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Measuring Techniques

Ponz

Oak Hall School

Robert Ponzio

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Measuring Devices

Example of Rendering Device

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Rendering and Measuring Techniques

Albrecht Durer’s Measuring Device (1538 A.D.) enabled the artist to accurately render a foreshortened figure by looking through a grid. The grid of the device correlated directly to the grid on the paper.

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Application of Durer’s Grid System

Transferring the image to paper.

Using this device, the artist would render each square of the grid onto the correlating square on the paper.

The result would be a perfectly rendered figure in the proper proportions.

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Measuring by Hand Consistency is the Key!

• View figure by sitting, outstretching your arm and locking the elbow for consistency.• Determine figure proportions by comparing height and width.• Imagine how grid would look around the object.• Plot in points by relating the figure to itself and the imagined grid.

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Relating Details to Proportions• Plot in measured points and elements on your paper in relationship to

imagined Grid.

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Determining Angles

• Rotate pencil parallel to the body like a steering wheel.

• With arm extended and elbow locked, mark angle and drop it on your page.

• All angles of this cube should relate to perspective

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Other Measuring Devices:The Camera Obscura

• The Camera Obscura is a device in which a lens focused the image of the subject on to the canvas or paper, allowing the artist to trace the outline of the scene directly on to the support.

• Vermeer is believed to have been one of the first artists to experiment with the camera obscura, and it was certainly in widespread use by the time of Canaletto in the eighteenth century.