Learning to draw? where to start?

[-james-]

Hi guys, just had a look through this section of the forum for the first time and must say that standard of work is just outstanding! Anyway, it inspired me to try drawing some aircraft for myself. Here is a sketch of a phantom i did earlier, I did this from memory so it may be a bit out of proportion :/

The big problem areas are the left wing tip, and the rear just dont seem to 'fit', has anybody got any tips or hints on how to get the perspective right?

Thanks,

James

[thx6667]

Practise, practise, practise... get some cheap sketch books and just fill them up with doodles and exercises, even if its just drawing cubes, cones and spheres. Don't go for finished art, just scribble, draw Phantoms and keep drawing them.

Edited January 30, 2010 by Jonathan Mock

[T-Tango]

The only advice I can give being an ex Technical Illustrator is see if you can Google for some Perspective Grids they will give you your correct perspective, overlay them with tracing paper and practice, as that Phantom doesn't look too bad for a first effort. Good Luck.

Just found this, might be of help to you.

Pespective Grids

Edited January 30, 2010 by T-Tango

[NeilF92]

Get yourself a cheap book on perspective in art - most artist shops have some - study the topic and apply to aircraft .

Your Phantom has all the right shapes - you just need to study perspective - it might seem daunting but it's pretty straightforward.

Oh - and try copying photos - that way you will quickly see how perspective works - drawing aircraft from memory isn't likely to produce great results - no matter how well you know an aircraft - been drawing planes for 50 years or more and wouldn't consider one off the top of my head for anything other than a rough composition idea.

Try here

http://www.design-skills.org/perspective_drawing.html

Edited January 30, 2010 by NeilF92

[MarkSH]

It's always difficult to draw from memory unless you're blessed with a photographic memory. Try sketching one of your model kits, don't expect to get it down straight away, even the best artists will map out the sketch with construction lines first. The main thing whether it be an oil painting or a pencil sketch is to start light and build it up slowly once you are confident of the perspective and proportions.

[-james-]

Hey guys, little bit of an update, bought myself a 130gsm paper a5 sketchpad, and "How to draw everything" by Barrington Barber

Ive just been doing some of the excercises in the book So far so good

I do agree, the best place to start is always at the beginning

[John Aero]

Hey guys, little bit of an update, bought myself a 130gsm paper a5 sketchpad, and "How to draw everything" by Barrington Barber

Ive just been doing some of the excercises in the book So far so good

I do agree, the best place to start is always at the beginning

When drawing elipses, engines, noses, wheels etc remember that the axis of the elipse is always at right angles to the axle of the body, tube cowl etc. Try and find a copy of Frank Wootons "How to draw Aeroplanes" or newer equivalent. Put a vanishing point on your paper and direct all your perspective to that.

John

[-james-]

Thanks Shall have a look on amazon etc for a copy of that book

[NeilF92]

Thanks Shall have a look on amazon etc for a copy of that book

That looks a promising start you've made there James - keep at it and you'll quickly gain in confidence and expertise.

I've never really tired of drawing aircraft - started at around 4yrs old - 61 years ago ! Frank Wooton's book was an inspiration to me around the age of ten - had it permanently out of the school library and studied the ink off the pages.

[~Dan~]

Thats pretty damn good seeing as you don't seem to have used any of the tricks!

General perspective is pretty simple, and there is plenty of reference on the subject. The trick to doing something as complex as a car or airplane is to break it down into simple shapes and then transpose these into your scale grid.

I'm sorry I haven't got a scanner at home to show you, but basically, THE best way to do it would be to have plans of the plane. Make a copy of the plans and break up outline of the fuselage into basic shapes, it may be a basic tube, or more likely three tubes, and a cone at each end. Then scale these in.

Just tackle one simple geometric shape at a time to build up the basic shape, then use basic geometric shapes to fill in the detail, then start smoothing it in. It is almost like carving out of a block of wood.

The thing is... once you start down the route of technical drawing... you really need to see it through, the point at which you can start 'winging it' comes fairly near the end. And what you want to do is actually quite advanced.

...I looked through 10 pages of youtube videos and found nothing other than the basics. They teach you how to draw a 'city block' in 3D, but that's all squares and rectangles. There isn't anything I found that would prepare you for a complex shape like a bubble cockpit.

So what you do is this. You get the overall dimensions of the bubble and you 'cube' it. Draw this cube onto your drawing in place. Then you grid this out from your plan. (it helps if you at least have a centre line). It's like when you were a kid and you scaled up a drawing by putting a grid over it and copying each square to a bigger square on a bigger grid. Only you are copying to a grid that is in perspective.

This is really hard to explain without pictures. But hopefully someone else will know where to find some!

[-james-]

Wow! Thanks for all the info Dan Really appreciate the effort to help

Heres an example of some of the techniques about shading I have learnt up to now put into practice

Not particularly good, but its a start

Ill give some of the techniques that you have mentioned a go Dan, and post the results

Thanks again, James

[~Dan~]

No problem, it's nice to see somebody having a go. I'm sure it's a dying art... everybody uses computers these days!

Anyway, I was thinking about this while peeling potatoes, and it occurred to me that if you are going to have a go at this, I may as well pass on some 'good practice' tips just to make it all that much easier.

If you are going to do perspective, it's worth getting a drawing board. I'd go to a DIY centre which cuts for you, and get them to cut a peice of Conti board into about 2'x3'. You'd get two out of a 2'x8' sheet. You can hide them away at the back of a wardobe without them taking up too much space.

Get a pad of detail paper. A3 would probably do you, but you might want to do A2. What you do is take a square and carefully draw an A3 rectangle on your board and then a border a quarter inch inside that.

Then what you do is carfuly tape your detail paper in place and trace out that border as accurately as you can. You then mark your vanishing points at the edge of the board and label them something like 'A' & 'A'. Then draw a notes box in the corner of your paper and note that you used vanishing points 'A' & 'A'. (Over time you may end up with loads of vp's marked on your drawing board).

You can then start drawing out the basic shapes. What you notice is that as you go on, you end up with loads of guide lines... So if you end up trying to do your drawing all on one piece of paper, you end up in a right mess. So you start the fusalage one one peice of paper, and when you are reasonably happy with it, overlay another sheet and do the wings... remember to carefully trace that border on the new sheet of paper as this is your registration marks.

You can use separate sheets of paper for all the sections like undercarriage and cockpit. You don't have to use full size sheets for all the parts, use smaller bits but put in registration marks.

The beauty is that if you mess something up, you can just throw away that bit of paper and not have to start all over again. When all the parts are done, you can tape them down to the bottom sheet in turn, and trace them onto an overlay. So your final drawing actually has no rubbed out guide lines at all, and you keep all your guides.

The other beauty when doing something like aircraft is that you can different versions of the same plane by just changing some of the overlays.

Another thing you can do is to make extra tracings, cut them out and use them as masks if you want to have a go at shading with an air-brush!

I've made it all sound like hard work now haven't I?

[-james-]

Haha, ideas come to us at the strangest of times dont they

Just tried some of the techniques you said about simplifying the object, Ive only done simple things but I can see what you mean from them

Ive got a piece of wood that I could use as a drawing board, it was part of a large bookshelf but I removed one shelf to fit my 1/32 phantom on it

I only have A5 and A4 paper atm, but can get some larger stuff Im going to speak to my engineering teacher about perspective drawing and see what tips he can give me

So, where can I buy detail paper from?

Thanks again,

James

[~Dan~]

I was just about to say that you have some natural talent there so should get on fine, but....you have an Engineering teacher? You should find this a doddle if you have an engineering background!

I haven't worked on a drawing board for over 10 years, so I don't have a source for detail paper, no doubt the price has come down since you have been able to get such things online.

[-james-]

Haha, with engineering in school, the most we have done is drawing isometric cubes lol, anything else Ive learnt on my own

Just tried another drawing, this time a phantom, again from memory so not particularly accurate (just a rough sketch to try techniques) but trust me to make it too big for the paper! But i kept drawing anyway

James

[NeilF92]

A big improvement - but why keep drawing from memory when there are thousands of Phantom images you could copy?

[-james-]

Because my sister had the laptop at the time Her and her friends falling out on facebook.... I hate that site lol

[Col.]

With regard to keeping the subject within the paper James; figure out where you want the extremities of your object to be on the paper and mark those points lightly then do a very rough and light outline sketch of it, from there begin working on individual large sections and shapes and gradually refine down to smaller details within each section. Don't be afraid to take rough dimension measurements from an object by holding the pencil at arms length and using your thumb to mark a distance then transfer to the paper, looks like a cliche but handy (pardon the pun) way of keeping things in scale.

[NeilF92]

Because my sister had the laptop at the time Her and her friends falling out on facebook.... I hate that site lol

Yep I have one of those sister people as well so I know how it is.

If you have Photoshop - or maybe some of the paint softwares it is possible to turn photos into line drawings - this saves a lot of ink when printing off and gives you an accurate image to trace and fill out.

[-james-]

But tracing is cheating isnt it!

and sisters.....eugh lol

James

[-james-]

James

[~Dan~]

But tracing is cheating isnt it!

Absolutely not. There is no such thing as cheating. You do whatever you want to do, and need to do to get the result that you want.

Tracing is just another technique among many.

...I once had an art teacher tell me that using a ruler was cheating, show how much teachers know!

[-james-]

Fair enough then I had just always regarded it as cheating due to all the hard work been done for you

Thanks for all the help and advice everyone, made an interesting evening has doing all this drawing

James

[NeilF92]

Fair enough then I had just always regarded it as cheating due to all the hard work been done for you

Thanks for all the help and advice everyone, made an interesting evening has doing all this drawing

James

Tracing something will let you compare how you tend to draw from memory with how things actually appear in 2D and hopefully your perception of perspective will develop.

Tracing a photo isn't cheating as long as it's for your own learning purposes and not to produce something for sale or plonk it on the WEB in high definition where others can copy.

I try to use my own photo's of the real thing , or my models , or create 3D projections to avoid getting involved with others photos. However , for working up ideas in the privacy of my own home I'll use anything that fits the bill.

If you have a digi cam and some plastic models you can create your own reference library for free.

Professional artists sometimes ask photographers for permission to use their photo as a reference - otherwise they'd be in breach of copyright i.e. cheating .

Just messing about at home isn't going to hurt anyone.

[kev67]

The most famous artists in time used to trace, some had a particular device that allowed the subject to fall on the canvas similar to a projector that they were able to sketch the outline