Sighting Exercise 2

Lesson 8, Part 4: Your Second Exercise in Sighting

Getting your Computer monitor into the Act:
A truly modern application of the renaissance "grid" device

This exercise is a direct extension of the one above (exercise number one in part three: sighting) - where you sighted angles and drew them on a sheet of paper using the paper's edges as a reference for horizontal and vertical.

In this exercise you're going to get more practice sighting in a fun and insightful drill. You'll be downloading a medium sized graphic. It's about 46 kb. It's a good photo for perspective and it'll give you lots of practice "sighting" angles. This is essentially a modern spin-off of the Durer grid. (And I got this idea by extension from one I learned from Dr. Betty Edwards. My second truly original idea involving computers and drawing :- ) )

Materials: 1) a felt tipped marker 2) Saran Wrap 3) sheet of drawing paper 4) drawing pencil

Time: give yourself at least 30 minutes for the drawing - read over the steps first.

Get the Saran Wrap. You're going to want a sheet long enough to cover your computer screen. Yes, you read right! You're going to wrap it right over the screen of your computer. Don't wrap it so tight that there are spaces between the screen and the Saran wrap. You want it flush with the screen so you can take a marking pen and draw right on it. Flatten the saran wrap down, try to get it as smooth as possible (wrinkle free).

Pull the Saran Wrap right over your computer screen. (You don't have to extend your pinkies)

Download the picture. Again, it's a sizable picture (46kb) so while it downloads, get up and stretch, make a call, grab a quick snack. It's sized so it should fit in most screens and fit on an 8 and 1/2" x 11" paper if printed out. Scroll the image so the center of the picture is in the center of your screen.

OK, downloaded? Notice the grid pattern - it covers the illustration just like you saw in the Durer model. Take your marker and trace the grid pattern right on the Saran Wrap you have stuck to your computer screen. You now have a grid pattern on the plastic.

Get an arms length from your computer, that is fully extend your arm so your eye is an arms length away. Your hand can be right up to the computer screen. Remember I mentioned above how you want to get in the practice of always doing your sighting with your arm extended? (It gives you a constant distance.) This is just a another friendly nudge.

You shouldn't have to move around too much so I'm not going to ask you to put tape on the floor by your chair feet. (The reason I'd have you do that is because to maintain the same view of your drawing subject, your head must remain stationary. There's not much room for movement between the Saran Wrap and the screen so it's not necessary in this drill. In the next exercise however, it will become more important.)

Grid's done? OK, like in the first Lesson 8 practice exercise, sight the angles, compare and relate them to vertical and horizontal. Now draw them - draw the major outlines of the building, the windows, taking note of anything that seems to be changing shape because it's closer to the vanishing point. Draw it on the Saran Wrap with the marker, using the squares as references. Don't' worry about tedious detail, I want you to concentrate on the larger shapes. (get a few of the larger windows.)

Sight your gridded screen. (This picture emphasizes
sighting. Get closer to your screen than the
picture suggests.)

This is easy because you what you're really doing is tracing the lines. Still, sight them first - go through the process of comparing them to your vertical and horizontal marker (or pencil) and the horizontal and vertical lines in the grid pattern..

This is not "cheating" because to trace the lines accurately, you must be in R-mode. The difference between tracing and drawing is that in tracing, you don't have to carry what you've sighted in your memory from object to paper: you're doing it all in one fell swoop. Relax. Have fun with this - it is fun!

You now have a "gridded" drawing that demonstrates perspective! Congratulations. It's a "perspective drawing".

Get a sheet of white drawing paper. Place it to the side. Now, peel the Saran Wrap carefully from the monitor. You don't want it to tear or get it all crinkled up.

Take your Saran Wrap picture and put it on a light counter top, or on top of your white drawing pad paper (a different one than the one you set aside): you want the felt tip ink to have some contrast.

On the sheet of paper you've set aside, lightly copy the grid pattern: i.e. draw vertical and horizontal lines on it. Make the same pattern of squares that are on the Saran wrap or computer drawing. (Or you can press here to have the exact same grid pattern available for print out, sized for 8 and1/2" x 11" paper - and it's only 10 kb.) It's on it's side so you can get the the whole grid.

Note: even if the grid pattern is a different size than the original, it won't make any difference: the relationship (angles and proportionate distances) between the lines in the drawing and the lines in grid will be exactly the same - as long as your grid is a proportionate replica of the original grid. (Proportion will be discussed two exercises from now.)

Copy your perspective drawing from the Saran Wrap on to the gridded page. Move from grid to grid, but explore one square at a time. Sight the angles in each individual grid. Compare the angle they form with horizontal or the vertical edges. Picture that angle in your mind - how would it look on your paper? Then draw that line. Go to the next grid and do the same until you copy the entire drawing. (When finished, I'll call this the "hard copy".)

Go back to your computer monitor. Take the "hard copy" - that is, the drawing you transferred from the Saran Wrap to paper. Tape it to the bottom of the monitor or support it from the side - somewhere you can view both the computer version and your drawing. Download the Step 9 version (29kb) of the building.

(It's the same graphic except this one has no lines, it's in black and white (grayscale) and I apologize again for the massive graphics. Making them large enough to incorporate them into this exercise takes lots of pixel information.)

*Note If you can't print out the Lesson or the graphic, tape both the Saran Wrap copy and your drawn version side by side on a wall (the lighter the wall the better). Treat the Saran Wrap copy as if it were the "screen" referred to below. You could also read through the rest of the exercise and do the sighting steps.

Get an arms length from the computer screen - (getting into that habit again). Like you did in the the first exercise in Lesson 8, I want you to sight all the major lines. Begin with the right vertical border of the building (It's sizable and right there).

What you are doing is double checking, you're "proofing" the accuracy of your drawing. To do this well, to sight accurately, make sure your pencil is vertical, perfectly vertical, you know, straight up and down.

You also want it parallel to the screen. (If the center of your screen is at eye level then your axis of vision is perpendicular to the screen. I'll discuss this more below in the section on the "Picture Plane".)

Line your pencil up right over the vertical edge of the building. Take a sighting. It's pretty obvious it's vertical right? Now go to your drawing and compare that line to the line you've drawn of the edge of the building. It's vertical too, right? I mean it's parallel to the edge of the paper (which is our representative of vertical). Check the other vertical lines in your drawing. What you'll discover is that all vertical lines in most drawings remain vertical (see notes below).

We're going to reverse the comparison here. I want you to look at your drawing. Look at the angles you drew. Compare one to horizontal. Compare it to your horizontal pencil. Take a sighting. Put your pencil right up to the line or form. Touch it with the pencil.

Place an end of the pencil right on the line at some point. (Remember the pencil is parallel and horizontal to the drawing) How far does it diverge from horizontal?

Compare it to the equivalent line on the screen graphic. The angle you've observed and drawn should match the screen graphic. If they're different, draw in the more accurate angle by taking a sighting off the screen version.

Go through the rest of your lines, forms comparing them to the vertical and horizontal of the original version. Your drawing should come pretty close to duplicating the original.

Notes: Vertical lines are all perpendicular to the earth. They have vanishing points too - off in space. For our purposes, I want you to assume all vertical lines remain vertical - just for now. You can get away with this when you're drawing things that on a "human scale" (at or about human sized) viewed from your normal viewing height: seated or standing) You can get wild and interesting distortion from an ant's eye or bird's eye views.

Here's three more exercises where you get to hone your fledgling "sighting" skills. In the first one, "Using Your own Picture Window as a Big Computer Screen", you'll be doing the exact same thing you did in the exercise you just completed - except you will be the one who gets to "collapse" the three dimensional view out your window on to a two dimensional Saran Wrap.

In "Sighting Angles III", you'll be taking a closer look at how angles - specifically corners - change with view point. In particular, with how your viewing height effects perspective.

In "Sighting IV" you'll be studying more relationships. In particular, you'll look at using length and width in the same object and comparing them. You'll discover you can use the information at your fingertips to reproduce a drawing in exact ratio - no matter how big or small you're reproducing the subject.

In Part VII, "Proportion", you'll be introduced to proportion. Your growing familiarity with sighting angles will set you up for a smooth transition into reckoning proportion. In fact, proportion is just sighting with a focus on size - not angles. It's a natural step from sighting angles.

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