Assignment - Melted Pancakes with Philip Dimitriadis
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LESSON NOTES
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Philip Dimitriadis teaches how to draw organic shapes using the Melted Pancakes technique. In this lesson, you'll learn:
- Two Methods for Drawing Melted Pancakes:
- Method 1: Using center lines and wrapping to create three-dimensional lumps.
- Method 2: Drawing walls and mimicking curves for solid forms.
- Understanding the Horizon Line: Learn how the position relative to the horizon line affects the appearance of shapes.
- Creating Depth: Stack shapes and use overlap to convey depth in your drawings.
- Slicing Shapes at Angles: Add complexity by cutting shapes to reveal new surfaces.
- Composition Techniques: Use scale, connect shapes, and guide the viewer's eye through your artwork.
- Drawing Through Shapes: Enhance spatial awareness by visualizing and sketching hidden edges.
Get this lesson and more in the premium course!
DOWNLOADS
assignment-melted-pancakes-with-philip-dimitriadis.mp4
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assignment-melted-pancakes-with-philip-dimitriadis-transcript-english.txt
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assignment-melted-pancakes-with-philip-dimitriadis-transcript-spanish.txt
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assignment-melted-pancakes-with-philip-dimitriadis-captions-english.srt
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assignment-melted-pancakes-with-philip-dimitriadis-captions-spanish.srt
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ASSIGNMENTS![]()
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![Maria Bygrove]()
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![Anthony DeGennaro]()
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![Rachel Dawn Owens]()
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Drawing Organic Shapes with Depth and Perspective
- Objective: Learn to draw organic shapes with depth and perspective.
- Steps:
- Draw the First Type of Pancake:
- Place a horizon line in the middle of the page.
- Start by drawing an organic shape split by a middle line.
- Freehand two isometric lines, intersect them, and create a rounded top like a roller coaster.
- Draw the contours over the top to give the shape depth, using dotted lines for additional effect.
- Draw the Second Type of Shape:
- Mimic the line from the first shape both above and below the horizon line.
- Pay attention to the thinness of the ellipses as they approach the horizon.
- Divide the shape with a line to see through it for better understanding.
- Practice Stacking Shapes:
- Draw some shapes under and some over the horizon line.
- Stack different shapes on top of each other to see how the perspective changes.
- Always draw through the shape, which helps in understanding and visualizing the 3D aspect.
- Draw the First Type of Pancake:
- Timing:
- Spend 20 to 30 minutes per page, or more if you are a beginner.
- Try different speeds: set a timer for 5 to 10 minutes on some pages to challenge your pace.
Deadline - submit by Mar 05, 2025 for a chance to be in the critique video!
First draw along and test the concepts, then some practice and try out more.
After the blobs with objects, now the pancakes opens up a new way into environments and backgrounds. Awesome 😃. This whole approach is so helpful, focusing first on developing the creative intuitive side.
These are my two attempts after drawing along with the demo.
The second attempt definitely looks better visually and I had a lot of fun doing these!
So the assignment, this time around, embodied all that I avoid drawing usually. I small little singular objects and fool myself that it's enough, but when faced with a whole scene I get overwhelmed. I am almost embarrassed to show these and to admit that it might be the first time doing a full scene, even though the art that I love most is the one that focuses on the background rather than the characters. Which means that I will have to focus on this assignment more than usual and push forward past the feeling of discomfort.
That being said, I am so pleasantly surprised to see that this course also has lessons like this, that force you to create and not just learn
ok this is definitely progress, I am starting to figure space out I think, I will throw a party for finally arriving at this place
After multiple failed attempts at doing this properly, I temporarily gave up and did actual pancakes. I will be back tho. Hopefully.
The last one looks so cool and dynamic! Clouds dramatically disappearing towards the sun ✨
Omg, this was so much fun! And something I can practice doodling everywhere! I will be adding more over the days, but please, help me see what I have done wrong here, so I do not repeat them.
Nice!Making the outlines so much thicker than the cross contours helps with clean silhouettes.
I drew over in two places where I think the cross contours should curve less (because the shape gets closer to the horizon) or go the other way (because the shape crosses the horizon line) - hope you don't mind.
I know what you mean about mileage, good thing it's a fun exercise, makes you just want to do more and more :)
I love this picture by Caspar David Friedrich (das Eismeer- die gescheiterte Hoffnung). Isn't it a bit of a pancake approach??
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1yr
It shore is!
uff, finally I did catch up with you (well, temporally).
I found this one not as easy as it did look like. But I did learn so much in this exercise as a complete perspective beginner.
I didnt do it exactly as Phil was teaching it. For a lot of parts I didnt do proper pancakes, Id call mine transverse lines. And I didnt do the sectioning, it just created an awful mess on my paper.
Thanks for this great course!
This was pretty challenging for me. Maintaining the ellipse relations when moving towards or away from the horizon while tackling so many different objects in the same scene was quite hard. Also, drawing through the forms helped. I found myself correcting many mistakes when I drew through the forms. Overall, this was a very helpful exercise.
I have a question. The plane marked in red crosses the horizon. I drew it assuming that a slant cut is made facing us. So, for both the parts below and above the horizon, the top plane is visible. Is it right? It looks alright to me but my eyes are not trained that much, so I am confused. Also, I am not sure how such a plane, that crosses the horizon in this way, can be drawn if the cross-section is perpendicular to the picture plane.
Looks convincing to me but would be cool to get a "formal" answer to your question. I suspect it's something to do with how since the red plane is facing us, it's more of a "front" plane, rather than "top" or "bottom" and so would be visible no matter if it's below or above the horizon.
This was fun for the most part. I tried messing around and cutting/ scooping out mass from these forms. What confused me the most were forms (like the one circled in the second image) where the bottom plane touches the floor, under the horizon line, and the top plane ends over the horizon line. I don't know why, but it just looks weird to me.
(I mean, a lot of stuff kinda looks weird in this, but especially those kind of forms.)
Looks cool :) When the top plane is that close to the horizon (judging from it's side verticals) it would probably be almost a flat line.
(and with the bottom plane there are several ghosted lines, i'd think the lowest seems right, unless the 'island' stretches really really far into the image while also becoming really wide)
Here is my first page, I kinda got in the zone with the cross contours. I think it has tons of tangents, but that's mostly due to zero placement plans. This was a lot of fun! Thanks for the assessment!
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1yr
A quick tip for this melted pancake assignment:
One thing that really confuses me about this please, shouldn’t your blue and orange lines be converging towards the horizon lines since (1) the pancakes are flat, not turning, and the lines parallel to each other and (2) matching the ground plane? Right now each set of two lines, for each pancake, they sort of look just parallel to each other, not converging at all. Or is it only the horizontal lines that converge? (i know the horizontal ones do for sure)
Oh thanks so much for making this - I’m finding drawing light versions of these circles in the background to be helpful
Great visuals, Rachel! I was a bit confused about something, and since you made this post, I think it’s the best place to ask. In the circled form, Phil has shown the top side of the form, even when it is in the upper part of the horizon line. It looks like the form is cut at a slant making the upper part visible. Is there any way to predict the width of such ellipses? Or I can decide any cut I want to irrespective of horizon lines?
That's very nice! Are you looking at reference or doing any planning? I'm trying to follow the instructions in the video but really just end up with a big mess of shapes.
Here, I applied the pancake method to different landscapes, experimenting with form modifications and adding variety. It’s been a lot of fun discovering interesting spaces! Below, you’ll find the more polished versions.
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1yr
These are SO COOL
