Simple tips on how to draw people in perspective: Foreshortening Pt 2

hey everyone so in this that hopefully will help you to make it easier for you to draw the you're in perspective now that can be one of the most challenging things for most people but I think just like what I do with my what I what I did with my home practice is that I try to master or be proficient with drawing the figure in terms of simple forms first and then afterwards you can flesh those simple forms with you know some basic knowledge of anatomy and so on so of course it helps to learn to look at the figure in real life there's nothing that can replace that and you you have yourself as the best model possible and that's what I did you know I looked at myself in the mirror and see how the forms overlap and that would help my basic understanding of anatomy and so on but as far as you know understanding how things are distorted and so on in foreshortened it helps to know some basic things and that's what i want to share with you in this video and things that you can apply with your own imagination just to practice and get better at this stuff now of course when you draw the figure in perspective it becomes foreshortened so let's actually look at that first and then we can actually go on to discussing overlap because that's also very important so say we have a form like that that's a cylinder alright you can see that this end is the same height as this end yeah alright so at this point we're matching that we're looking at this like this so basically none of the other ends are closer to us than the other so they both appear to be the same now if we rotate this like so then it actually shifts so now we're going to have this happening so we're imagining that the cylinder has rotated now notice that the distance between here is less see so almost this distance shrinks a little bit and also the other observation is that this end gets smaller so the end that's further away from us gets smaller the one that's closer to us is larger that's a key observation if you're drawing an arm right and the arm is like like an L shaped like this so we know that there's not necessarily any foreshortening happening here however when it actually moves forward or way that's when foreshortening occurs so before we actually go into that let's discuss another thing now let's look at cross contour lines I've emphasized cross contour lines in my previous tutorials over and over and over again I can't stress them enough because they are very important to giving your drawings a sense of forms orientation and and reinforcing their volume and structure now if you have a form like this see these lines the curvature of these lines think of them like arrows okay if something is pointing that way see the arrow is going to be like so if it's pointing in this way it's going to be like so so this is very important when you're paying attention to forms and the orientation so for example if we have this simple let's say this is the cylinder we're looking at it straight on so we can see the top or the bottom however if we tilt it forward well the top forward right so now it's going to look something like this see so now we're seeing the top side and the bottom side is being hidden away from us vice versa if we flick it the other way say we have it like so right you see so by doing this basically what I'm saying is just by having paying attention to the curvature of the cross contour lines or the edges these lines help us to determine the orientation so that's something that's very subtle and sometimes we can overlook it but it's very important to creating you know the illusion of foreshortened forms okay so going back again so when I was discussing if you're drawing an arm like this right and I'm going to be using simple forms like that see now if the arm tilts forward we're going to have something like so all right you see what I'm saying because now it is facing this way so that's something is useful to keep in mind as well now another thing that's very important to keep in mind is that with drawing things in perspective we have to pay attention to overlap okay so if you have three forms like this if we do like this I'm communicating something about each one that this a is in front of B and B is in front of see if I have it like this I'm saying B and in front of a and C if I have it like this I'm saying C and a are in front of B that's the importance of overlap okay now when it comes to forms in perspective you have to also keep that in mind so not only are you paying attention to what's being getting smaller away from you and you also have to think about the shortening of the length of things as they recede or project from space you also have to think about overlap because if you don't you can be it can be very confusing now going back to this simple example here i illustrate it in a very subtle way here this overlap see if I didn't do this let's say I did something like this so I'm saying this is coming towards us and then we have this here right but what if I had this like this see how confusing that is so basically you have to make sure that your overlaps and everything is consistent and this is especially useful when you're creating forms from your own imagination because it's endless things you can do with this now another important thing that's very useful to keep in mind is of course thinking of the rectangular prism or just a prism in general it could be a cube it could be a rectangular prism it could be something just in terms of a block now this is very useful because it enables you to think off the container space the space that holds a particular thing and when you're drawing the human figure this is very very useful concept and you're going to see how I'm going to apply that in a second now in addition to this is good to think of how to draw a simple square in perspective so remember I shared before that when you're drawing a square once you put the cross like that that tells you where the horizontal Center is and where the vertical Center is and of course when you're drawing things in perspective the same principle applies so now this enables you to be able to find where that midpoint is going to be so you can be able to determine where the half point of something is going to be when it's receding in space and that's regardless of how far it's receding in space you can still use the same concept just draw that X and that will give you a rough estimate of where that midpoint is so here I found that midpoint so if I'm drawing something that's receding in space like the human figure I can now say okay I have an idea of where the half point of the head is so the head is going to be say I'm going to use a say a quarter of the space so now I can draw another X I find where this is I know the head is going to be here you see intuitively we may not do this because it seems like it's too big but when something is seen in perspective that's actually what's going to happen so we know that the shoulder is going to be here and the halfway point of the body is going to be here right so this gives is a good idea when we're actually drawing things in perspective how to control the distortion in size and space now important thing to be aware of and it goes back to cross contour line is if you have something like this right that's it we have a form like this if I'm looking at it straight on of course it's going to be like this that's the halfway point eyes are found here however when you're looking at seeing something that's rotated away from you right so for example like with this now let's say we're looking at the top of the head right so now the eyes are not going to be halfway anymore the eyes are going to be further down so the eyes may actually be down here and then the top of the head we're actually looking at here see so it's not like this so looking at something like this you have to remember that the eyes are not going to be halfway the half point is actually going to be further down so use the eyes may actually be down here and this is the top of the head that you're looking at see so now it doesn't look so weird and see how this is just a simple shape that's drawn in perspective the same thing can be applied me thinking of the entire figure so now even though this is just a flat shape you can actually give it some depth and then it becomes something more like so then you can actually think of the figure in a more three-dimensional way like so so now you're seeing the top of the shoulders you see it's not just a flat shape like this now it's three-dimensional so I'm imagining the torso as something like so the arms are now going to be cylinders likewise the pelvis and the legs projecting from that see and the head is actually now not a flat circle but actually a three-dimensional form you see so that's what I'm actually this is the basis that you keep in mind it's good to go over these individually to kind of reinforce the idea in your mind and then you apply this when it comes to drawing the figure in perspective and I'm going to do three or four examples for you to see how I'd actually apply these concepts and you know drawing the figure in various poses and then afterwards is when you can use your anatomical knowledge you know information that you learn about how the body is actually designed and then kind of you know weave these things together to make it to more realistic but I think if you're beginning with drawing or playing with the idea of drawing the figure in perspective now I feel like it's best to start with these simple forms [Music] [Music] see so I'm just having fun with this all I'm doing essentially this playing over and over is I'm using these basic forms of like for the arms and for the legs I'm using a cylinder if I want the arm to bend backwards then I have this one project out and this one comes in C so now by doing that I have this will overlap this so I can make this one be coming forward I can make it going backwards so since I'm having the form that's closer to me from one overlap or closer to me then form two so it overlaps form two if it were the other way around then it would be like this so this form would actually overlap this one so then I'm communicating a different relationship and there are some of the key things to keep in mind you know when you're drawing things in perspective is that you have to make the form diminution size and if you notice here I'm not necessarily trying to be accurate per se what I'm doing is playing around with the relationships of the masses the main forms and it will be believable that's all you need to do make sure that you have a sense of how things are diminishing make sure your overlaps or important and make sure that the distortion seems about right so for example if if you're seeing the leg is like this right if the leg now rotates towards us counterclockwise then that means the leg is now has to be shorter than this distance C so it has to actually be more like so see so I have made the distance less and by doing this I'm actually conveying that the form is facing towards us and not away like this one vice versa if I were to rotate it in the other direction like so then it would go like this and notice that again the length here is shorter it is sure this length now the new length is sure than the length length when it's just facing sideways so if the form is facing away or towards us it diminishes in length so by doing some of these things I believe you will have more than you need in your arsenal of tools and techniques to really start having lots of fun which is coming up with different poses and really just exploring drawing the figure perspective remember now you don't have to concern yourself with anatomical accuracy and all those things you just want to be able to have it seem believable none of these are active or anatomically sound but they are believable and they're believable believable enough for me to convey an idea and that's the key thing that you want to focus on don't be caught up so much in the intricacies of the principles because no one will ever get everything 100% right never all right focus on the overall idea and at the end of the day have fun have fun all right and that's the cool thing that this allows you to do focus on just basic shapes basic forms and the relationships between them and you'll be well on your way all right so hopefully you found this useful you found something that you could apply to your own work or you were just entertain whatever it is you know please give the video a thumbs up appreciate it and again thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Alphonso Dunn

Views: 214,613

Rating: 4.9798765 out of 5

Keywords: alphonso dunn, pen and ink, drawing, sketching, drawing tips, tutorials, foreshortening, how to draw, drawing tutorial

Id: wApKArpbxmY

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2017