Undoubtedly, one of the hardest things to achieve when drawing is perspective. As I am learning through this book, perspective is all about seeing things the way that an artist sees things. We live in 3-D world, and paper is a flat surface, so it might seem impossible to create dimensions on paper -- at least to me it does. As we can all see from various drawings from the past and present, it is possible...but HOW?
Apparently, one of the hardest figures to draw in perspective is a hand that is reaching toward you. To demonstrate how to achieve perspective, or how to "see" things as an artist does," I was instructed to use a very handy technique. I balanced a glass on my hand, which was in an interesting position, and I traced it using a felt tip marker. When you lay the glass on a blank sheet of paper, you can see what it would have looked like had you drawn the exact same image on paper. It was really neat. The book instructs you to wipe the glass clean and try several more hand positions. I think did about 17.
I was so excited and feeling like I had the hang of it, so I tried drawing my hand on a piece of paper without the aid of the glass. Ummm...didn't work. Turns out, this method is really just a trick. I definitely understand what it means to see as the artist sees -- but that is what we call theory. Practice is what I need to work on. Hopefully, my next exercise will go a little further to help me draw better on my own. Perhaps I should change the name of my blog to No Tracing Allowed.
One interesting thing that came of this, is that I have spent the last couple of days looking at negative space and the lines where things meet, you know, seeing things how an artist sees them.
Here are a couple of examples of me tracing my hand on glass:
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