You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less (24 page)

4. Curve the bottom of the cylinder, making sure to curve the bottom a bit more than the corresponding curve at the top. This bottom curve uses two key drawing concepts, size and placement, simultaneously.

5. To draw the back two cylinders, position the foreshortened circle guide dots above and to the left of the top center of the first cylinder.

6. Complete the foreshortened circle.

7. Draw the sides of the second cylinder. The right side tucks behind the first cylinder, using overlapping, which creates the visual illusion of depth.

8. Curve the bottom of the second cylinder. Be sure to push this line up and behind the first closer cylinder. The natural tendency is to draw this line connecting to the bottom corner of the first cylinder. I don’t know why, but most students do this over and over again. You can see where I put a line placement guide dot on the left side of the near cylinder.

9. Begin the third cylinder with two foreshortened circle guide dots off the top center right of the first cylinder.

10. Draw the foreshortened circle. Notice how my second row of cylinders is a bit smaller than the first cylinder. Complete the third cylinder using overlapping, size, and placement.

11. Draw the horizon line, and position your light source. I like to begin my shading process by darkening all of the small dark nook and cranny shadows.

12. Complete this drawing of three cylinders. Add cast shadows, opposite your light source, using blended shading. Make sure to use a direction SW guide line to place your cast shadows correctly.

Okay, now we are ready to start applying our drawing lessons to the real world. Go into your kitchen, and find three soup cans, three soda cans, or three coffee mugs, all of the same size. Arrange the objects on the kitchen table in the same positions that we have just drawn them.

Sit down in a chair in front of your still life. Notice how the tops of the cans are not nearly as foreshortened as we have drawn them. This is because your eye level is much higher than where we imagined it to be in our picture. Push yourself back from the table a bit, and lower your eye level until the tops of the cans match the foreshortening that we have drawn. Experiment with your eye level, moving your eyes even lower until you can’t see the tops of the cans. This is a glimpse of two-point perspective that I will be getting to in a later lesson.

Now, stand up and watch what happens to the foreshortened can tops. They expand; they open up to near full circles depending on where your eye level is.

Understanding the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing will give you the skill to draw objects you see in the world around you or that you create in your imagination in any position. Now grab nine cans or mugs (varying sizes are okay). Position them in any way you want on one end of the kitchen table. Sit at the other end of the kitchen table with your sketchbook and pencil. Look at your still life. Draw what you see. Feel free to place a box under your cans to raise them to a higher, more foreshortened perspective.

As you draw what you see, you will recognize the words that you have been learning in these lessons. You will begin to discover how these Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing truly apply to seeing and drawing the real world in 3-D in your sketchbook.

Here is an important point: In every three-dimensional drawing you create from your imagination or from the real world, you will always apply two or more of the Nine Laws every time, without exception. In this lesson we applied foreshortening, overlapping, placement, size, shading, and shadow.

Take a look at how student Susan Kozloski explored changing the eye level in her drawings.