Drawing Lesson: Seeing and Measuring for Accuracy.

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In this first drawing lesson, I just want to go over some ways that you can get your drawing as accurate as possible without having to go overboard with the measuring. There are some basic things you will want to be able to "see" in order to get everything positioned correctly and in the correct proportion.

Today, I'm going to show you how to see vertical and horizontal alignments. I will show some pictures with red lines so you can see what I'm talking about. In your actual drawing, you do not have to draw these lines physically if you don't want to. You can either draw them very lightly in pencil (or whatever medium your are using) and erase them, or you can just draw them in the air so you can see where things would line up without actually drawing the lines.

Let's begin the drawing lesson.

Vertical lines...

First, let's take a look at vertical lines and how we can use them. I have placed 4 vertical lines in this drawing for you. The line on the front of the face shows you how far the face sticks out compared the body. I placed a line on the front of the body so you can see how much farther forward the body (stomach area) sticks out passed the face.

I placed a line on the back of the head so you can see where it is in relation to the body as well. Notice how the back of the head lines up with the mid point of the spine. The spine is curved naturally as you can see. It won't go straight up and down from this angle.

Another line on the back of the armpit shows how far the back of the body sticks out. Notice that it sticks out even passed the hand. I'll go into more specific anatomy later. I just want you to start noticing these things to see how everything lines up. Most of the time, I look for the furthest points out and use those as a basis for placement. All for red lines that I drew for you show the furthest points out. On the bent arm, if I were to draw another line, it would be on the far tip of the elbow. I'll go into more detail with proportions in another lesson.

Horizontal lines...

Okay, moving on to horizontal lines. On the straight arm pointing forward, we can see that the bottom point of the arm lines up with the armpit area of the other arm where the arm meets the back. The top of the hand meets the shoulder, and you can see how the trapezius muscle in the upper back and the chin are slightly higher than the shoulder.

The hand on the bent arm meets up with the start of the muscles in the lower back. The point of all of this is to get an idea of where to place everything. Just taking a quick moment to see how different body parts line up, we can get everything place accurately fairly easily. We can also go back and check our drawing for accuracy later on.

I also use diagonal measurements, but that will be covered in a different drawing lesson..

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