You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less (45 page)

Let’s review how we’ve applied the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing to a two-point-perspective drawing:

An excellent way to remember all Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing is to create a wacky cartoon story in your imagination based on the first letters of each of the Nine Laws in proper sequence (F, P, S, O, S, S, C, H, D). Here is what I teach in my classes, but feel free to create your own wild visual images. The more outlandish and exaggerated your story is, the better your recall of it will be. In your imagination picture “fluffy pillows surfing on super small carrots holding dinosaurs.”

This is a fun, whimsical whacky visual chain that will enable you to remember these Nine Laws forever! I’m serious. I taught a big burly cowboy named “Rock” (who just happened to have won the world bull-riding competition in New York City!) this memory trick on an airplane in less than four minutes! He then drew a very cool rose in 3-D for his wife. Yes, I do have the most interesting weekly plane rides!

Now, let’s draw a second tower, with multiple levels and varying widths.

1. Draw a horizon line all the way across your paper. Place your vanishing points near the outside edges of your paper as far apart as possible. If you place your vanishing points too close together, your two-point perspective will look skewed, as if you were looking through a fishbowl. This is actually a great point to explore on your own. Try drawing this tower several times, each time placing the vanishing points closer and closer together. If you do, you will notice increasing distortion. A good example of this is M. C. Escher’s
Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror
, where he drew a portrait of himself looking into a round glass globe (Google it when you get a chance).

2. Draw the center line to position your tower.

3. Using your straightedge or a side of a piece of paper, lightly sketch in the top of the tower with guide lines from the vanishing points.

4. Draw guide dots down the center vertical line to determine the position of the tower levels.

5. Using a ruler or any straightedge, lightly draw the guide lines from each center guide dot to the vanishing points.

6. Define the top tower with vertical lines. Pay attention to these vertical lines, and match them with your center vertical line. You can also double-check the vertical angle of these lines with the vertical side edges of your drawing paper.

 

7. Define the next two levels, making sure to keep the sides vertical.

8. Draw a level of the tower both above and below your eye level. Remember that your eye level is the horizon line.

Be very attentive to the vanishing points when you draw the back edge of the bottom foreshortened platform. Notice how this line disappears behind the wall of the tower, not into the corner, but behind the corner. This is the most common mistake that many students make.

9. Complete this two-point-perspective multilevel tower by adding shading, shadows, and details, such as tiny windows. By drawing small windows, you create the illusion that the tower is enormous. (Likewise, drawing big leaves on a tree makes the tree look smaller; drawing small leaves on a tree makes it appear larger. Draw big eyes on a face to make it look smaller, like a baby; draw small eyes on a face to make it look larger and older.) Playing with proportion is a wonderful trick, which we will dive into more deeply in a later lesson.