How to Draw Accurate Proportions

one of the most common challenges for artists drawing from reference is accurate proportions in this episode I'm going to show you how you can train your mind to improve your accuracy tools you can use along the way and most importantly how you can give yourself quick feedback so you can improve faster [Music] when we're establishing proportions in our drawing we're usually using a combination of eyeballing and measuring eyeballing is just using our best judgment this is something that will take time to develop so it's good to start practicing that now to improve your intuition without relying on measuring everything a big part of that is going to be learning how to see what's actually there and not let your brain misinterpret what you're seeing you're drawing an eye and you have an idea of what an eye looks like and you end up drawing that idea instead of what this eye actually looks like to do this successfully you have to set aside any pre-existing ideas of your subject initially it's helpful to pretend that this is not an eye it's just a shape so what is that abstract shape you'll often hear artists talk about flipping their reference upside down to help ignore those pre-existing ideas this does does help it's effective but I never really liked doing this instead I tried to get good at switching into that mode in my mind measuring when eyeballing isn't enough or when accuracy is crucial we can always fall back on measuring using tools like Plumb lines angles sighting and units now I do want to mention that there is something called the site size method which involves a pretty strict process of transferring the scale of the subject you're seeing from a specific vantage point we're not going to be using that in the drawing Basics course broker.com drawing instead we're going to use comparative measuring which involves transferring relationships of shapes in your subject to your drawing doesn't matter what size your drawing is as long as the proportional relationships are the same then the drawing is accurate so let's go over some of the things we can use used to help us measure better citing citing is using your pencil to measure what's in front of you or in a photo explain this in detail in a video I made a while back so I encourage you to go back and watch it link is in the description basically you hold out your arms straight make sure the elbow is locked tilt your head towards your shoulder close one eye align the tip of the pencil with one point on the subject and the top of your thumb on another point take that unit and relate it to something else on the subject now you're not going to transfer that size onto your page remember this isn't the site size method instead you're going to use that same relationship in your drawing I measured that the center is about at his at his his belt uh his belt I can mark the top of his head bottom of his feet and now I know that his belt will be here one measurement down and 999 to go plumblines another great tool is a Plumb line not that it's just a vertical line artists used to hang a lead weight on a string to measure a vertical line and the Latin word for lead is plum bum so Plumb line we don't really use strings and weights anymore we just eyeball vertical lines the point is to find alignments you drop a vertical line or even a horizontal whatever who cares and you look for things that align with that other thing this is great to know because you just make sure that those points also align in your drawing angles angles are kind of like Plumb lines except they're more difficult it's easier to measure a perfect vertical or horizontal but getting the exact angle of a diagonal takes practice the benefit of angles is that we can measure the angle relationship of any two things not just the things that align vertically and horizontally when you can rely on your angle drawing skills your measuring game gets stronger girls like guys who can measure angles girls only want boyfriends who have great skills units it's helpful to use something for from your reference as a unit of measurement it could be anything but a common one in figure drawing for example is the height of the head when you use one common unit to compare the size relationships of everything in your drawing it helps to keep everything working together you can have stuff over here relating to other stuff over here and then you have other things here relating to these things here and then things from these two areas might not relate to each other but when everything relates back to the Head things throughout the drawing are more likely to align now that doesn't mean that you should just use that one unit to measure everything but it's nice to have something to fall back on and double check other measurements straights and slightly curved C's we already went over this in the line lessons straights are easier to control you're just thinking of placement and angle when you have to consider the curvature of a complex line that's much more to juggle at the same time a lot of artists start their lands using only straights and slightly curved C's sometimes you just need that extra little bit you know negative shapes sometimes you might find problems with your positive shapes by observing the negative shapes positive shapes are the shapes that make up the object you're drawing negative shapes are the ones around or between if I reach up to scratch my armpit this hole between my body and my arm is a negative shape seeing how that negative shape looks different gives me a clue to fix the shape of the arm even if you're drawing from imagination you should still consider those negative shapes and design them to look good there are other tools that people use like rulers proportional dividers viewfinders gridding these are totally valid and you can certainly use them personally I trained with just a pencil as my measuring device because you always have your pencil and if you can get good enough to draw accurately with just the pencil and your eyeballs then you can draw accurately anywhere at any time you don't have to be prepared with all your gadgets big to small another important concept that I stress a lot is working big to small you can start with the biggest shape like an envelope which contains your whole subject and then break that down into smaller and smaller shapes but you don't have to always start with that biggest shape you can start with the medium shapes design those to look good and relate to each other accurately on the page for example I can draw the shape of the head shape of the neck the Hat the shoulders these are not the biggest shapes but they're big enough for me to have only a few shapes that I can control to determine the composition on the page before I move on to the details sometimes an envelope is very useful but sometimes you might prefer to just start with the relationships of several major shapes either way the beginning of a land should establish the major proportional relationships on your page when you draw for example the head of a figure drawing you need to consider the size and location of that head shape it's easy to get distracted by the details of that specific shape and make it too big or in the wrong place a common mistake in life drawing is to have a figure slowly get bigger or smaller as it goes down or to start with a shape that's too big and run out of space for the rest of the body or default to putting it in the middle of the page and end up with a bunch of empty space and a bad composition when you're done establishing those biggest shapes then you're going to break them down into the major shapes within each initially you start by breaking down the whole page now you focus on the face and break down the face into its major shapes for example the big Shadow shape that represents the front and side of the head the eye sockets the big rectangle for the container of the nose and some others depending on your subject then you can focus in even further and break down the eye socket shape into an eyebrow eyelids the white of the eye and the iris when you think you're done with the linear land then you can move on to shading and even in the shading process you're going to be breaking things down into smaller and smaller shapes really small shapes like a few shapes for the tear duct a tiny highlight the pupil a few indications of eyelashes the hairs on the eyebrow if you want to get that detailed but you see how none of that really matters if you start with the wrong head shape so if you struggle with proportions I strongly encourage you to hold back on the shading for a little bit spend that time doing more Lanes the beginning of a drawing is very important so it makes sense to practice doing that to make sure that you're good at starting your drawings strong self-critique for a rapid feedback loop as you're doing the land remember to step back or lean back and observe the whole drawing fight against tunnel vision also periodically step away reboot your brain and come back with a fresh perspective sometimes you might come back and immediately see a bunch of mistakes after you're done with the land and you think you've made it as accurate as you can now you can check yourself to get instant feedback we don't always have access to an instructor whose eyeballs we can borrow but most of us have access to a camera and a computer a really important part of improving your observation skills is increasing the speed and frequency of feedback I used to do this a lot I would take a good quality undistorted photo or scan of my drawing take it into Photoshop and overlay it on top of the photo reference as a multiply layer if it's hard to see I would make my lines into some bright color the way I do that is select all copy the drawing hide it create a new layer fill it red create a mask alt click on the mask paste my drawing into the mask invert it with Ctrl or command I and click back on the layer sometimes if my lines are light I'll boost the contrast with a levels adjustment it's a lot of steps but it only takes a minute then I just sit there for 10 minutes and observe all my mistakes getting this feedback is super important it helped me improve my proportion accuracy I hope it will help you too if you enjoyed this video check out my drawing Basics course you can find everything about it over at program.com drawing it's a very in-depth course for beginner is learning how to draw and for those of you who want to strengthen your fundamentals every project has a level two version so if you're not a beginner you can still take this course because the fundamentals are so important and for those of you who already have premium thank you so much these free lessons are only possible because of our premium students thank you all I appreciate you I'll see you next time

Channel: Proko

Views: 116,895

Keywords: how to draw, artist, art, tutorial, drawing tutorial, learn to draw, video tutorial, art school, art class, art training, drawing lesson, art lesson, learning art

Id: 1J7RQvKnWf4

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023