Complete Idiot''''s Guide to Drawing- P8 pps

Part 2
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Now You Are Ready to Draw
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What you see on the picture plane is magically “flattened.” This is be-
cause the distance between you and what you see and the distances or
space within the subject are foreshortened.
How a Picture Plane Works
To get a general idea of how a picture plane works, grab a new piece of
Plexiglas or clean off the one used for the previous exercise if it’s the
only one you have.
1. Hold the piece of Plexiglas evenly in front of your face.
2. Look around the room, at a corner, at a window, at a doorway
to another room. Look at a table from the corner, across or
down the length of it. Look out into the backyard or go look
down the street or up the hill.
All that you can see on the plastic picture plane is drawable, first on
the plastic, and then, when you’ve got the hang of it, directly on
paper.
So, we will start with a few additions to your piece of plastic and set up
for drawing.
Preparing a Plexiglas Picture Plane
for Drawing
For this exercise, you will need
➤ An 8" × 12" piece of Plexiglas.
➤ A fine-point permanent marker.
➤ A fine-point washable marker that will hold a line on plastic.
➤ A ruler.
Try Your Hand
If you want to keep one of your
picture plane drawings as a

record, you can try putting it on
a copy machine or a scanner. Or,
you can place a piece of tracing
paper on the plastic and make a
careful tracing of your drawing.
Artist’s Sketchbook
2-D is an abbreviation for two-
dimensional, having the dimen-
sions of height and width, such
as a flat surface like a piece of
paper. 3-D is an abbreviation for
three-dimensional, having the
dimensions of height, width, and
depth, an object in space.
The Art of Drawing
The development of photography grew out of early experiments with the picture plane and
lenses which were used to project an image down on to a piece of paper, something like a pro-
jector does today. It is now thought that the old masters used projector-like devices to help
capture likeness, complicated perspective, or elaborate detail in their very realistic paintings.
After the development of the camera, artist interest began to move away from perfectly repre-
sented realism to more expressive ways of seeing and painting.
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The Picture Plane
To make a grid on your picture plane:
1. Draw diagonal lines from corner to corner on the piece of plastic with the permanent
marker.
2. Measure and draw center lines vertically and horizontally in the center of the plastic.
First, draw a set of diag-

onal lines.
Add horizontal and verti-
cal lines to the diagonals.
3. Measure and draw lines dividing each of the four boxes you now have on the plastic.
The boxes will be 2"
× 3" vertical.
Divide each grid into
boxes.
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Your drawing will be done on the plastic picture plane with the wash-
able marker. The permanent grid is there to help you see relationally—
that is, how one shape relates to another. It will help you transfer the
drawing to paper when you are finished. Right now, the grid will get
you used to seeing where things are in an image or a drawing, and
eventually you won’t even need it.
Isolate a Subject with the
Picture Plane
Now you are ready to try one of the drawing devices favored by the old
masters. This is an exercise that will help you get the idea of the picture
plane in your mind’s eye—or is it your eye’s mind?
1. Look around the room and decide on a first subject. Don’t get
too ambitious at first. A corner of a room might be too much;
try a table or a chair, or a window at an angle.
2. It is absolutely necessary that you’re able to keep the plastic
picture plane at your eye level and that it be still. Rest it on a
table, or hold it straight up and down at a level that you can
see through and draw on at the same time.

Back to the Drawing Board
To draw on the plastic picture
plane, you must keep it as mo-
tionless as possible—and you
mustn’t move either. You’ll be
looking at a single view, and the
hardest thing will be to keep still
enough for that single view to re-
main static. You can try propping
the picture plane on a pillow or
books if it’s a small piece. If it’s
a larger one, simply set it on
your lap.
Make sure your picture
plane is even with your
eyes and that it’s resting
straight up and down at
a level you can see your
subject through. Prop it
up on a book or two if
you need to. This is
where a longer piece of
glass might be handy.
3. Once you have situated yourself and your subject, close one eye and take a good long
look through your picture plane, particularly at the parts that would seem hard to
draw, either because of angles, complicated shapes, distortion, detail, or perspective.
Try to get back to just seeing, but really seeing, and just what you can see, not what
you think.
4. See the image through the lines that you put on the picture plane, but try to note
where things are relative to the lines:

➤ What part of the image is in the middle?
➤ What part is near the diagonal?
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The Picture Plane
➤ What part is halfway across?
➤ On which side of each grid is each part?
➤ Does a particular line go from top to bottom or across?
➤ Does a curve start in one box and travel to another before it disappears?
➤ And then what?
5. Uncap your marker and decide where to start. It should be a shape that you are quite
sure of, one you can use to go to the next shape, one you can see your way from to
where it connects with another. See where it is relative to your grid of lines.
6. Start to draw your subject, line by line. See how one line
goes into another, over or under, curved or straight. The
marker line will be somewhat thicker than a pencil and a lit-
tle wobbly because you are working vertically, but no matter,
just draw what you see.
7. Keep going at it at a nice easy pace, concentrating but not
rushed. You should be having fun now. Are you?
When you have put in all that you see in your object, take a mo-
ment and observe the accuracy with which you have drawn a
complicated drawing. Try to see where the plastic picture plane
made it easy for you to draw a difficult part, like a table in per-
spective, or the scale of two objects, or the detail on the side of a
box, or the pattern of a fabric that was in folds.
These potential problems are no longer problems, once you really
see and really draw what you see.
Do you like your drawing? Would you like to keep it? How about

transferring it to a piece of paper?
Back to the Drawing Board
If all this holding still and seeing
through seems like a lot of re-
quirements, think about those
poor old masters lugging a much
more cumbersome glass version of
a picture-plane drawing device
out into the fields. Then you will
be happy that you have a nice
table to work at—and presumably
a nice cup of hot coffee, thought
by many to be an essential.
Here are some sample drawings done on Plexiglas picture planes.
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Transfer the Drawing to Paper
To transfer your picture plane drawing to paper, you will need
➤ A piece of paper, preferably 11" × 14".
➤ One of those new mechanical pencils, with HB or B lead in it.
➤ A kneaded eraser.
➤ A ruler.
1. Measure and draw the center vertical and horizontal lines on your paper. A piece of
11"
× 14" paper would have a vertical center line at 5
1
/
2

" and a horizontal at 7".
2. Measure and draw a box that is 8" × 12," centered, or you can put your piece of plastic
directly onto the paper, line up the center vertical and horizontal lines, and trace the
outside edge of the plastic for your box.
3. Draw the diagonals in your box. Then measure and draw the secondary lines to divide
the four boxes, just like the grid. Are you getting the idea of what we are doing?
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4. Put your drawing on the plastic up in front of you, as vertically
as possible.
5. Start copying your drawing onto paper, using the grid to see
the relations between things and lines that you drew on the
plastic.
6. Don’t let your mind (Old Lefty!) trick you into drawing any-
thing differently because you’re not on plastic anymore. Don’t
think—just see and draw. Work lightly, and if you get lost, go
back to the grid to see where you should be. It’s fine to erase
when necessary. Keep drawing the lines from the plastic.
7. When you have drawn as much on your paper as you had on
the plastic, take a moment to assess your work.
➤ Can you see how the grid helped you to transfer your
drawing from the plastic to the paper?
➤ Could you begin to relate one line or shape to another
or to the lines on the grid?
➤ Did it help to have the grid to establish distance or rela-
tion between things as you copied your drawing?
8. If you are happy with the pencil drawing, you can add more
to it by looking back at your subject, but make sure that you

draw relative to things that you see—no fudging or filling in
just to fill in. If you can see something to add, fine, otherwise
leave it.
Here are three drawings by three different students transferred from Plexiglas to paper.
When you’re finished, put your drawing aside to compare later. These exercises can be re-
peated as often as you like; you will only get better at seeing and drawing.
In the next chapter, we will add a viewfinder, another handy item for helping you to see
what is there and to draw it.
The Art of Drawing
Another exercise to try is drawing
an object or a person through a
plate glass door—right on the
door! You’ll be amazed how easy
it is to draw on the glass (don’t
use permanent marker, though).
The subject on the other side will
come out very small unless you
and it are quite close to one an-
other on either side of the glass.
You can adjust yourself and your
subject as you like, of course. And
you can make a tracing on tracing
paper after you’ve gotten the
main lines on glass.
Part 2
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Now You Are Ready to Draw
Your Sketchbook Page
Try your hand at practicing the exercises you’ve learned in this chapter.
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Chapter 4
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The Picture Plane
The Least You Need to Know
➤ A picture plane is the imaginary visual plane out in front of your eyes, turning as you
do to look at the world, as if through a window.
➤ When you see through a Plexiglas picture plane, 3-D space is condensed into a
drawable 2-D image.
➤ Drawing on a plastic picture plane is a step to seeing the space and shapes and
relationships in the drawing.
➤ You can transfer your picture plane drawing to paper, if you like.

Chapter 5
Finding the
View
In This Chapter
➤ What is a viewfinder frame?
➤ Materials to get you started
➤ How to use a viewfinder frame
➤ Drawing what you see in the viewfinder frame
Drawing should suggest and stimulate observation.
Bernice Oehler Figure Sketching, (Pelham NY: Bridgman Publishers, 1926).
Working with the plastic picture plane has shown you 3-D space condensed into a drawable
2-D image on the surface. But it’s also shown you the beginnings of another concept that’s
important to drawing—looking through a frame to see your subject.
In this chapter, we’ll be exploring the concept of a viewfinder frame. Using a viewfinder
isn’t cheating. As artists have known for centuries, it’s a way to help you see spatial relations
and make your drawing more accurate.
A Viewfinder Frame
A viewfinder frame is a simple device that will help you decide on a subject to draw and then

focus on it. As we discussed in Chapter 1, “The Pleasures of Seeing and Drawing,” framing
an image makes it easier to see, and the graduated marks on the edges of the viewfinder
frame give you reference points for relations between lines and shapes, rather like the grid
on the plastic of the picture plane, but requiring more clear seeing on your part.
Seen through a viewfinder frame, the main points of an image can be drawn on paper using
the graduated marks. The important thing is to have the viewfinder frame and your paper
or the box that you draw on it in the same
proportion, so that the relative positions and
placement do not change.