Drawing Forms in Perspective

[New Masters Academy]

In this lesson, instructor Chris Legaspi will introduce you to drawing forms in 3-dimensional space. You will learn how to plot basic shapes in perspective, construct forms from imagination, and break down a household object into simple forms.

This lesson belongs to the course The Beginner’s Guide to Drawing. It is a 12-week course designed to empower new students with a structured approach for learning how to draw. Join instructors Steve Huston, Chris Legaspi, Heather Lenefski, Bill Perkins, and Mark Westermoe as you learn the fundamentals of perspective, rendering, and composition. After completing this course, you will develop a solid foundation in drawing.

Throughout this course, you’ll have access to the NMA community for feedback and critiques to improve your work as you progress.

[Simran Agarwal]

Can someone explain vanishing points in detail please?

[Hanase Yuki]

Ok so imagine a very long box that is extending away from you, the longer it goes and more distance it covers away from you it will come to a point that it will vanish and you’d no longer see it. Go outside and observe your house, your neighbors car and observe how parallel lines that go in the same direction converge.

In a sense that they meet at a common point if you extend them further, that is if you extend them but they dont since your house is finite. That is the vanishing point and whatever lines that are also parallel to an object with a specific vanishing point, it will also converge towards that point infinitely into space.

Like, really experience it. Because there’s a clear boundary between description and EXPERIENCE, when you experience something you know how it feels, you know how it works and the beautiful thing about it is that it becomes a part of you as an artist. There’s a Whole lot of things that goes into perspective that I cant fit in here so I would recommend taking Erik Olson’s Linear Perspective Master course if you really wish to understand how to visually measure and understand 3D space and eventually break those rules depending on how you use them.

Good luck, have fun and enjoy the process

[Andrea Lo Rillo]

I was doing the assigments but i find hard to draw “perspective cubes”(on the reference 3d sprites) It looks like there are more than 2 vanishing points but I don’t think I shoud do 2 for each cube.

Can someone help me out?

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Andrea, it might be easier to simply treat each box separately. Each box will have separate vanishing points that will move along the horizon line as the box rotates.

https://www.nma.art/videolessons/perspective-5-drawing-scenes-objects-with-multiple-vps/

Perspective 5: Chapter 7-9, Drawing Scenes, Objects with Multiple VPs with Erik Olson

in chapter 7-9 Eric covers different vps in perspective
and chapter 11- 23 are using photos to demonstrate the different vanishing points in life

[Andrea Lo Rillo]

Ok thank you so much for your answer 🙂

[Phoebe Wagner]

hi there. Can anyone tell me if in a single object there can be multiple vanishing points or just those that form one box? i am trying to draw a tape dispenser by breaking it up into boxes and cylinder…and I cannot quite determine where v.p. should be or if they are so far away I cannot actually draw them. I would insert the images here but I don’t know how or if you can upload images on macintosh computers. many thanks for a response.

phoebe w

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Phoebe, it looks like you images did not display properly, but yes it is possible for an object to have multiple vanishing points. first you have 1pt, 2pt, 3pt, 4pt and 5pt.. even 6pt perspective of standard configurations.
Where things get tricky is when objects are rotated around the x y or z axis in a multi point perspective system. Those vanishing points will also have to move. if a box tilts forward 15º, the vanishing point will also move up by 15º
an extreme example would be that an icosahedron would have a minimum of 15 vanishing points

this is all a bit advanced though.  I don’t see a reason why you couldn’t draw a regular plastic tape dispenser in 2 pt perspective. Most likely the vanishing pts are very far away. sometimes you need a few feet of space on either side of you paper to properly place them

I hope this helps 🙂

[Phoebe Wagner]

Thanks Daniel! I’m trying to post the photos, but not sure it will work. My tape dispenser is not the throwaway kind but rather simple anyway. If I could post the photos, maybe that would help me explain the problem or for you to assist me in knowing where to place the vanishing points. ( when I try to post a photo, a jpeg, it asks for Source…I don’t know what to put there. Usually on a Mac you just drag and drop the photo, but when I try that, it doesn’t work.) Anyhow, thanks for explaining that an object can have multiple VP. That helps in itself.

[Ella G]

Hi there! I’m going through this lesson but I got stuck trying to understand the cylinder part (I always go through the videos once just watching and trying to understand before I start practicing along while rewatching). My challenge is, I get what the center line does, but then the instructor draws a line at a perfect 90 degrees to the center line and I don’t see what that line does. He says it helps me “quickly see the lines of intersection” which I should connect to the lower ellipse, or that it helps me detect “where these ends are”. I feel like I’m being an absolute dunce about this, but aren’t these ends just where I drew the ellipse? How does it help me to draw in an ellipse first and then a line 90 degrees to the center line? Thanks in advance for helping me figure out what that second line actually does!

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Ella, I think he is drawing the major axis (red) of the ellipse. where the major axis meets the end of the ellipse on the left and right side, is where the cylinder wall will start, not at the corner of the square.
To take it a step farther, this center line actually deviates from the major axis line, and this deviation increases as the ellipse moves farther from the horizon line.. When the ellipse is below the horizon line, the “center line” will appear to be farther back or above the “major axis”

The major axis (red) is a line that splits an ellipse in half, it is the axis that the ellipse would rotate around if it were to spin on the x-axis in this case. While the center line is drawn from the corners of the square that encase the ellipse. its probably easier to just look at the picture 🙂

I hope this helps

[noselves]

Week 3: Drawing Forms in Perspective

This week focused on drawing forms using the new rules that we have learned from Chris, for the assignment I drew the 3D-forms from the 3-D models, I was a bit confused on the amount of variety we were supposed to have in the drawings of the forms since the models have a plane underneath the object. But, alas I did the assignment using the model to guess-timate where my vanishing points would be to the HL. I had trouble constructing the sphere in space because of the lack of angles, I assume you create 2 planes with an ellipse to connect the contour to create a sphere. Drawing the forms from imagination was a little tricky as I would try to place clearly defined marks that are aligned with the VPs and the same angles relative to the other lines on the boxes. I did erase unfortunately. For the cylinders, the ellipses were tricky as they always are, I haven’t drawn ellipses for awhile but I was up to the challenge, maintaining the concentration of your shoulder but also letting your motion dictate the curvature of the ellipse is a balancing act as well. I added the minor and major axes of the cylinder as well along with experimenting forms that bend and stretch. On the bottom plane of my stretched forms they look a bit off I was trying to follow the top plane since the form squeezes just ever so slightly, if someone could help with this that would be greatly appreciated. Final assignment, the household objects these were drawn from life, the objects were a staple gun, olive oil bottle, measuring cup, pliers, and a cup. I tried to add line weight to distinguish the depth of the object for the viewer, I created light lines to find my perspective for the objects and I found that the measuring objects assignment help with placing the objects on my paper. I feel that the ellipse for the measuring cup is bit off on the bottom. The full assignment is here on my ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LeaBOk

[Daniel Daigle]

Hi Joshua, Have you checked out our Discord channel yet? You might get more feedback there. These are great 🙂

link is at the top of this page

[Sara Elb]

Hi,

I’m Sara, I just started learnig how to draw the last summer. I’ve done the exercices of this course, but I’m suffering with the ellipses to the point that I started thinking may be I won’t never be able to draw it correctly. My problem is that I can’t draw from shoulder and when I try I always have wrong ellipses, or I can’t get the right degree, I find mylsef drawing above it many times to correct it until I lose my clean drawing.

Here is an example trying to draw a simple object from my kitchen, it is clear how the left ellipse is wrong. The problem is when I see it directly I think this is the right degree.

Do you have any tips for me? any exercice I can do to accurately draw an ellipse and catch at least an apporximate degree?

Thank you

 

 

[Claire]

Assignments for week 4

[Author]

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