This project had been among those with which I felt most comfortable in part 3 Drawing Outdoors, because I had the feeling that I know and can apply basic perspective rules. I wasn’t very fond of the course materials suggestion to use rulers to get really straight lines, but otherwise I appreciate perspective and always try to get it right. The project has two exercises, I made the two drawings, found that it worked and thought that was it, on to the next. But in the assignment feedback, it was commented that those two drawings were not enough for judging my abilities in perspective. So I decided to make more drawings in my review.
The two exercises had been
– An interior view, using central perspective
– An exterior view, using two-point perspective
My idea was to walk through the house and search for views that would work in central perspective. Then in a second step, I’d go outside to look out for a building view in two-point perspective.
Central perspective – View from the living room onto the stairway upwards
The first drawing was the view from the living room onto the stairs leading upwards. I used a waterproof fineliner (0.3 mm). This meant that I wouldn’t be able to correct errors by rubbing out, and I think this affected my drawing style. Maybe it would have been a good idea to sketch out the central lines of the room to have a general orientation, then draw in the elements with the fineliner.
I had briefly thought about this when I started, but did not want to work twice over the drawing as I had done with an earlier townscape study. In that drawing, I had made the entire drawing in pencil, and then re-worked all the lines with black pen. I wasn’t aware that there was no need to do everything in pencil. So maybe next time I’ll do a sketchy outline first.
I think the drawing is quite successful. There’s just a cheating element with the middle cat tree. I think I have placed it too close to the center, and then the top of it did not match to its bottom and I ended up with a hole between the high scratchpost to the left and the cat tree. I filled this sketchily with some invented elements and the error it isn’t too prominent, but it doesn’t deptict what was actually there.
Before beginning to draw, I had spent quite some time analysing what I wanted to include in the drawing. The view was a relatively large section of what I saw when sitting on the sofa. I wanted to fit in the two recessed lights in the ceiling as well as both ceiling edges to the left and right. I also wanted to include to the right the adjacent wall with the door into the bathroom. Including all this onto a sketchbook page was only possible if I made the drawing on a relatively small scale.
I thought about the alternative of drawing on an A3 sheet, but then decided rather to make several smaller drawings and maybe later make a larger and more worked out drawing from one of the sketches. The first view had interesting tonal effects, but my primary goal was to practice central perspective and therefore I wanted to make only line drawings. Nevertheless I did include some tonality. For example, the stair handles are really black and giving them a bit of tone helped to clarify the middle section of the drawing.
Central perspective: View from the back terrace
I discovered this view when I was upstairs, looking out of the window. But the window has metal bars for protection, which I found disturbing. But the weather was relatively mild (in November!) and I went outside, walked up the fire stairs and placed myself on the small balcony outside of the window. So I had the view without bars.
As planned earlier, I began with a pencil outline sketch, then switched to the black fineliner to make the actual drawing. I think I made too many details in pencil already, but the sketch was helpful by providing orientation when drawing with the fineliner.
While drawing, I realized that there were actually not so many angled lines in the central perspective as I had thought. So I began searching for clues that could bring out the perspective and found they were also in the tiny details like window sills. I found drawing the windows difficult, both the larger ones in the mid-ground and the smaller ones in the background apartment buildings. But I’m relatively satisfied with the solutions I found. The closer windows have more details, and for the windows further away I tried to develop shortcuts and this seems to work for me.
I did not dare to indicate the brickwork of the mid-ground building. I was tempted because it is so characteristic, but I did not want to spoil the otherwise rather clear drawing by adding clutter. I felt the brickwork should only be suggested, only slightly more defined than the windows in the background, but I did not know how to do this. So I thought to leave that out for now, which would also be in line with the focus on perspective, rather than detail, and maybe make a separate study on depicting brickwork.
The review for this project isn’t completed because I haven’t yet made the two-point-perspective drawings I intended to make, and I’d also like to develop one of the drawings into more complete study. But again I’m running into time problems due to work commitments. It is a very unsatisfactory situation and I feel that working full time leaves not enough room for serious artwork. The leasure time I have is barely sufficient to rest from work, and it’s very difficult to maintain the energy for drawing.
Concluding remarks
I think both drawings work quite nicely, although I encountered some difficulties. One was an inclination to produce “loose ends” – ending to draw and loosing the connection to context. This happened in the interior view where I seem to have placed the central scratch tree not correctly but did not realize this until I worked the elements further right towards the center of the drawing. My solution was to make a preparator pencil outline sketch and this worked well in the second drawing.
In the second drawing, I think the objects on the left rooftop are slightly out of scale and not entirely correct in perspective. I’m not sure why this happened. What worked well for me in this drawing was how I developed shortcuts for the apartment building details in the background.