The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [71]
Fortunately, once you understand “informal” perspective (sighting), you don’t really need to know formal perspective at all. That’s not to say the study of perspective is not useful and interesting. In my view, knowledge never hurts! But sighting is sufficient for basic drawing skills.
Graham Collier, professor of art, states that in the early days of the inception and development of Renaissance perspective it was used creatively and imaginatively to impart what must have been a thrilling sense of space to art.
“Effective as perspective is, however, it becomes a deadening influence on an artist’s natural way of seeing things once it is accepted as a system—as a mechanical formula.”
—Graham Collier
Form, Space, and Vision,
1963
Fig. 8-10. The classic perspective illustration. Note that vertical lines remain vertical; horizontal edges converge at a vanishing point (or points) on the horizon line (which is always at the artist’s eye level). That’s one-point perspective in a nutshell. Two-point and threepoint perspective are complex systems, involving multiple vanishing points that often extend far beyond the edges of the drawing paper and requiring a large drawing table, T-squares, straight-edges, etc., to draw. Informal sighting is much easier and is sufficiently accurate for most drawing.
Fig. 8-11. Draw the top of the doorway on your plastic Picture Plane. This is your Basic Unit.
Fig. 8-12. Transfer your Basic Unit to your toned drawing paper. Since the paper is larger than the Picture Plane, you need to scale up (proportionally enlarge) your Basic Unit.
A brief practice in sighting before you do a “real” perspective drawing
What you’ll need:
• Your drawing board
• Several sheets of scratch paper
• Your drawing pencils, sharpened, and your eraser
• Your plastic Picture Plane and your felt-tip marker
• Your larger Viewfinder
What you’ll do:
First, you will practice sighting proportions and angles, using your pencil as a sighting device. Once you’ve practiced a bit, then you’ll do your “real” sighting drawing. Begin by seating yourself in front of a doorway, at about ten feet away.
Hold up your Viewfinder/Picture Plane and compose your drawing so that you can see the whole doorway. Hold the Picture Plane very still and use your felt-tip marker to draw the top of the doorway on the plastic plane. See Figure 8-11. (The line will be somewhat shaky.) This is your Basic Unit. Transfer this unit to a piece of paper, estimating the size and position so that it is the same as on your Picture Plane. Set the Picture Plane aside. See Figure 8-12.
Now, pick up your pencil. Hold it at arm’s length toward the top of the doorway with the flat (eraser) end out and with your elbow locked. Close one eye and move the pencil so that the end coincides with one side of the top of the doorway. (Choose either the outside of the molding or the inside edge.) Then, with one eye still closed, move your thumb along the pencil until your thumbnail coincides with the other side of the doorway. Hold that measure. You have “taken a sight” on the width of the doorway.
A test: What happens if you open both eyes or if you relax your elbow?
Keep your thumb at the same position and try bending your elbow just slightly, just barely pulling the pencil toward you. What happens? The “measurement” has changed, hasn’t it? Therefore, the reason you must lock your elbow when sighting proportions is to maintain the same scale. When your elbow is locked, you are always taking sights using the same position.
Then, relock your elbow, and resight the width of the doorway on your pencil (Figure 8-13). We’ll call this your Basic Unit, or your “One.” Now, keeping your thumb in the same position, turn your pencil vertically and find the relationship (the ratio or proportion) of