You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less (12 page)

Go ahead and have some fun: Try drawing a group of five cube games each overlapping the other, like you did with the five spheres!

By Kimberly McMichael

Place a shoebox or a cereal box or any kind of box on the table in front of you.

Sit down and position yourself so that you can see the foreshortened top of the box, similar to the foreshortened shapes you have just drawn in this lesson. Now, draw the box sitting in front of you.

Don’t panic! Just remember what you learned in this lesson, and let this knowledge of foreshortened squares help your hand draw what your eyes are seeing. Look, really look, at the foreshortened angles, the shading, and the cast shadow. Look at how the lettering on the box follows the foreshortened angles at the top and bottom of the box. The more you draw, the more you will really begin to see the fascinating details in the real world around you.

T
o teach you how to really feel like you are gaining control over that daunting flat piece of paper, I want to explore the challenging fun of hollow boxes and cubes.

 

 

1. Go ahead and lightly sketch in the cube.

2. Slant back two parallel lines.

3. Alignment alert! Look how I have drawn this top edge of the box lid in alignment with all of the angled lines slanting slightly up to the left. I’m going to refer to this angle as direction northwest. Think of a compass.

The four most commonly used line directions that I will be referring to throughout this book will be lines drawn in directions northwest, northeast, southwest, and southeast. Take a look at this compass.

Now, I’ll foreshorten the compass. As you recall, foreshortening is distorting or squishing an object to create the illusion of depth, to make one edge of the object appear closer to your eye.

Notice in this foreshortened compass illustration that the four directions—NW, NE, SW, and SE—all line up with the lines you already used to draw your cube.

I call this my “Drawing Direction Reference Cube.” This is a wonderful tool to help you position your lines consistently in proper alignment. Without consistency in your angles, your drawings will “droop” or look askew. Dr. Seuss achieved world acclaim for his signature style of drooping, melting, Play-Doh-ish characters, buildings, objects, and environments. However, in his work, Dr. Seuss still maintained consistent drawing compass angles. Good examples of this are in his book
The Lorax
. Turn to any page in
The Lorax
, and hold up the Drawing Direction Reference Cube to the illustration. You will discover that his buildings, windows, doors, pathways, vehicles, and characters all follow these four important positions.

4. Draw the other side of the box lid lifting up with two parallel lines.

5. Using the bottom of the box line in direction NE, draw the top of the lid in direction NE.