The Carried Horizon
The Carried Horizon
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The Carried Horizon
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Maria Bygrove
Thank you for this lesson! I was almost pulling my hair out with this one and now it clicked :)
LESSON NOTES

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I will show you how to draw tilted and tumbling objects without warping their shapes. We cover the concept of the carried horizon. You will learn how to lock your height lines and horizon at a perfect 90-degree angle. This rule gives you a reliable place to put your vanishing points when an object is floating or spinning in space.

I will walk you through practical exercises to train your eye to spot perspective errors instantly. You will learn a straightforward method to fix wonky lines and construct independent forms that do not rely on the background environment.

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ASSIGNMENTS

Disclaimer: This is not an official assignment. It's a suggested practice exercise, and there will not be an accompanying critique video.

Practice Tumbling Forms

This complex understanding becomes a simple habit through practice. Draw at least 20 boxes in every tumbling position you can imagine.

  • Sketch lightly without commitments.
  • Make sure most of your boxes are not level.
  • Use tools to check your 90-degree angles if you need help seeing them.
  • Pause after each drawing to compare your instinctual lines with the corrected ones.

Taking a minute to ponder your work refines your sensitive eye. Soon you will instantly see when lines are off and know exactly how to fix them.

Mal
13d
I freehanded these minus when I created the perpendicular lines. I feel it will benefit me if I do a page of these with the vanishing point established first and then a page with the box established first as an everyday drawing exercise. I have to remember to keep the vanishing points on the page so that I can more accurately assess any errors I've made.
Jeremy Johnson
Here are my free-handed atrocities, other than the two lines that needed to be established before committing to the vanishing points.
Roberto C
28d
It took me a while but I think I get it now. I don’t have a square or rulers so I struggled more than I needed. But I see it now.
@rupertdddd
Finally finished my chicken scratchings...
Shayan Shahbazi
Wow.🤯
Sandra Süsser
Question: For the Y-Line, is it always the front most Y-Line? Because so far I've always worked with the centered Y-Line of an Object (as shown in the examples by Manitoba Rice in the end) and this seems to deliver more precise results.
Terry F
28d
Took me a while, but this hopefully helps answer your question, as well as some more questions around here or questions people may have regarding the carried horizon. With this lesson's project, we're training to draw a box that looks like it is sitting correctly in a random space, without looking disturted. We imagine its height lines converging to a point on a Y Line that is at a 90deg angle to the Carried Horizon of the box. I tried to explain in the attached examples here where does this carried horizon come from. You can see in the end that none of the floating box's Y lines are sitting on the Y line of the guides that construct it. One of the edges could fall on top of that Y line sometimes. A Y line that is passing through the center of the box can also sometimes be on top of this Y line. it depends where we draw the object in space, and at what orientation. This is just like sometimes an object sitting on the ground might have one or none of its edges sitting on top of the center of vision line (that's the same Y line we're talking about) depending on the location of that box. Hope this helps you all <3
sara keyes
1mo
Dermot
1mo
Is it wrong when you draw a block where the back corner is is hidden behind the front corner? It makes it tricky to draw in the internal hidden edges.
Terry F
28d
If you post an example it will be easier to answer, but in general there are some cases that the back edge will be directly behind the front edge, that's not a mistake necessarily. It all depends on the rotation of the block and the location of it in relation to the SP.
Patrick Hynes
I was having a really hard time wrapping my head around this. As I was re-watching and drawing along for like the 5th time, it suddenly clicked: the y-line and the horizon are perpendicular. I know it seems pretty obvious, but it took a while for the implications of this to sink in. I've done a few practice iterations and will definitely do some more now that I see how useful this exercise is. I made my initial blob and box in blue, then did the final, corrected version in graphite so I could see where the corrections were.
Shayan Shahbazi
Very neat.
Dermot
1mo
Looking at your blob boxes, I just realised, a circular blob (approx), gets the box mostly cube in shape. I've been marking the right angle on the horizon to remind me. Great drawings, I need to work on being tidier. :)
Randy Pontillo
I think i cracked the code!
Sita Rabeling
The first 10. I wanted to include some ‘looks wonky but it’s not’ ones, or are they? 🧐
Sita Rabeling
And the next 10. The idea was not to draw the VPs in the second method. I almost made that mistake. But all time is well spent:)
Randy Pontillo
Ahhh this touches on the incidental feeling i was getting when doing the vertical trace!
Maria Bygrove
Thank you for this lesson! I was almost pulling my hair out with this one and now it clicked :)
M C
1mo
i know the feeling! it’s like a muscle cr mp relaxing but in the br in!
Patrick Bosworth
Lin
1mo
Nice! I can finally do reasonably okay stacked cubes (right column) from imagination, which broke my brain before. Requires a fair bit of thinking still, but enjoyable enough. I notice I’m not considering proportions as much. Now to figure out how to see the HL and be more purposeful with tumbling shapes within the human form instead of guessing…
M C
1mo
this looks fantastic! this is what i’m aiming for but i’m not there yet!!😻😻😻
Sandra Süsser
This entire page is sooo lovely <3
M C
1mo
@Marshall Vandruff any advice as to how to easily manage these when the VPs are off the page?
Marshall Vandruff
Nothing new. Larger surfaces. Smaller drawings. Special tools like offset T-Squares that fit curved templates made to help... which is hardly easy. I usuall use the first two to make it manageable. But if the VP's are off the page, the easiest way to manage them is to not care too much about distant VP's being precise, but to envision them clearly enough as "out there on that line" and aim for them roughly enough to look right.
Terry F
1mo
I think It is worth noting that this excercise treats each box as if it's in its own 3D space. The Vanishing Points in this case are located randomly, which means if we put these random boxes into a single space, not all of the boxes will have 90deg angle corners (some might have sharper corners and some more blunt). If the boxes should inhabit a common 3D space and all their angles remain at 90deg, the location of a Station Point (A Viewer/Eye/Camera/Lens) should be taken into account, as it reveals the location of each pair of 90deg vanishing points. Unless we want to create an Illusion of an impossible space, there must be only one SP (and it can be carried with the "carried horizon", as long as the distance from it remains constant). Of course the SP location can be estimated too. Once we plot the first pair of VPs, we can estimate where they would meet at a real 90deg angle, and that is our estimated SP, which in turn help us estimate the rest of the VPs in our 3D space. I hope this explaination might be helpful to someone. I think it would be valueable to add a short lesson explaining all this eventually in the course. <3
Dermot
1mo
I'd like to understand how it all comes together. I'm having trouble visualising all the components necessary to create individual space versus enviromental space.
Lin
1mo
This is the part I need help with. How do you ensure this remains the case with, say, random boxes within a human form like my figure drawings above? How do you approach that because finding the HL and mathematically figuring out a station point is probably not the way and remains too much, or is it? When you already have a reference and you’re working backwards I mean, to ensure everything sits within the same space or to train that same space intuition. Right now I’m going by feeling but feeling can only take me so far and I’d like to understand the solid science behind it so I can manipulate with intention. Guessing without checks is not the most conducive to progress while checks seem too intense and mathematical for a simple figure drawing photo 🤔 so how would you approach training this sense?
Marshall Vandruff
Yes. This exercise is not to fit cubes into an environment, but to fix their internal line systems, a bit like a doctor doing surgeries apart from the patient's environment.
M C
1mo
let’s train our nervous system!
Dennis Yeary
This reminds me of geometry class in high school. best part this get rid of the guess work
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