Creating Three Dimensions

Hi there,

I'm back already. My schedule is still manageable this early in the semester, but once I get toward the last few weeks, with all the long essays and projects due, and the tests, I will have very little, if any, time to blog, and around April and May the entries will probably have to go on the backburner for a while, until the semester ends. Anyway, for the new few weeks I should have a good amount of time open for blogging.

Anyway, I had some time open in between classes yesterday, around 11-ish. I was able to grab about 45 minutes to an hour at a table on the top floor of my campus's main library. Most of the floors have this big study area, with a huge section of windows looking North (away from the ocean), but on the top floor, they have these tables with these really comfortable chairs right next to the windows, and from there, you have this spectacular view of the whole LA area, all the way up to the San Gabriel Mountains.

The inside of the Library's top floor study area (taken from my Iphone).

My main goal was to get some reading done. I was doing some play reading from The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh, and Death of a Salesman. The Pillowman is pretty dark and twisted comedy, but there is lots of interesting character development in it, which really makes it worth reading. Today, I really got into reading Death of a Salesman. I worked with it about a year ago, and I've just gotten it out again. Anyway, I was staring out the window, with my personal notebook out. It was a fully-illuminated day, and the mountains were clearly visible, in all their towering presence.

This was the view from the Library's top floor. This was also taken from my Iphone. Blow it up, examine carefully the view in the picture, and then look at my drawing of it, seen again below for comparison's sake.

If you blow it up, you can see some of the small details which were nevertheless done with care. This was a more rough, approximate rendering of a scene than I usually do. I do not always do the grand drawings with the full coloring job. However, I knew this one was worth putting on the blog from the time I was working on it yesterday morning. The point of drawing it so rough was to create the visual feeling of depth, of three dimensional space and objects, on the page.

I did a similar work about a year ago. When I was up in San Francisco, on my own last April, I was walking past Ghiardelli Square, and I found this view that looked north across the Bay, with Alcatraz, and the hills up in Marin County (toward Sausalito and Novato) were nice and green.

I took this picture to give you a sense of it. I decided, however, that this wouldn't do on its own, and given that I sometimes like to challenge myself, since this challenge is what makes creative work vital, alive, I sketched this in as little time as I could do it. This is the "finished" product of what I came up with.


All told, this work took twenty minutes to complete. I was sitting on these big concrete, stadium-style steps, in the shade overlooking Ghiardelli Square and the Bay for that time, while I was working on it. I put this up because I took a similar approach here. I was trying to give the feeling that the mountain actually goes back in space, that there is this large bay between you and it. Here, I had to do it as quickly as possible, so I used the bare minimum of lines I needed, indicating the form of whatever it was that I was seeing. An example of this would be, if you were trying to draw someone's arm, and it was coming toward your eye, to draw a cyllinder, and the circles indicating it coming toward you. It's a basic trick most drawing teachers and instructors teach, and it works. It really gives that depth to what it is you are trying to produce.

Perspective is what a lot of people get hung up on. Perspective can be a really tricky bastard. It can be difficult to accomplish for people who don't draw often. You can indicate it, though, if you have the patience to take that step. Look at the difference between a perspective drawing, and a line drawing.

You see? There is just a line indicating the top of the mountains. Not nothing, but still, doesn't go as far as it could. Now look at the original again.



See the difference? It goes so much farther in showing you the depth, all three dimensions of the scene. Add in the shadows and that makes the perspective so much more apparent. You can see those structural lines that I described better in this one than you could in the other one I showed.

One thing people say a lot is "Oh, I can't draw! I'm no good at it!" Bull. It isn't about "being good at drawing." It's about getting into what you're doing. You have to have enough patience to express yourself through it. Having patience is the key. That's what a lot of people don't have. I didn't have a lot of patience when I was young. You can learn to draw like a photograph, which I do, but I only do it because I have been doing it for 15 years or longer, at least since I was 6. You can do it, but you don't need to do it. All you really need is a willingness, a patience, and a creative drive to communicate something through the image. I'll have more material for you soon.

See ya, and keep wondering, folks!