of your vanishing point, keep your thumb on the vanishing point and slide the ruler through your hand until the top of the ruler is at the end of the distance you want to measure. If it is below or to the right of the vanishing point, keep the top of the ruler aligned with the vanishing point, and use your thumb to measure the distance. That's for righties. If you're left handed, switch the right and left directions around. Top and bottom stay the same.

Check and recheck to make sure your measurement is correct. Shifts in posture, even a single step from where you had been standing, and an unsteady hand can all screw up your measurements. Once you are sure, make a mark on your page according to your vanishing point that you've drawn. Once you have a couple marks down, you can connect the dots with your ruler.

Do not attempt to measure diagonal lines with your ruler. It just doesn't work that well. Instead, for diagonal lines, simply use your ruler to draw the diagonal line from two known points that you've already put down. So long as the two known points are correct, your diagonal line will also be correct.

Here's one final tip. Like a railroad track converging on the vanishing point, most diagonal lines in the drawing are not, in reality, diagonal at all. Like in the case of the edges of walls, the ceiling, and floor, they are parallel and at ninety degree angles to their neighbors. Nevertheless, like railroad tracks, they will all go toward the vanishing point. If you are drawing a diagonal line, check to see that if you continued the line, it would go directly into the vanishing point. If it doesn't, you may have made a mistake.

I realize that many parts of this may be rather confusing. If you need anything clarified, don't be afraid to ask .

I've added a picture of a real quick hallway I drew in the easier method here