Part 2 ➤ Now You Are Ready to Draw 50 What you see on the picture plane is magically “flattened.” This is be- cause the distance between you and what you see and the distances or space within the subject are foreshortened. How a Picture Plane Works To get a general idea of how a picture plane works, grab a new piece of Plexiglas or clean off the one used for the previous exercise if it’s the only one you have. 1. Hold the piece of Plexiglas evenly in front of your face. 2. Look around the room, at a corner, at a window, at a doorway to another room. Look at a table from the corner, across or down the length of it. Look out into the backyard or go look down the street or up the hill. All that you can see on the plastic picture plane is drawable, first on the plastic, and then, when you’ve got the hang of it, directly on paper. So, we will start with a few additions to your piece of plastic and set up for drawing. Preparing a Plexiglas Picture Plane for Drawing For this exercise, you will need ➤ An 8" × 12" piece of Plexiglas. ➤ A fine-point permanent marker. ➤ A fine-point washable marker that will hold a line on plastic. ➤ A ruler. Try Your Hand If you want to keep one of your picture plane drawings as a record, you can try putting it on a copy machine or a scanner. Or, you can place a piece of tracing paper on the plastic and make a careful tracing of your drawing. Artist’s Sketchbook 2-D is an abbreviation for two- dimensional, having the dimen- sions of height and width, such as a flat surface like a piece of paper. 3-D is an abbreviation for three-dimensional, having the dimensions of height, width, and depth, an object in space. The Art of Drawing The development of photography grew out of early experiments with the picture plane and lenses which were used to project an image down on to a piece of paper, something like a pro- jector does today. It is now thought that the old masters used projector-like devices to help capture likeness, complicated perspective, or elaborate detail in their very realistic paintings. After the development of the camera, artist interest began to move away from perfectly repre- sented realism to more expressive ways of seeing and painting. 51 Chapter 4 ➤ The Picture Plane To make a grid on your picture plane: 1. Draw diagonal lines from corner to corner on the piece of plastic with the permanent marker. 2. Measure and draw center lines vertically and horizontally in the center of the plastic. First, draw a set of diag- onal lines. Add horizontal and verti- cal lines to the diagonals. 3. Measure and draw lines dividing each of the four boxes you now have on the plastic. The boxes will be 2" × 3" vertical. Divide each grid into boxes. Part 2 ➤ Now You Are Ready to Draw 52 Your drawing will be done on the plastic picture plane with the wash- able marker. The permanent grid is there to help you see relationally— that is, how one shape relates to another. It will help you transfer the drawing to paper when you are finished. Right now, the grid will get you used to seeing where things are in an image or a drawing, and eventually you won’t even need it. Isolate a Subject with the Picture Plane Now you are ready to try one of the drawing devices favored by the old masters. This is an exercise that will help you get the idea of the picture plane in your mind’s eye—or is it your eye’s mind? 1. Look around the room and decide on a first subject. Don’t get too ambitious at first. A corner of a room might be too much; try a table or a chair, or a window at an angle. 2. It is absolutely necessary that you’re able to keep the plastic picture plane at your eye level and that it be still. Rest it on a table, or hold it straight up and down at a level that you can see through and draw on at the same time. Back to the Drawing Board To draw on the plastic picture plane, you must keep it as mo- tionless as possible—and you mustn’t move either. You’ll be looking at a single view, and the hardest thing will be to keep still enough for that single view to re- main static. You can try propping the picture plane on a pillow or books if it’s a small piece. If it’s a larger one, simply set it on your lap. Make sure your picture plane is even with your eyes and that it’s resting straight up and down at a level you can see your subject through. Prop it up on a book or two if you need to. This is where a longer piece of glass might be handy. 3. Once you have situated yourself and your subject, close one eye and take a good long look through your picture plane, particularly at the parts that would seem hard to draw, either because of angles, complicated shapes, distortion, detail, or perspective. Try to get back to just seeing, but really seeing, and just what you can see, not what you think. 4. See the image through the lines that you put on the picture plane, but try to note where things are relative to the lines: ➤ What part of the image is in the middle? ➤ What part is near the diagonal? 53 Chapter 4 ➤ The Picture Plane ➤ What part is halfway across? ➤ On which side of each grid is each part? ➤ Does a particular line go from top to bottom or across? ➤ Does a curve start in one box and travel to another before it disappears? ➤ And then what? 5. Uncap your marker and decide where to start. It should be a shape that you are quite sure of, one you can use to go to the next shape, one you can see your way from to where it connects with another. See where it is relative to your grid of lines. 6. Start to draw your subject, line by line. See how one line goes into another, over or under, curved or straight. The marker line will be somewhat thicker than a pencil and a lit- tle wobbly because you are working vertically, but no matter, just draw what you see. 7. Keep going at it at a nice easy pace, concentrating but not rushed. You should be having fun now. Are you? When you have put in all that you see in your object, take a mo- ment and observe the accuracy with which you have drawn a complicated drawing. Try to see where the plastic picture plane made it easy for you to draw a difficult part, like a table in per- spective, or the scale of two objects, or the detail on the side of a box, or the pattern of a fabric that was in folds. These potential problems are no longer problems, once you really see and really draw what you see. Do you like your drawing? Would you like to keep it? How about transferring it to a piece of paper? Back to the Drawing Board If all this holding still and seeing through seems like a lot of re- quirements, think about those poor old masters lugging a much more cumbersome glass version of a picture-plane drawing device out into the fields. Then you will be happy that you have a nice table to work at—and presumably a nice cup of hot coffee, thought by many to be an essential. Here are some sample drawings done on Plexiglas picture planes. Part 2 ➤ Now You Are Ready to Draw 54 Transfer the Drawing to Paper To transfer your picture plane drawing to paper, you will need ➤ A piece of paper, preferably 11" × 14". ➤ One of those new mechanical pencils, with HB or B lead in it. ➤ A kneaded eraser. ➤ A ruler. 1. Measure and draw the center vertical and horizontal lines on your paper. A piece of 11" × 14" paper would have a vertical center line at 5 1 / 2 " and a horizontal at 7". 2. Measure and draw a box that is 8" × 12," centered, or you can put your piece of plastic directly onto the paper, line up the center vertical and horizontal lines, and trace the outside edge of the plastic for your box. 3. Draw the diagonals in your box. Then measure and draw the secondary lines to divide the four boxes, just like the grid. Are you getting the idea of what we are doing? 55 Chapter 4 ➤ The Picture Plane 4. Put your drawing on the plastic up in front of you, as vertically as possible. 5. Start copying your drawing onto paper, using the grid to see the relations between things and lines that you drew on the plastic. 6. Don’t let your mind (Old Lefty!) trick you into drawing any- thing differently because you’re not on plastic anymore. Don’t think—just see and draw. Work lightly, and if you get lost, go back to the grid to see where you should be. It’s fine to erase when necessary. Keep drawing the lines from the plastic. 7. When you have drawn as much on your paper as you had on the plastic, take a moment to assess your work. ➤ Can you see how the grid helped you to transfer your drawing from the plastic to the paper? ➤ Could you begin to relate one line or shape to another or to the lines on the grid? ➤ Did it help to have the grid to establish distance or rela- tion between things as you copied your drawing? 8. If you are happy with the pencil drawing, you can add more to it by looking back at your subject, but make sure that you draw relative to things that you see—no fudging or filling in just to fill in. If you can see something to add, fine, otherwise leave it. Here are three drawings by three different students transferred from Plexiglas to paper. When you’re finished, put your drawing aside to compare later. These exercises can be re- peated as often as you like; you will only get better at seeing and drawing. In the next chapter, we will add a viewfinder, another handy item for helping you to see what is there and to draw it. The Art of Drawing Another exercise to try is drawing an object or a person through a plate glass door—right on the door! You’ll be amazed how easy it is to draw on the glass (don’t use permanent marker, though). The subject on the other side will come out very small unless you and it are quite close to one an- other on either side of the glass. You can adjust yourself and your subject as you like, of course. And you can make a tracing on tracing paper after you’ve gotten the main lines on glass. Part 2 ➤ Now You Are Ready to Draw Your Sketchbook Page Try your hand at practicing the exercises you’ve learned in this chapter. 57 Chapter 4 ➤ The Picture Plane The Least You Need to Know ➤ A picture plane is the imaginary visual plane out in front of your eyes, turning as you do to look at the world, as if through a window. ➤ When you see through a Plexiglas picture plane, 3-D space is condensed into a drawable 2-D image. ➤ Drawing on a plastic picture plane is a step to seeing the space and shapes and relationships in the drawing. ➤ You can transfer your picture plane drawing to paper, if you like. Chapter 5 Finding the View In This Chapter ➤ What is a viewfinder frame? ➤ Materials to get you started ➤ How to use a viewfinder frame ➤ Drawing what you see in the viewfinder frame Drawing should suggest and stimulate observation. Bernice Oehler Figure Sketching, (Pelham NY: Bridgman Publishers, 1926). Working with the plastic picture plane has shown you 3-D space condensed into a drawable 2-D image on the surface. But it’s also shown you the beginnings of another concept that’s important to drawing—looking through a frame to see your subject. In this chapter, we’ll be exploring the concept of a viewfinder frame. Using a viewfinder isn’t cheating. As artists have known for centuries, it’s a way to help you see spatial relations and make your drawing more accurate. A Viewfinder Frame A viewfinder frame is a simple device that will help you decide on a subject to draw and then focus on it. As we discussed in Chapter 1, “The Pleasures of Seeing and Drawing,” framing an image makes it easier to see, and the graduated marks on the edges of the viewfinder frame give you reference points for relations between lines and shapes, rather like the grid on the plastic of the picture plane, but requiring more clear seeing on your part. Seen through a viewfinder frame, the main points of an image can be drawn on paper using the graduated marks. The important thing is to have the viewfinder frame and your paper or the box that you draw on it in the same proportion, so that the relative positions and placement do not change. . a moment to assess your work. ➤ Can you see how the grid helped you to transfer your drawing from the plastic to the paper? ➤ Could you begin to relate one line or shape to another or to the lines. particular line go from top to bottom or across? ➤ Does a curve start in one box and travel to another before it disappears? ➤ And then what? 5. Uncap your marker and decide where to start. It should. quite sure of, one you can use to go to the next shape, one you can see your way from to where it connects with another. See where it is relative to your grid of lines. 6. Start to draw your subject,