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Lesson 8, Part VI: More Sighting: Relating Length and Width |
Lesson Eight really gets summarized here in "Part VI: Relating Length and Width". You'll pull together all you've learned so far in sighting angles, in breaking the picture down into more manageable pieces, and you'll be introduced to the sighting of sizes. To make this clear as possible, I've tried to reproduce these ideas in animations. The first two are medium sized downloads. The third and forth animations are getting on the very big side - closing in on100 kb. Animation four has over 80 frames. Make sure you're ready to watch them or you'll get frustrated waiting.
In these animations you'll see a demonstration of "sighting": the act of measuring relative angles and sizes. "Relative angles" referring to how a line diverges towards or away from vertical or horizontal. "Relative sizes" referring to how big something is when compared to some "standard of measure". The standard of measure we'll be using here is your pencil, or fractions of it, at arms length. ("Relative size" is really proportion. You'll see more of that in part VII.).
Overall these four animations show you how to accurately reconstruct a coffee table with all angles, proportions and parts intact. You'll use the techniques artists use employing just your eyes, your hand, a pencil and a piece of paper. What you learn here is appliable to drawing anything and plays a large part in the caricturing or portraits I know your'e dying to get to. Take your time and enjoy your learning.
Note: These animations were made originally as one "mini-movie". I broke them up because it would've been even more cumbersome to download. Besides, my 3 year old computer started smoking when I tried to compress it. Watch for the cues to go to the next animation.
Repeat notes on Sighting
When you take any sighting, do so with a straight arm like you see Leonardo doing in the illustration just below. When sighting angles, like you saw in Part III, you can expose any length of pencil from your hand. When you sight size, for example the length of an edge like you'll see in the animations, you slide the pencil in or out of your fist knowing that the length exposed correlates with the edge you measured - that is, it's the distance from your thumb or hand to the tip of the pencil.
Leonardo in the act of "Sighting"
These four animations summarize all the sections of Lesson eight. Take your time watching them. Watch them often, let them repeat and repeat until you can anticipate the next frame. When there's a reasonable software that allows you to control each frame, go forward or backwards, etc., I'll try to incorporate it.
1. Sighting (comparing) the table angles to vertical and horizontal.
Animation part I
Major points to watch in the first animation:
Pay special attention to estimating angles in relation to vertical and horizontal. Mimic what you learn while it's fresh in your mind. This is review of Lesson 8, Part III.
Watch closely as you see how a "visualized" angle is "transferred" to paper.
Remember all sighting is done with your arm fully extended. That way the pencil will always be the same distance from your eye - and so it appears to your eye as the same size. It becomes your "yardstick". This will allow you to sight the object you're drawing and duplicate those measurements with consistent "units of measure" on your paper. (Have I said that enough already?)
Click here for animation part I
2. Sighting the width of the table with outstretched arm and pencil
Animation part II
In the second animation you'll be seeing two things. First you'll choose the left width of the table as the "unit of measure". What's a "unit of measure"? In this case it's an arbitrary measurement that makes sense for the picture you're trying to draw. Second, you'll be applying that unit of measure to the rest of the table.
In this section we're looking at a table. A measurement that makes sense to me here is the table width like you see in the illustration just above. It makes sense because it's easy to sight (it's right in front), it's not the biggest nor the smallest object in the picture and so we can relate other parts of the table to it fairly easily. (More on this in Part VII: Proportion .)
Here's what I want you to watch with special attention:
When the table edge, the left width to be exact, is "sighted" for length, only enough pencil is exposed beyond the thumb to duplicate the width. Try to duplicate this by exposing the same amount of pencil.
Watch how this same exposed pencil length is applied to sighting the rest of the table.
Click here for animation part II
3. Using the Width measurement to compare table length.
Animation part III
The crux of this lesson is here in the third animation, (animation III). It's here you'll see demonstrated relating the front edge - the long edge - of the table in terms of widths. In the way there's one hundred pennies in one dollar, it's our job to decide how many table widths there are in a table length. That is, by using the width as our unit of measure, we can count off widths against the length. We'll be able to say something like "there are two and a half widths to every front length", or "the ratio of width to length is 2.5 to 1". This will be clearer after you see animation part III and clearer yet after you see the next section on proportion.
Watch closest here for:
the use of "width" - the unit of measure - as the yardstick for measuring the long front edge of the table,
and the technique used for counting off units: lining up the thumb and pencil on the edge to be sighted, marking where the tip (the eraser in this case) of the pencil falls, then sliding the thumb to where the tip of the pencil was, then repeating this until you've measured everything.
Click here for animation part III
4. Comparing width to table legs
Animation part IV
By looking at the illustration above, you can see the leg of the table is shorter than the width. The pencil exposed between the tip of the thumbnail and the eraser is still the same size as the original width. That width being the front left table width you saw sighted in picture 2 near the top of this page.
Note: This animation got huge (98 kb). I did my best to reduce the size but there are 80 plus frames in it. It could take a minute or two to download, so take a break, stretch, grab a snack while you wait.
Click here for animation part IV
By inferance:
Sighting the height of the table top.
Assignment: lay out steps and pictures so
Click here for animation part I
Click here for animation part II
Click here for animation part III
Click here for animation part IV
Go to Part VII -Proportion
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