DRAWING with 2 P’s

A drawing is usually groundwork for a painting, whether it is watercolor or oil. Therefore it is very important to pay attention to your sketch because it will greatly affect the outcome of the final painting.

Some artists can render vibrant and realistic colors but have difficulty in drawing proportions and perspectives. These two are one of the basic elements in a drawing or sketch. Proportion gives a drawing that normal look especially when drawing the human body. You don’t want that other arm longer and bigger than the other do you? And you don’t want that left eye seem too big for the face. Basically there is a rule on proportion. This is called the Golden Mean. Our upper body’s proportion to our lower body is 1:1.6. An average man is more or less as tall as 7 heads stacked together. There are other theories about the proportion of the human body.

Perspective, on the other hand, gives your drawing a sense of depth and distance. This composes the foreground, midground, and the background. An object, when viewed from afar would look smaller than its actual size. Perspective can be achieved in different ways. One of which is by making the farther object smaller and shorter than the nearer one. Another way is by overlapping the object that is nearer over the farther one. The third way of achieving perspective is by blurring the farther object. The farther it goes, the lesser detail there will be.

Perspective can also affect proportion. For example, a man’s arm, when extended forward or backward would appear shorter than its actual length. The hand that is extended forward would appear bigger and the far one, smaller. This is called foreshortening.

I will soon post some of my artworks that show these two elements.

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