Seeing Through Shapes

This week I got really busy with some school work so I spent less time on learning to draw and looking for additional resources, and instead just focused on the tasks I had done during previous weeks, namely shapes and shading with a smaller amount of perspective. When I found the time to take a longer time to draw I decided to draw objects rather than shapes, such as a cup. I did this by first breaking it down into shapes, then outlining and shading it in an attempt to make it look 3D. Below is a mug I attempted to draw at the start of my exercises. I broke it down into four main sections, the top, the main torso, the weird curve at the base, and the handle. Then used a bunch of circles and ellipses to outline where the curves started, where the handles were, etc. The final version doesn’t have the plate as I couldn’t seem to shade it properly, and the shading on the base feels off, but overall I was pretty happy with the attempt.

I drew a few additional objects, always trying to break objects down into multiple shapes before using shading in an attempt to make it look 3D, but near the end of the week I wanted to try my hand at drawing a larger scene that I could attempt to use what I learned in perspective in it. For this I chose my desk, as it had multiple simple objects to draw, and my closet in the background. Below on the left was the plan I drew out while looking at my desk and the objects on top. I used different colors to separate the three main sections: the desk (blue), the objects (red), and the closet (green). I then wrote a bunch of notes on things I needed to keep track of as I was drawing, such as where lines should bend according to perspective, or how it lines up with the desk, where I could see an extra side of an object, etc. I then went over the drawing with pencil and added shading as shown below on the right. I am most happy with how the desk bends according to perspective as I can tell that the image I was referencing was taken from the back-left angle. However I feel I misaligned the closet in the background with the rest of the image, and it doesn’t feel like I got it’s depth properly as I didn’t know how to shade the closet. The trackpad on the laptop also annoys me. The foreground is great, the background/perspective work needs improvement.

As my YouTube recommendations has been flooded with drawing channels I found out that YouTuber PewDiePie has recently finished his attempt at learning to draw in 100 days. Upon watching how he describes his process and experience I was reminded that a large part of why I chose to learn to draw for this project was so that I could draw people with appropriate anatomy. Seeing how he went from not knowing how to draw and starting at a similar level to me, to creating amazing art has given me more motivation and a desire step away from shapes into drawing anatomy. Now that I am more comfortable with drawing, I plan on having a physical notebook so I can see my progress day by day and can look back on a more physical object at the end of this experience.