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Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

Plotted Perspective

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Plotted Perspective

In this exercise, we're just going to get used to the concept of a vanishing point and plotting lines back to them to create boxes. We'll be drawing in 2 point perspective, and we'll be doing everything in this exercise with a ruler.

This process has a lot of steps, but each step is quite simple. Follow the instructions as they're written, don't get caught up in the complexity of the task as a whole, and you'll be fine.

Setting up your page

Assuming you're working on an A4 or 8.5" by 11" piece of printer paper (as recommended in Lesson 0), divide it into 3 rectangles using a ruler. Take your time with this, and try your best to keep your horizontals/verticals perpendicular to one another.

As you'll notice, I misjudged my spacing and ended up with three frames of noticeably different sizes. While this isn't a big deal and won't interfere with the exercise, it does suggest that I should have given myself more time to complete this step.

Drawing your horizon and vanishing points

From here on out, the instructions are going to focus on a single instance of the exercise, in the first frame. You'll of course then go on to repeat the steps for the other two frames.

Draw a horizon line somewhere near the center of the frame. It doesn't need to be perfectly centered, so don't worry if you're off by a bit. Do take care to keep it perpendicular to the vertical edges of your frame though, and parallel to the horizontal edges - or at least, to the best of your ability.

That's something I'll be saying a lot throughout this course - to do things to the best of your current ability. What that really means is give yourself lots of time, and don't rush.

Once the horizon line is drawn, place a vanishing point on either end, close to the edge of the frame.

Placement of vanishing points

Before we continue with the exercise, let's take a moment to discuss how we think about the placement of our vanishing points. The video linked at the top of this page gets into it more thoroughly, but I'll lay out the main points briefly here.

While in this exercise we're keeping our vanishing points within the frame, this is actually not normally going to be the case, as it tends to lead to distortion.

As shown in this diagram, the two vanishing points in a two point perspective layout governs a set of edges, and those edges are perpendicular to one another. Meaning, all of those edges will meet with a 90 degree angle to one another.

The full slice from the left VP to the right VP represents a 90 degree arc that the viewer can see, but it's really just the central 60 degree portion that we see without distortion, with the portion on either side falling into our "peripheral" sight, where things get distorted but we don't really notice it.

As a result, as a basic rule of thumb, we generally want to draw within the central 2/3rds between the vanishing points. If we turn that relationship around, it means that the vanishing points should sit outside of the actual composition of our illustration, or the "picture plane".

Again - we're not doing that in this exercise, because we're not worried about distortion. Still, it's best to keep those VPs towards the far extremities of our frame.

Draw a vertical edge

With our vanishing points and horizon placed, the next step is to place a vertical line somewhere within the frame. I wouldn't place it too close to either vanishing point, but somewhere within the middle 2/3rds is fine, as it'll give us plenty of room to build out from there.

This line does not need to be any specific length, but whatever length you choose will dictate the height of the box we build from it.

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Plotting back to vanishing points

Our vertical line has two ends - a top and a bottom. Draw a line from each of these ends, back to each vanishing point.

This'll result in 4 edges:

  • One from the top end to the left VP

  • One from the top end to the right VP

  • One from the bottom end to the left VP

  • One from the bottom end to the right VP

These will serve as the top and bottom edges of two of our box's faces - but we're not going to worry about how long we want our box to be in either of those directions. For now, we're just plotting those lines all the way back.

Placing the outer vertical edges

In this step, we're going to define the side edges of our boxes, and in so doing, we'll be closing off the two faces we mentioned in the previous step.

Just like with that first vertical, where its length defined the height of the box, we are once again deciding how long we want our box to be in either direction. We are not creating a cube - while a lot of students tend to jump to the assumption that we're constructing cubes at various points throughout this lesson and the box challenge that follows, we are not.

We don't actually start worrying about the proportions of our boxes until after Lesson 5, because it's a more advanced concept that would only get in the way right now.

When you've decided where you want to place these side edges, draw them vertically (parallel to the first vertical, and perpendicular to the horizon line) between the two edges receding back to each vanishing point.

Plotting back to vanishing points again

Like before, we're again going to draw lines from the top and bottom ends of each new vertical back to each of the two vanishing points. This will define the top and bottom edges of the back planes, while also closing off the top and bottom planes of the box itself.

Notice that these lines cross at the back corners of the box. We'll be using those corners in the next step.

Drawing the back vertical edge

That leaves us with one last step before the box is finished - drawing the back vertical edge by connecting the two corners.

It's very likely that the line you draw connecting them is not parallel to the other verticals, and that it slants a little one way or the other. This is the result of all the little mistakes that accumulate as we work through these steps.

After all, we're not perfect robots, so when we line up our ruler on a vanishing point, or on the end of an edge, it's likely that it'll be off by a little bit. Taking our time and being careful will certainly help to reduce this margin of error, but this discrepancy does not mean that you're doing the exercise wrong, or that you need to redo anything. It is entirely expected.

Remember - it's the mistakes in our exercises that show us where we have room to improve. So take note of the patterns of mistakes you see emerging, and keep them in mind so you can work towards minimizing their causes when tackling the exercise again in the future.

And again, as mentioned here in Lesson 0, you will continue to practice these exercises as part of your regular warmup routine.

Draw another 4 or 5 boxes

With the box finished... well, draw some more. Aim to draw 5 or 6 in each frame. Once you're finished drawing all of the boxes in a frame, you can optionally decide to fill one face on each box with hatching (the parallel diagonal lines shown here) to help clarify the result.

If you choose to do this however, it's extremely important that you not do so sloppily. Anything you choose to put time into deserves your full attention and care.

I also recommend doing this after all of the boxes in a frame have been drawn, so you can factor in which boxes are in front and which are behind.

The purpose of this exercise

The main purpose of this exercise is to introduce students to the idea of working with vanishing points, and how they're employed in relation to the objects we draw. In addition to this, it also serves as an introduction to something you'll be facing a great deal throughout this course - having a lot of lines present on the page, and having to sort through them.

This aspect will definitely be very difficult for students initially, but I guarantee you it gets easier the more you do it. I have students who, though they struggled initially here, upon reaching Lesson 6 were putting together absolute forests of perspective lines to construct very complex objects with extreme precision, so try not to feel discouraged if you find it challenging right now.

We take courses to get better at the things we're not good at, so having difficulty with something that is objectively difficult is only natural.

Example homework

Your results will look something like this.

<<< Boxes: Homework
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Getting Your Work Critiqued

Critiques on reddit.com Critiques on our discord chat server

Having your work reviewed by others is critical, as those who are just starting out aren't in a position to properly judge their own work, and won't be for quite some time. Don't be afraid to show your struggles - it's by analyzing your mistakes that we can help you grow. Perfect homework is not what we're looking for; we just need it to be complete.

There are currently two places you can get your work critiqued by the community - Reddit and our Discord Chat Server.

Both of these are completely free.

Private Patreon Critiques

Critiques on reddit.com

If you are interested in receiving extra help, I critique the work of those who support Drawabox on Patreon.

All of these private critiques are done through reddit, in specific threads where students post their work as a comment, including a link to their work (often hosted on Imgur, though most image hosts are okay).

My requirements are more strict than the free community critiques:

  • You must complete the lessons in order, in their entirety, starting from lesson 1
  • All work for the lesson must be completed - that means all exercises in the lesson, not just those in a given section
  • You may only move onto the next lesson once the previous has been marked complete
  • The work must be done in the tools recommended in the lesson

The minimum pledge for this lesson is $5.00/month. The orange button above will take you to the reddit thread for this lesson, you can post a link to your work there and I'll be notified. Once I catch the submission, I'll add it to this backlog spreadsheet.

Pledges are collected at the beginning of the following month, but you may start submitting your work immediately. If you're a new patron, I'll be reaching out to your shortly to collect your reddit username.

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