The Pain of Geometric Shapes
15d
Michael Giff
Any tips on how to improve? No idea what to do other than try try again.... which spoiler alert.... does not appear to be helping.
When drawing geometry, always keep in mind the perspective. "Parallel" lines should always seem like they will meet at some point at its vanishing point if you keep traveling the line beyond the form. At what point those imaginary lines meet depends on how much of that plane is facing the viewer. If a plane completely faces the viewer, the parallel lines will stay actually parallel. The more perpendicular facing a plane gets away from the viewer, the more some of the lines converge sooner to its vanishing point. I suggest studying the basics of perspective.
An exercise that helped me out was from the draw a box challenge found at https://drawabox.com/
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14d
Hey these look pretty good! One thing I found really helps when drawing any hard edged shape like that, is that the lines moving away from me have to be at least parallel or converge. Then I can just check each shape and make sure it follows that rule.
Kind of wild that I drew these while consciously trying to get to the lines to a single point.... maybe I should ask for brain scan, because I wasn't even close.
I'm pretty much where you are - just started exploring form. This might help.
1) Draw the pentagon facing you
2) Draw the vanishing point *on the page*
3) 'ghost' from each of the vertices of the pentagon all the way to that vanishing point (run the tip of your pencil just over the paper without actually touching), leaving a dot where the pentagonal prism ends. Each of these dots will be between a vertex of the first pentagon and your vanishing point. You may have to try a few times. This will produce a second, smaller pentagon.
4) Connect the original pentagon to your second, smaller pentagon.
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15d
The convergence looks off on these. From that perspective, the lines can be followed back to the same vanishing point. Yours are either parallel or move outwards. Try drawing the front plane and then following each corner back to one point!
Thanks for your time. Silly question 2.0, the front plane should be foreshortened, yes? Since it's falling from my face or is it so subtle that I really shouldn't be thinking of such things? Like if it was a cube face and start to angle it away from my face, something happens to it. What? I'm not particularly sure and if that even has anything to do with what I'm trying to draw here.
Am I right in saying that all of the angles from the reference are obtuse and putting them together should get me close enough? Sorry, if what I'm asking isn't making much sense, the little gray cells in my brain are at full retreat at the moment.
I've found that improvement comes with spending more time looking than moving the pencil. It's tough at first, and it can take a while to notice correct angles and dimensions, drawing them lightly, and correcting the drawing with further observation. But you get used to it after a while.
One of the best art lessons I've learned is that good work is usually not done quickly or all in one go.
You also want to be sure you're observing the model from a consisten point of view. It might be better to set the model down and be strict about keeping your head and eye from moving too much and changing your point of view.
Thank you for your time and response. Think I'll just switch to photos and tape them down to the table. Pretty sure my eye-line is staying the same but frankly holding the bloody thing in my left hand for an hour is very tiring.
I think youve got that one angle down pat now, you should try more contrastive angles.
