You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less (49 page)

7. Draw some additional vertical lines from the tops of the other buildings to create the illusion of depth and to create the look and feel of a crowded city skyline.

8. Clean up your extra lines.

9. Lightly draw the vanishing-point guide lines to create the top of the building. Decide where you want your “below-eye-level” buildings to be by drawing a vertical line. This will establish the near corner of the building.

10. Define the thickness of the tower with two vertical lines.

11. Use your straightedge to draw a light vanishing-point guide line from the back right corner of the roof.

Do the same thing on the other corner, and voilà, you have a slightly opened foreshortened square. Now, you CAN actually see why we practiced so many of these foreshortened squares in the previous lessons. Foreshortened squares are an ideal example of how two-point perspective works. You CAN draw in 3-D without understanding two-point perspective, just as you can drive a car without knowing how the engine works, or use a computer without knowing how it works. However, understanding two-point perspective opens up a whole new view of creative possibilities for your future drawings.

12. Begin another skyscraper with a vertical center line.

Using your straightedge, lightly draw the vanishing-point guide lines to create the roof. For this exercise, let’s just draw our buildings so tall that they extend below our field of vision. Just draw all your vertical lines for these below-eye-level buildings running right off the bottom of your paper.

13. Draw the vertical lines to define the width of the building, and lightly draw the vanishing-point guide lines to create the roof.

14. Draw all of the buildings, repeating this vanishing-point guide line technique over and over again.

15. Determine where your light source is positioned, and shade all surfaces opposite that light position. Notice how I’ve punched out the edges of the overlapping buildings by really digging in with my pencil to get that very dark nook and cranny shadow. This dark edging, or defining of objects that are in front of other objects, is a very important tool that nearly every illustrator uses. Now that you know what to look for, I challenge you to find a comic, a magazine illustration, or a museum painting that does not use this technique to define and separate objects.

Here’s a fun and interesting bonus-level challenge for you: Go online and search for images of Neuschwanstein Castle, a famous castle in Germany. This castle is believed to be the inspiration behind Cinderella’s castle at the Walt Disney World theme parks and on the Disney movie logo you may have seen in the theater or on a DVD. Browse through several images of Neuschwanstein online until you find one you really like. Be sure to choose one that has your eye level positioned toward the bottom of the castle, with all the spires reaching for the sky above your eye level.

Enlarge this image to fill your computer screen, and print it. Tape this photo image to a piece of cardboard, once again making sure the cardboard is larger than the image by three inches on each side. Now tape a clear piece of plastic Write-On Film over the photo.

Use a ruler and a black fine-point Sharpie pen to find and trace the eye-level horizon line in the photo. Now, draw the guide lines from the highest point and the lowest point of the castle to position the vanishing points. Continue drawing as many of these guide lines from angles that you can find in the photo, dashing these lines off the castle to the vanishing points.

Notice how all of the windows on both sides of the main building all line up with the angles of the dark roof, the jutting roof spires, and the jutting roof windows. Look at how even the smaller-side castle and the tall-side guard tower all line up with the vanishing points as well.

Take a look at how some students practiced this lesson in their sketchbooks. This is a great lesson for you to draw three or four times in your sketchbook, adding lots of extra detail, such as people, windows, and doors.