7. How you sit (or stand) changes everything.

~ stephanieabower ~ 2 Comments

We’ve talked about starting your sketch by reducing what you see to big shapes, then drawing those shapes onto your paper. Now we’ll learn that this shape will change depending on how you sit (or stand) and view your subject!

Let’s review the concept of vanishing points, key to any perspective drawing. Remember Rule #1, lines that are parallel to each other in reality, appear to converge to a single point in the distance, and that point is at the height of your eye level, or on your Eye Level Line.

And this is the tip in the book:

Here is a simple example inside my house. I’ve chosen the opening of the door as my big shape, but notice how that big shape changes…

One-point Perspective (left) …………………………………………………. Two-point Perspective (right)

On the left: ONE-POINT PERSPECTIVE. I am sitting so that my body is looking straight ahead, my line of sight is perpendicular to the wall or door opening in front of me, like in the diagram on the left in the book. In this view, there are lines in only one direction that recede away from me (as seen in the hallway walls). All other lines appear as true horizontals (as seen at the top and bottom of the door frame). Sitting this way creates a true rectangle (also called an ELEVATION view in architecture-speak) that I can use as my big shape. Because there is only one vanishing point, this yields a one-point perspective view.

On the right: TWO-POINT PERSPECTIVE. I am sitting in the exact same spot, but now I’ve turned my body ever so slightly to the left. As soon as I do this, I no longer have a true rectangle as my big shape. In this view, there are lines receding away from me in two directions: what before were flat horizontal lines are now lines that are angling down or up to a point way off to the left — this is one vanishing point for all the lines that are parallel to each other. The other vanishing point is the same as before, directly in front of my at my eye level. Because I now have two sets of lines that are receding away from me to two different points, this is a two-point perspective view. Key to know is that BOTH vanishing points are on my Eye Level Line!

So the big lesson in this post is that how you sit or stand to face your subject is key to determining the shapes in your view, and how you sit also determines whether or not you will generate a one-point or a two-point perspective sketch! It’s as simple as that. Look carefully at my work and you’ll see that nearly all my sketches are simple one-point perspective views, as they are way easier to sketch! More on this as I develop a sketch of this exciting view inside my house for tomorrow’s post 🙂

6. Kitchen Greens.

~ stephanieabower ~ 8 Comments

I confess, I was holding off on my pandemic sketching. I don’t know why, maybe it’s lack of ability to focus, or maybe feeling overwhelmed by life these days, even though things are radically simplified by staying at home. I’ve never felt more grateful for a roof over my head and food in the fridge.

Yesterday, however, I finally jumped in to the Urban Sketchers group on Instagram at #uskathome this with this sketch. I had to capture those orange flowers in the bright light, as their tropical colors cheer me up every day as they over-winter in the only sunny window in our house.

And since we’ve been talking about starting with big shapes, can you figure out which shapes I drew first to set up the sketch?

I had to redraw these shapes a second time to get them the right size and location on my paper. Those first boxes determine everything! If you are sketching indoors during this pandemic, please consider posting your sketches to Instagram at #uskathome. More blog posts to come, how to find the vanishing point is coming up…stay tuned!

5. A measured view from a window in Brooklyn

~ stephanieabower ~ 6 Comments

Yesterday’s post talked about using your pencil to analyze your view. Your pencil or pen is great both for measuring the proportions of shapes as well as spotting the location of things you see.

Here is a quick sketch that I did last year from our hotel room window in Brooklyn, NY. I loved the wide view that went all the way from the old Brooklyn City Hall to a peekaboo view of the Brooklyn Bridge on the far right, and I wanted to capture it all in my sketch!

How to do that? I used my pencil to measure. The first thing I drew was my eye level line (aka horizon line–you can really see the consistent, flat horizon in the distance between the buildings), as that line functions as a sort of datum line throughout the sketch (plus, all the vanishing points for the buildings will be somewhere on that line!) The ELL is so important! I had to think carefully about how high it should be on the page, and decided if I wanted to get the tops and bottoms of most of the buildings, it would need to be slightly over halfway up the page.

Next I used my pencil to spot locate the edges of major buildings in my view. I figured out that I could divide the view into 4 fairly equal segments that aligned with the edges of some of the prominent buildings. Next I transferred that information to my paper by making tick marks along my eye level line, dividing it into four equal segments for where each of these building edges would appear. (I must have started over 10 times to make sure everything would fit on my page. It’s no big deal to erase these light lines at the beginning of a sketch.) Once the tick marks were in my sketch, I could start to draw in the shapes of the buildings.

Then the big shapes were broken into smaller shapes as I drew floor lines in perspective and refined the “stacked boxes” of the buildings. Detail was added at the end using dark pencil or paint. Note that I didn’t draw in every window, I only suggest the windows in places (near the tops of buildings or the ground), and let them fade out to suggest they continue.

And voilá, a wide angle sketch of my wide angle view!

4. Getting in Shape

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Now you know to edit your view to simple and basic shapes, and you have some idea how to find those shapes. Let’s talk about how to measure those shapes in order to get them right, that is with correct PROPORTIONS.

1– Just what are “proportions” anyway? The answer is simple: proportions are basically the relationship of the height to the width of something. That’s it. Simple, but important, as proportions are key to how we see the world accurately and in particular, how we perceive beauty. Imagine the Taj Mahal looking squat or the elegant and timeless proportions of the Parthenon being off. So how do we capture accurate proportions when sketching in the field, and how do we apply that to our sketches?

One of the comments most often posted to my Craftsy/Bluprint classes is that people are so happy to finally understand how to measure a scene with their pencil. Apparently, lots of artists have been told in colleges and universities around the world to fully extend their arm and pencil, lock their arm in place, then use the pencil to measure things in their view… so it was a joyous ah-ha moment for many folks to realize instead that they should, 1) close one eye to flatten out the view, 2) align your pencil with a prominent vertical (or sometimes horizontal) edge, 3) THEN lock your arm and 4) use that pencil length to measure. Here it is in the recent book:

2– For lack of a better term, I call this vertical edge my “Measuring Line”. It is a line that I use to measure and reference many things in my view. For example, in the photo above, I can see that the 2nd floor balcony in the distance is just about half way up my Measuring Line/pencil, information that helps me locate the height of the 2nd floor in my sketch. And the top of that arch in the distance just about lines up with the top of my Measuring Line, also useful to know. I can also use my pencil to locate other buildings in my view, see this example from Rome below.

In this view, I align my pencil with a prominent edge of the building (which I used as my Measuring Line ;), then I lock my arm and drop the pencil horizontally to measure the distance to Trajan’s column and then the corner of the Wedding Cake building. Analyzing the scene with my pencil before I start sketching helps me locate things accurately in my sketch.

3– It’s critical to note that you are not transferring the actual height of your pencil to your paper (it probably wouldn’t fit anyway), you are really just transferring the RATIOS you have measured with your pencil. Is a wall 1 pencil high to 1 pencil wide (a square), or maybe a tall rectangle, or a wide rectangle like in the sketch from the Met above? Seeing this gets easier with practice. And once you start looking, you will see 1:1 SQUARES everywhere!!!!

4– And last, I want to add that the Measuring line is the first thing I sketch on my paper, and its size determines the size of everything in my sketch. Its location on my page determines what I will be able to include in my sketch. Remember, the Measuring Line should probably be lower than you think!! By starting with the Measuring Line the right size and low on my paper, I have room to include the ceiling! See the quick thumbnail below.

3. Do you think like an Artist or an Architect?

~ stephanieabower ~ 51 Comments

Years ago in NYC when I was teaching sketching at Parsons in the Environmental Design and Architecture department, I had a student who had transferred in from the Art Department. I had everyone in the class start their sketch by ignoring the details in front of them and just drawing the big shapes of the buildings and spaces. This one art student, however, could never do it. After 20 minutes of drawing when everyone else had a pretty complete sketch on their paper, she had only a small piece in the corner of the page, fully completed and beautifully rendered, while the rest of the page was empty. I don’t think I could ever get her to see her sketching process differently, and it made me start to notice a difference in the way a designer’s mind worked and the way an artist’s mind worked. Many years later when writing my book, I describe this as Tip #49: “Sketch like an Artist: Grow your sketch” and Tip #50: “Sketch like an Architect: Start with the big shapes”.

If you see his posts online, rockstar sketcher Paul Heaston, can start with one area of his sketch and sort of grow it from that point, much the way the artist in my Parsons class worked. He often first draws his own sketchbook on the page, then uses that sketchbook as a reference to locate and size everything else as he grows his sketch in a clockwise direction. He’s got to be clairvoyant as from the beginning, he can somehow visualize how his sketch will sit on the page and its extent — he somehow gets everything to fit and look right. It’s an amazing skill, and other artists have it too.

I, on the other hand, Sketch like an Architect in what is really a different approach that reflects how a designer’s mind works. I reduce what I see in front of me to simple shapes like squares and rectangles, and those shapes are the first things I sketch on my paper using very light and loose lines. I believe there are real benefits to taking this approach, especially when sketching in perspective:

  1. Within the first few minutes, I know everything will fit on my paper. Have you ever sketched a tower only to find 45 minutes into the sketch that the most important part, the top, doesn’t fit on the page?
  2. These simple shapes provide something of a road map to follow. Once the shapes are on paper, the hard part is done. The rest is filling in the lines and then details. I do this working in layers in several passes.
  3. It’s much easier to capture true proportions using this method. No more buildings that are too tall or squat.
  4. Starting with simple shapes makes a really complicated view easier to draw and less overwhelming.
  5. It doesn’t require the remarkable ability to visualize that Paul Heaston has!
Here is the wide angle view in Dubrovnik.

Started the sketch with these simple shapes… probably started over 5 times to make sure everything would fit.
…became this finished sketch.

I think why architects tend to draw this way is because we think about the relationship of the pieces to the whole. Architecture is not just about making a beautiful, functional building, but about how that building sits in its context, how it creates spaces in and around it, and how people interact with those forms and spaces. We don’t see surfaces, we see volumes. We also tend to approach the design process by starting with the general and working toward the specific, that is, starting with massing and figuring out the details later in the process. OK, this is a gross simplification of the process, but I’d say it’s the way most designers that I’ve known tend to think and work. There is also a strong correlation to the way designers sketch — start with the big shapes, add more information in layers by breaking the big shapes into smaller shapes, then adding details toward then end.

While I think this process is easier than growing a sketch, the hard part is finding the simple shapes in your view and then transferring them to your paper with true proportions. More on that process in the next post!! In the meantime, here are some sketches showing the simple, big shape that I drew first on my paper:

Binnenhof and Ridderzaal in Den Haag, The Netherlands.
Street in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Chiesa San Donato in Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy.
Can you guess which shape I used to start this sketch of Diocletian’s Palace in Split, Croatia?
(I’m planning to have a workshop on the Croatian coast next year!! Fingers crossed.)

One more thing, I’d love your feedback on these posts so far…too long, too much writing, too much detail? Font too big, how does it look? I’m still figuring out how to post to this new blog platform. Send me your thoughts and questions. And if you like these posts, please let other folks know too…we can all help each other stay sane during these challenging times!

2. It’s all about your eye level…

~ stephanieabower ~ 8 Comments

When I wrote my book on perspective in 2015, I came up with several unique ways of describing perspective terms and processes — things that I have seen no where else but are a product of my 25+ years of teaching perspective sketching and the crazy ways I explain things 😉

Here’s an example. Instead of using the concept of “Horizon Line” used in every other book or class I’ve ever seen on perspective, I use the concept of “Eye Level Line” or “Eye Line”. This is literally a horizontal line that represents the height of your eyes above the ground (shown in blue in the photo below.) Why use ELL instead of HL? Unless you are sketching at the beach or West Texas or from the second floor of Basilica San Marco in Venice and can see the horizon (where the ocean or land meets the sky), the concept of your Eye Level Line is more relevant to urban sketching.

Your EYE LEVEL = Horizon Line, but ELL is better!!

From The Urban Sketching Handbook: 101 Sketching Tips. You can see that my eye level aligns
with the actual horizon in the distance. You can also see that the vanishing point for the building
on the right is ON the horizontal line at my eye level, my ELL!

Now let’s apply it to sketching interiors. From lesson 1, you know how to use converging lines to find your Vanishing Point. Next thing to learn is that nearly all the vanishing points will live somewhere on your Eye Level Line!! This line is so important for so many things, I draw it into every sketch I make.

How do I find my Eye Level Line in my view? Here are a few methods:

  1. Hold your pencil or pen at your eye level in front of your eyes, and compare this horizontal line to your view. Where does this line hit something in the scene that you can use as reference?
  2. If you are sitting, find a door handle. You’ll notice my eye level is just about the height of the handle on the door to the left.
  3. Find where parallel lines that are receding away from you converge to one point, that Vanishing Point will be on your Eye Level Line.
  4. Horizon = Your Eye Level, so if you can see the horizon, use it! Keep in mind that your Eye Level Line is different if you are sitting (about the height of a door handle), standing (about 5′ from the ground), on top of a building or in a plane, just remember that the vanishing points will be on this line!
  5. Use the concept of Foreshortening. Vanishing lines ABOVE your eye level will angle down, receding lines below your eye level will angle up, and receding lines that appear dead flat are ON your eye level line! The example below shows the floor lines of an office building, but you can also see this when looking at shelves in your home. Where the lines of the shelves flatten out to a true horizontal line, that is your eye level!
  6. Reference other people in your view. If you are sitting, other people in the view who are also sitting will align with your eye level. Same if you are standing and the ground is more or less flat– the eyes of other people standing will be just about the same as your eye level!
From The Urban Sketching Handbook: Understanding Perspective.
From The Urban Sketching Handbook: 101 Sketching Tips.

The New Burke Museum, Seattle. Notice how when I’m standing, most everyone else who is standing has the same eye level as I do, provided the floor is pretty flat and they are roughly as tall as I am. This is true no matter where people are in your view. Knowing this can help me find my ELL and VP, and helps me to accurately add people to my sketches! In an eye level perspective view, heads will align!

Try taking some photos around your house of things like bookcases, drawers, horizontal wood siding, etc. to see if you can find where these lines flatten out to a horizontal–that will be your eye level line! Watch this line change as you sit or stand and how this change impacts other lines.

It’s really important to understand where your Eye Level Line is in your view and in your sketch… much more on that coming up!

1. Perspective Rule #1: Converging Lines

~ stephanieabower ~ 16 Comments

OK, since this is basically an online tutorial, let’s start at the very beginning…

Key to all things in perspective is the #1 Rule: Lines that are parallel to each other appear to converge to the same vanishing point in the distance.

Think railroad track. We know the two rails are the same distance apart, so how weird is it that when we look at the tracks in the distance, we see the two rails appear to cross, or “converge”? We actually see this all the time but take little notice of it, and it’s THE most important concept in perspective sketching — it’s key to our perception of depth and space around us. Lines and edges that are in reality parallel to each other, appear to vanish, or converge to the same point in the distance– the Vanishing Point.

So how do we find that point in our view? It’s easy:

  1. Close one eye to flatten out your view. (We need both eyes to perceive depth, so seeing your view accurately is easier with one eye shut.) To help you, try taking a picture of your view with your phone, and look at it flattened out. You can even use the Mark Up feature to “draw” on the image as you analyze the view.
  2. Use your pencil or pen to extend the lines that are receding away from you, and find the point where these lines intersect. I often use edges where the wall hits the ceiling, or joint lines in paving or wood floors. TIP: When sketching outdoors, I generally use the lines of windows on a wall, moulding, or a roof edge, NOT the ground. If the ground slopes up or down even a little, it will throw off the location of your vanishing point!
  3. Once you’ve found the point where receding lines converge, mentally “pin it” to something in your view, sort of like playing Pin The Tail On The Donkey. That’s your Vanishing Point!
  4. Now you can use that point to draw other lines in your sketch, no matter where they are in your view. If lines are parallel to these, they will all go to this same vanishing point… like the edge of the front porch in the photo. Once you’ve located that point, it’s essential that you use it to build your sketch.
  5. One way to study this is to take a photo, print it out, and draw over your photo. You’ll easily see where the lines are converging to find your vanishing point!

Much more on how to use this point and what it means in the next posts! I hope you will follow along and encourage others to do the same! Thanks…

CANCELLED!!!!

~ stephanieabower ~ 13 Comments

I’ve been spending my days cancelling plane tickets and hotels, writing piles of refund checks to the wonderful folks who had signed up for workshops, and being hit hard by the reality that with this pandemic, so much has changed. I have cancelled virtually all of my workshops for the year, but one… a one-day workshop at the Seattle Daniel Smith store and mothership on Saturday, August 22 — thank you to Thom at DS for rescheduling! But Italy, Paris, Spain, the Loire Valley, and San Jose with Shari and Suhita are all cancelled or postponed to next year. (You can check out the “workshops” tab on this blog for dates and locations.)

As everyone around the world is quarantined at home (did I really just write those words??), I’m reminded of Tip #12 in the 101 Sketching Tips book:

It’s these connections that give meaning to our sketching! This concept really hit home when talking with a sketcher in Hong Kong 2 years ago who said that being part of a sketching community had changed his life, brought him out of a deep depression. So no coffee shops, but let’s stay connected– I hope it will cheer all of us up! I hope you will motivate me as I hope to motivate you!

To that end, I’m starting a series of posts about sketching interiors. They will go step-by-step, in small and detailed steps, and will walk you through the process of sketching interior spaces in perspective. Here they come!

And if you want me to see your sketches as you try these exercises, please post them to Instagram and tag me at @stephanieabower (don’t forget the “a” in the middle.) I will give you feedback on your work, like an online class.

So stay healthy, stay inside, but stay connected — and sketch interiors!

Paris in Yellow Ochre

~ stephanieabower ~ 8 Comments

With Paris workshop registrations starting tomorrow, it’s got me thinking a lot about my time in this extraordinary city back in 2013. I had been awarded an amazing architecture fellowship, The Gabriel Prize, which meant I was able to live in Paris for 3 months to learn about architecture by sketching on location (my project settled on the use of perspective in the gardens at Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte). Unbelievably great and challenging time. It was an opportunity that would change my life forever and lead to amazing opportunities. But of course, at the time, I had no idea any of this would happen!!!

A big part of what made it life-changing was having the luxury of time in an inspiring setting to figure out who I was as an architect and an artist. I literally stayed up nights wondering if I was a pen or a pencil person! Would I draw a lot or paint a lot, how would I hit that sweet spot of having the right balance of both? What colors and equipment would I settle on using? This meant a fair amount of experimentation with few “successes”, although in the end I realized — and this is an important tip from the new book — we shouldn’t spend a lot of time thinking about sketching… instead, just do it. Do anything. Don’t worry about style or if you like your work or not, just listen to your inner voice and do anything… your style, your way of working will emerge as long as you keep moving in a forward direction.

So, one of my sketching experiments was in underpainting. Many artists start their painting with painting light washes of transparent colors like aureolin yellow, cobalt blue, and permanent alizarin crimson to establish areas of light and dark. Underpainting also unifies a painting, as there is a common layer at the foundation that is still just barely visible with the other transparent layers laid on top. I do this all the time in my studio work, but not very often when sketching in the field. It’s an extra step that takes time, especially since you have to wait for it to dry before doing anything else. It’s scary to start to apply watercolor, so another benefit of this wash is that it allows me to “dip my toe in the water”, aka start painting without making a huge color commitment. Helps me shake off my painting nerves!

But here, I wanted to emulate some beautiful sketches we have at home that were done by my husband’s Croatian great-grandfather. He was the head of the Yugoslav railroads, as well as a poet and artist who painted incredible watercolor scenes on the heavy yellow paper used for printing train schedules! It’s fun to flip over the paintings and see the schedules.

For these sketches, I tried to mimic the warm yellow paper he used by underpainting with yellow ochre. Once it dried, I painted other layers on top to create 3-dimensional shapes… and for surfaces hit by LIGHT, I painted with an opaque white. I rather liked the glow this gave the sketches, and it launched me into using yellow ochre to underpaint probably a majority of my sketches now. And you can see the beginnings of what would become my “style”! I’m eager to go back and try again, now that I have more sketching know-how.

So thanks to great-grandfather Villim Filipasic for his inspiration. I hope my great-grandchildren, should I be blessed some day, will look at my sketches with the same love that I look at and appreciate his…

Workshop in PARIS!!!!

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Yep. I’m soooooooo excited to be heading back to The City of Lights this June. I’ve dreamt about teaching a workshop in this gorgeous place for years. Here’s the scoop:

Good sketches start with Good Bones! In this workshop, you’ll learn the simple steps to set up the foundations of a great architectural sketch in Perspective and Watercolor. How do you start a location sketch? Where is the darn Vanishing Point? And how do I start painting?
Held in the amazing historic Marais of romantic Paris, this workshop offers 2 full days of instruction. The first day is an introduction to the fundamentals of on-location perspective through demos and sketching on-site. Day two introduces basic watercolor mixing and techniques, and in the afternoon, we put it all together!

Friday, June 19 | Meet for a bring-your-own picnic dinner at the Places des Vosges.

GOOD BONES Day 1 | PERSPECTIVE | Saturday, June 20 | 9am-5pm* | Meet in the Place des Vosges

  • Learn perspective basics and a simple step-by-step process to construct an architectural perspective sketch, how to build the sketch in layers.
  • Learn what to look for when sketching perspective on location—how to find your eye level and vanishing points to provide the good bones of any sketch.
  • Learn how to measure proportions and relationships of spatial elements.

GOOD BONES Day 2 | WATERCOLOR | Sunday, June 21 | 9am-5pm* | Meet in the Place des Vosges

  • Introduction to basic watercolor tools and techniques, using a simple palette of colors.
  • Learn how to use watercolor to enhance the sense of architecture and space in your sketches.
  • In the afternoon, put perspective and watercolor together.                                
  • * One hour break for lunch.

————————————————————————————————————————————

GOOD BONES PARIS is open to 15 participants with any level of experience, but it’s targeted to sketchers who want to improve their basic sketching and understanding of perspective and watercolor.

Workshop Registration opens Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 8am Seattle time/ 5pm Paris time. To sign up, contact Stephanie by email at stbower@comcast.net  The first 15 emails will be accepted—first come, first served. A waiting list will be created.

Workshop tuition is US$295.00, by check or PayPal (tuition includes PayPal transaction fees.)

***And for you blog followers, I’m offering early-bird spots today and tomorrow as a THANK YOU. Contact me directly at stbower@comcast.net ASAP if you’d like to be pencilled in to a spot. And if you also sign up for the French Escapade workshop in the Loire, I’ll knock of $100 from the cost of this workshop, and FE will also reduce their price. Paris will be a great warm up for the LOIRE!!

There are also still workshop spots open for Seville in April (before it gets too hot in southern Spain) and one spot in Civita in June.

A bientot!!