Week 4: 3 point perspective - Architecture

With the 3 point architecture piece, I had a bit more of a challenge, since I don’t find 3 point perspective that simple and I had only drawn it from my intuition until now, without knowing the exact rules. Plus, I was not used to drawing buildings, since I am more into drawing people, mainly portraits, than I am into drawing environment. Overall, it was a challenge that took me some time to complete.

I chose a photo of a building from the @dmuleicester instagram account, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the fisheye lens effect of google maps:

Because of the details and the perspective, it took me a lot to sketch everything, erasing and redoing the perspective where it seemed weird. The building in the middle looked a bit uneven, but I fixed it later in the process:

Then I started the tonal work, adding the rest of the details while at it:

I tried keeping the contrast and difference in tone throughout the drawing:

The tonal work still ended up being a bit flat, especially the ground and sky:

And this is the final project after getting feedback and applying it (I erased some of the ground and instead added lines to suggest the road instead of relying on tone which made it look overworked; I darkened the right side buildings too, since the light came from the left.):

Overall, although it took a lot of work, this exercise helped me understand how to apply perspective to more complex objects/scenes. 

Week 3: Perspective

The perspective exercise went smoothly, with little problems. I had taken classes in drawing perspective and did some exercises on this before, so I have a general understanding of how perspective works. Not perfect, but there were less setbacks than in the previous exercise. 

I set my scene and quickly constructed the general form of the objects, taking the perspective into consideration and extending the lines so I could see them clearly and get an idea of where the lines would meet into the vanishing point, see if it works for my object and make sure it doesn’t look weird or exaggerated. 

These are my objects:

And this is my sketch:

I had noticed the glass cup looked a bit weird and couldn’t figure out why, but I brushed it off. (Note to self: Don’t do that.) I started working on the lines, straightening them and darkening the ones of the objects of interest, or the objects that are closer, overall trying to make the drawing cleaner:

Then started the hatching, adding tone to the drawing:

I did my best to distinguish between the darker and lighter tones, to keep it from becoming too flat. It worked, partially:

I finished hatching and also did the background. After the first round of feedback I turned the cup around, because having the wider part of the object in the back added a challenge I was not ready for:

Overall, in terms of tonal work it still ended up looking a bit flat, so, after the second round of feedback, I concentrated on adding contrast to the reflections on the glass and darkening the cube in the middle. I also added stronger highlights to the cup and erased the top part of the glass bottle’s shadow. The perspective on the cube in the middle was a bit exaggerated, so I fixed that too:

And the second drawing, to which, after the feedback I also made the contrast on the glass stronger, and fixed an awkward looking shadow; the perspective on the triangle was also a bit exaggerated:

This exercise improved my understanding of perspective and how to apply it on simple geometrical forms.