3 buildings

8/7/2019 3 Buildings

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Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

The text and original art in this document are the property of Robert Stites, all rights reserved

Kodak monolith, south of I 531, west of Roichester (RWS)


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Lesson Three: Buildings

So much for fundamentals. Now were ready to apply them to subject categories, starting with buildings.

To make a good realistic drawing, you need to get three things right:proportion, perspective, and shading. To

make a good, realistic painting, you need to do all these,plus make effective use of color. We didnt have to

worry about proportion or perspective in our paintings of the apple or the zinnias, but buildings are a differ-

ent story.

Proportion

A correctly proportioned painting shows all parts of the subject in their correct

apparent size, just as we see them. To measure proportions, use a technique

called sighting:1. Face the subject squarely and extend your arm straight out, all the way.

2. Hold a ruler or pencil at a right angle to your arm, alongside an edge of the

subject.

3. Close one eye, and mark the edges length with your thumb; thats your unit.

4. Measure the other edges in terms of that unit.

Try it with these rectangles. If youre looking at this on a computer display (rather

than a projected image), move back until your eye is about three feet away. Sight the height of the red figure,

then without moving your thumb, see how many times that unit will fit into the width. If you dont get 3, goback and try again. Are you facing the figure squarely? Is your arm straight out in front, all the way? Is your

pencil or ruler at right angles to your arm?

Did you close one eye?

Repeat for the blue figure, this time making

the width your unit. You should get 3 for

the height.

Stating the width first, ratios are 3:1, and

1:3. You can paint the figures any size, and

still keep them in proportion, so long as you

maintain these ratios.

Perspective adds the illusion of depth to a

painting by showing things the way we see

them. There are three methods, used sepa-

rately and in combination.

Sighting (RWS)


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LINEARPERSPECTIVE is what most people mean

when they say perspective. It is most apparent

in boxy subjects like a book, a box car, and

conventional buildings. It distinguishes near and

far objects by making the distant parts smaller,resulting in lines that slope into the distance.

How do you measure these slopes? One way is

to estimate their angle:

We know what a 90 angle looks like; a 45 is

half that, and a 30 is a third. By eye, we can

tell that the slope of the yellow line marking the top of the

police box is just a little short of 45 above horizontal.

Thats a good reasonableness test, but not very accurate. Theres

a better way called sighting for slopes which is a lot like thetechnique just described for measuring proportions. To use it,

close one eye and hold a pencil or ruler alongside the edge you

want to measure. Study the angle relative to a horizontal or

vertical edge of the paper, if its a photo, or a vertical edge of the

subject, if drawing from life, and transfer the slope to your

picture.

Sighting for slopes works because even an untrained eye perceives slopes

surprisingly well. You can tell when a picture is hanging crooked by as

little as 2, for example.

One point, two point You may hear these terms used in connection

with linear perspective. They refer to a way of measuring slopes that is

taught in art schools. It uses vanishing points and is accurate and

comprehensive, but more complicated than we need at this stage, so we

limit our treatment of it to the few examples shown on this page.

Its easy to guess what the terms mean by noticing that the perspective

lines for The Last Supper and The Civic Center converge at a singlepoint, but the perspective lines for the Police Box converge at two

points.

San Francisco Civic Center, in one point perspective.

photo by Jenny Huey,(Flickr)

The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci , showing one point perspective

Police Box in Scarborough showing two point

perspective; so called because the lines

converge at two points. photo: by Thomas

Tolkhiem (Flickr)


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Still Life showing overlap

photo byDan4th, flickr

Santa Monica Mountains showing aerial perspective;

photo, sbisson's photostream , Flickr

AERIALPERSPECTIVE results when a subject is seen through a

large volume of air. The many particles of dust, watervapor, and pollution the light encounters on its way to your

eye, cause distant objects look blue and hazy. Aerial

perspective is limited to long view landscapes, but for these

it is quite effective. You can easily distinguish between the

nearest and farthest peaks in this beautiful photograph.

OVERLAP is a way to show the relative position of objects seen at short to

middle distances. Still life artists find it particularly useful. Here, we

have no trouble telling that the apple is in front of the bottle, and the

grapes are in front of the apple


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Exercise:

Using hard pastel, a charcoal pencil, and the rough side of a half sheet of paper, trimmed to fit your drawing

board, make a blocked-in underpainting of the building seen in this photo.

Steps:

Put the building in propor-

tion by determining the ratio

of height to width.

1. Sight the height of the

near edge, and make this

your unit (you could use any

edge).

2. Sight the width of each

side in terms of this unit.

This gives us the ratio of height to the width for each of the two sides, and for the building as a whole.

One of two Kodak monoliths south of I-531, west of Rochester (RWS photo)


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Put the parts in linear perspective by drawing the slopes:

1. Draw the near vertical edge on your paper. You are creating a new unit now, which determines the size

and position of the building on the paper. You can make the picture as big as a billboard or as small as apostage stamp by varying the size of this unit. Using the ratios just measured, draw vertical lines to position

the distant vertical edges, left and rightthe heightof these far edges doesnt matter at this point.

Step 1; draw the near vertical edge (new unit) and position the left and right edges


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2. Draw the eye-level line, which falls about a quarter of the way down the light colored band around the

base of the building. How do I know? Two ways (1)the two sloped sides, when extended, converge on either

side at the eye level line (2) because I walked up to the building after taking the picture, and the level of my

eyes was about a quarter of the way down the light colored strip.

3. Draw the foundation lines by eye. They have very little slope because they are so close to the eye-level line.

4. Sight the upper slopes on each side, and draw.

5. Inspect, make final adjustments by eye; clean up.

6. Block in the colors.


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You now have a blocked-in underpainting in correct proportion and perspective, and can pat yourself on the

back. You would be surprised to know how many amateur artists (and even some professionals) dont

know how to do this.

Short Break

Assignment

Working from the underpainting just prepared, finish the picture using charcoal pencil and soft pastels.

The Blocked in underpainting


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Steps:

1. Sharpen the edges of the building by useing a paper mask. (Lay a sheet of paper along an unevenly

drawn edge, so you can erase the edge without erasing much of any thing else. Adjust the paper, and use

it as a mask to draw the sky where it meets the building; repeat to draw the building edge .

2. Adjust the sky, adding a few soft clouds.

3. Adjust the lawn, giving it some color variety and texture.

4. Add a tree or two, and shrubbery.

5. Add a something to give the building scale; a jogger, a cyclist, or a vehicle (I used a truck).

6. Touch up, sign and date.

Footnote: In case youre wondering why I chose such an unusual subject, it was to avoid the repetitive details that characterize most

buildings. An office building typically has multiple floors of one window after another. Residential buildings also have their share of

repetitive features which take a long time to paint, and quickly reach a point at which they are no longer instructive. This building is

free of such details, enabling us to concentrateon proportion and perspectivethe important parts of this lesson. (RWS)

Revised 2/6/2011

Kodak Monolith RWS


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