You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less (17 page)

8. Begin drawing the doors on the top level with two vertical lines on each side. To make sure your lines are actually vertical, straight up and down, look at the edge of your paper. All of your vertical lines should be parallel with the edge of your paper. You should glance at the vertical edge of your paper every time you are drawing a vertical line, or you run the risk of the objects in your picture severely leaning over to one side or the other. Here’s an interesting point to note: The near edge line of each doorway needs to be drawn a bit larger than the far edge line. This uses the important concept of size. The near part of the door needs to be drawn larger to create the three-dimensional illusion that it is actually closer to you. This underscores a fundamental principle of drawing: To make an object appear closer to your eye, draw it larger than other objects in the picture.

9. Curve the tops of both doorways on the top floor of the building.

 

10. To create the illusion that these doors actually exist as three-dimensional entrances to this building, we need to add thickness to them. Let’s review the simple thickness rule:

 

If the door is on the right, the thickness is on the right. If the door is on the left, the thickness is on the left.

Memorize this rule, repeat it, and practice it (I teach this rule to my university students as often as I do to my elementary school students). This thickness rule will always apply—to any door, window, hole, or entrance to any object you will ever draw. Knowing this rule by heart will get you out of many a drawing quandary in complicated renderings.

Let’s begin applying this important thickness rule to the door on the right side first. If the door is on the right, the thickness should be on which side? Yes, you’ve got it: the right. Using your drawing compass lines in direction NW, draw the bottom thickness on the right side of the doorway.

 

 

11. Complete the door by following the line of the exterior door as it curves up.

12. Look at the door on the left side. Using the drawing compass direction NE lines you drew earlier as reference, draw the thickness on the left-side door on the left side of the entrance.

13. Erase your guide lines at the bottom of each door. With a well-placed line in drawing directions NW and NE, you can easily create the visual illusion that there is a hallway or a room inside each doorway. Notice how I have drawn these lines just a bit higher than the bottom thickness line of each doorway. By nudging this line up, I create more space.

 

 

14. Now, with some interesting wedges you can develop these into entrance ramps or quick-exit-end-of-workday slide ramps or skateboard ramps for your kids. This is a great example of why drawing in three dimensions is such a magical skill to master. You are developing the skills to create buildings, cities, forests, or entire worlds on a blank two-dimensional piece of paper. One pencil, one piece of paper, your imagination, and the skills I am teaching you here are all the ingredients you need to create your own world. Not a bad way to spend thirty minutes of your day, right?

Draw two guide dots on either side of the building.

15. Let’s create the ramp on the left side first. Draw the vertical back edge of the ramp against the wall, and extend the bottom edge of the ramp out in drawing compass direction SW. We used this direction often when drawing our guide lines for cast shadows in our previous lessons. In fact, we will be using this SW direction line again for a cast shadow on this building a little later in this lesson. Be vigilant in maintaining this direction SW line. Triple-check it against your earlier lines in NE because NE and SW lines are identical, just a different stroke direction of your hand. This is definitely an idea that is much easier to explain with visual examples than with words.

16. Complete the near edge of the ramp.

 

 

17. Draw the thickness of the ramp with two lines in direction NW, matching the angles with the lines you drew earlier in direction NW.

18. Complete the far edge of the ramp by matching the angle of the front edge (another good example of parallel lines). Notice how I have drawn the bottom of the face or the ramp a tiny bit larger than the top. You must always keep in mind the effect of size in your drawing. To reiterate, to make objects appear closer, draw them larger. To make objects appear farther away, draw them smaller. In this case, I want to draw the bottom of the face of the ramp a bit larger to strengthen the visual illusion that it is closer to your eye and that the top of the ramp is pushed deeper into the picture, farther from your eye. It’s this constant application of these small details, using these important drawing laws (size, placement, shading, shadow, etc.) and the drawing compass directions (NW, NE, SW, and SE) that give you the skills and confidence to sketch anything in three dimensions.