Accurate Drawing and Proportion

Drawing and Proportion for Painters

Rule for using this skill: These tips add specialist detail to your answer. They do not replace it. Always give your full general answer first, using everything you normally know about drawing, proportion and painting. Then work in the tips below wherever they apply. Do not shrink the answer to only these items.

Why it matters

• Wrong proportion (and wrong values) is the most common reason amateur work fails. Proportion errors show up most in small online thumbnails.
• Daily practice is the main fix. Carry a sketchbook and draw in spare minutes. Draw your own hand when nothing else is available.

Hand-drawing exercise

• Draw your hand in various positions for about an hour.
• Draw what you see, not "fingers". Squint.
• Sit next to a strong light for more contrast.
• Rest the hand on something, or hold an object, to reduce fatigue.

Making and sizing a viewfinder

• Cut a square or rectangular hole in stable cardboard or cardstock. The hole must have the same proportions as the canvas or panel.
• Use an online proportional scale calculator to get the proportions exact.
• An adjustable commercial option is the ViewCatcher. Keep several cardboard ones in different sizes for different setups.
• If you hold it very close to your face, it is too small for you. If you can't hold it far enough away, it is too large.
• A viewfinder lets you find the composition. Without one, objects tend to land in the dead center. Every inch matters on a small daily painting.

Using a viewfinder

• Hold it up, close one eye, and make the composition look good inside the frame before you draw.
• The hard part is returning it to the same position each time. A fix is an adjustable "arm with dual clamps": clamp one end to something solid and the other to the viewfinder. You then only have to return your head to the same spot.
• Without the clamp arm, keep one foot planted in the same place. If you look down at the setup, keep your left elbow clamped to your side.
• Study each edge before drawing: how close each object comes to it, and where an edge crops an object.
• Once the setup is drawn, you usually don't need the viewfinder again, except to judge perspective and angles.
• For tricky angles, hold the viewfinder perfectly upright. Line its horizontal or vertical edge up with the angle and compare. Something that looks diagonal may be vertical, or the reverse.

Halfway marks and the layout drawing

• Mark the midpoint of each edge of the viewfinder. Put matching marks on the edges of the canvas or panel.
• Find where each object's outer edges fall relative to those midpoints and mark them on the panel. This is like gridding, but faster and less obtrusive.
• Drawing sequence, as demonstrated with apples, fork, spoon and plate:
  1. Tone the canvas and establish the halfway marks.
  2. Mark the boundaries of each object (top, bottom, left, right) with simple straight lines, using the halfway marks. Do the easiest marks first.
  3. Round out each object and correct now that all objects can be seen in relation. Find shapes using negative shapes.
  4. Optional: add a few darker values.
  5. Wipe lightly with a dry paper towel so only a ghost image remains.
• Draw overlapping objects as if you could see through them.
• Draw big, simple shapes first. Add peripheral parts (handles, spouts, stems) last, then details.
• Step 4 is optional because it can make the next stage harder. It is recommended for beginners without a firm grasp of value. A neutral burnt umber value map lets you match values when you put the "real" colors on top.

Avoiding the "grapes" failure

• Drawing each item relative only to the previous one (grape 1, then 2, then 3...) leaves no room for the rest of the composition.
• Instead, mark the boundaries of each object or group (top, bottom, left, right), and where objects are cropped by the canvas edge.
• Work the entire canvas at once, not one element at a time.
• Compare each mark to as many other things as possible (canvas edges, halfway marks, other objects). This triangulates the position.
• One misplaced item throws off everything along its line.

Drawing materials and the wipe-back

• The demo drawing uses burnt umber thinned a little with OMS (odorless mineral spirits) and a small brush. The author's choice is a Silver Brush Bristlon filbert, size 2.
• Too much OMS in the drawing means the final wipe removes too much of it. Use just enough OMS to make the paint easy to draw with.
• The final wipe with a dry paper towel leaves a ghost of the drawing. It removes the thickest paint so it doesn't interfere with the colors laid down next.

Measuring with brush and thumb

• Stand in the drawing spot, lock your elbow, and hold the brush straight up and down at arm's length.
• Line the brush tip up with one end of the length and your thumb with the other end.
• You are measuring what you see from where you stand, not the actual object.
• Take the shortest length as "1". See how many times it goes into the longer length, fractions included (for example 1:1¾). Check that your drawing has the same ratio.
• Measure this way especially for people, cups, bowls and boxes. Apples are more forgiving.
• Your brain will insist a tall cup viewed from above is taller than its mouth is wide. The brush and thumb may say otherwise.

Overriding your brain's assumptions

• Draw what you see, not what you know. For example, you know a cup bottom is flat, so you draw it flat even when it clearly looks rounded from above.
• Squint to simplify and see the big picture. Alternatives are taking off your glasses or using a reducing glass.
• See objects as connected shapes and forms, each with its own value and color, not as "an apple".
• Look at angles, distances and negative shapes. For handles, ask whether the bottom of the handle lines up with anything else.
• Check relative positions constantly, against canvas edges, halfway marks, negative shapes and other objects.

Catching errors

• Back up often, and stand to paint. Sitting means you back up too rarely. Near the end, back up every few strokes.
• Mentally zoom out and keep thinking about the big picture.
• Look at the drawing in a mirror. A good composition works backward and forward. A mirror reveals leaning vases or a composition that needs shifting.
• Photograph the work before you are done. Seen small on the camera's LCD, mistakes such as a leaning vase or an overly dark shadow stand out while you can still fix them.
• Plein air: bend over and look at the landscape upside down through your legs. You can view the painting upside down at the same time.
• From a photo, turn both the photo and the canvas upside down. Do the whole painting that way and don't turn it over until done.
• If a painting runs past about an hour, momentum and freshness drop. Take a break (a walk, jumping jacks, washing dishes) and return.

Ellipse method

This is for round objects sitting flat on a level surface (round bowls, plates, cup tops). It does not work for oval rims or tilted ellipses such as a leaning lid.

1. Through the viewfinder, mark the boundaries of the ellipse and cup: the top of the ellipse curve, the bottom of the ellipse, the far left and far right of the lip, and the bottom of the cup. That is five marks for cups and bowls, and four for a plate, since you can't see its bottom.
2. Put a small vertical mark halfway between the left and right marks, and a horizontal mark halfway between the top and bottom ellipse marks. This forms a cross.
3. Extend the cross lines to the ellipse edges, perfectly horizontal and vertical. The exception is the lean-out described under perspective.
4. Measure with brush and thumb, then compare these ratios against the drawing:
   • width versus height of the entire cup
   • top of cup to bottom of ellipse, versus bottom of ellipse to bottom of cup
   • width versus height of the cup opening
5. Draw the curve. Each of the four quadrants mirrors its horizontal and vertical neighbors.
6. Draw the sides and bottom. Seen from above, the sides converge toward the bottom, so they are almost never parallel or vertical. The base curve mirrors the top ellipse but is slightly tighter. The side-to-bottom junction is a subtle curve, not a sharp corner, unless seen at eye level.

• Stacked, tilted cups are especially hard. Take time and compare the visible amount of side on each cup. The upper ellipse is more squished than the lower one.
• Cropped ellipse: draw the full ellipse on something behind or beside the canvas (for example the panel holder) so you can see the whole shape.

Perspective

• Size: farther objects look smaller. Because you know two objects are the same size, you must measure their visual widths and heights with brush and thumb and compare. A bigger sugar bowl further back can look the same width as a nearer cup.
• Converging lines: parallel lines converge toward a vanishing point as they recede. The angles are often subtle but should not be overlooked. Use the upright viewfinder edge to check the lean.
• Looking down at a setup, objects lean outward toward the edges. Tall objects and larger paintings show it most, but it is subtle even in small paintings. Think of the center of the earth as the vanishing point: lines drawn down from object bottoms converge there, so extended upward they lean out.
• Looking up has the opposite effect: verticals lean inward, as with tall buildings.

When the drawing gets messy

• If there are too many corrections, wipe off and restart. Dip a paper towel in OMS and wipe the panel. Later attempts are usually better.
• Several wipes before the keeper is normal.

Further reading

• The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards.
• Your Artist's Brain, Carol Purcell.