Perspective With Just A Pencil!

If you are painting outdoors or attempting to paint a still life in front of you, how would you go about drawing realistically with just a pencil and paper? How could you transfer what you see to your painting surface? How can you judge proportion and perspective without error?

To make a drawing look right, we must understand that all parts of a scene (or landscape) are LOCKED into a proportional relationship which doesn’t change. When drawing, your job is to observe carefully what the relationship is and reproduce it accurately. You don’t want to guess what the proportions MIGHT BE or assume what  they SHOULD BE. Instead you want to replicate what the proportions actually ARE.

In my last blog, Use The Low-Tech Grid Method To Transfer Your Image, 4/8/20,  https://leemuirhaman.com/2020/04/08/use-the-low-tech-grid-method-to-transfer-your-image/, I explained how to use a grid to judge placement, angles, and proportion in a drawing.

However, using just a pencil and paper for drawing is even simpler and faster! The pencil you draw with becomes the tool for comparing and SIGHTING how shapes relate to each other. You take your sighting by holding out the pencil AT ARM’S LENGTH. (Your arm is locked straight out from the body.) You look down your arm and slide your thumb to measure the approximate length of an object. (Your thumb is a SLIDING MEASURING GAUGE.)

In this way, you measure first one portion of a scene or object, while you extend the arm holding the pencil. Hold your thumb steady on the pencil to mark the measure, move your pencil while keeping your thumb in place, and compare the first measurement to the size of a second portion of the scene or object. For example, to find the relationship (RATIO) of the top width of a chair to the height of the chair, place your thumb on the pencil to mark and hold the width. Turn your pencil without moving your thumb, to compare the height to the first width measurement. (If width measures ‘one’, height might be ‘1.5’. In this case, the height of the chair is 1.5 times width of the chair.) You could then easily use this information to create a drawing of the chair.

Continue to measure and compare other areas within your scene to the first measurement in order to figure relative sizes and relationships throughout the picture. Angles can be determined using this method as well.

Once SIGHTING with a pencil is learned , it quickly becomes an effective way to check size, distance, and angles in a drawing. You can scale an image up or down in size while maintaining proper proportions. The technique will become automatic and indispensable as you gather information and look carefully at your scene. The more you look into your subject, the more you will see!

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For a quick video explanation of sighting with a pencil, watch this YouTube by Chris Triner, Drawing With Simple Sighting Technique, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otv_l_qkML4