Author: Carol

This is the fourth lesson in a series of five that take you from using a viewfinder to freehand drawing and finally into fluid and expressive line drawing.

You need some experience with freehand style drawing for success with this lesson’s enlarging and reducing methods, so here are the first three lessons of the series.

Line Drawing Part One – How To Use A Viewfinder
Line Drawing Part Two – Draw From Life With A Viewfinder
Line Drawing Part Three – Draw From Life Using Sight-Size

If you’re browsing, here are the last two lessons in the series:

Line Drawing Part Four – Enlarge Or Reduce While Drawing From Life
Line Drawing Part Five – Drawing From Life With Expressive Line

Supplies

Some sight-size devotees move closer or farther away to adjust drawing size so they can draw at a one to one ratio. I prefer to use a few measuring tricks to do the same thing from wherever the best point of view is.

The most peculiar thing about proportion you need to know is that you can’t just add the same amount, like an inch, to the height and width and get away with it. The whole drawing will stretch in very bizarre ways if you do that unless you’re working with a square. We’ll use a square in that way, to our advantage, later on.

You can multiply height and width by the same factor and stay in proportion, and that’s easy to do and an excellent place to begin.

Bounding Box Enlarged Proportionally X2 

Look for something you can clearly see and block-in accurately with a few easy lines, like the vase in this still life.

If possible, I pick the largest object so I know the entire drawing will fit on the paper.

Imagine where the center of this object needs to be on the paper and mark that point.

You don’t have to be exact as long as the drawing ends up centered on the paper relatively well.

Now, take the longest vertical measurement of the object, and mark that length on both sides of the mark vertically.

(See previous lessons for how to take measurements.)

Now do the same thing with the horizontal measurement and you’ll get a cross.

Draw a box around the cross. You can use your viewfinder as a square to get the lines parallel and the corners true.

(Use viewfinder from Lesson Two.)

Draw a simple sketch of the object inside the bounding box. It’ll be enlarged by a factor of two or doubled in size.

Reducing by Two

To reduce by two, you divide the measurements by two. Sounds easy, right? Well, it is, but it’s a little chancy trying to find ‘half’ by pencil measuring alone for your bounding box.

A ruler is much more accurate for reducing. Just hold it at the end of your arm, like you hold your pencil when taking a measurement from the scene, get real numbers to work from, and divide those numbers by two. Then, draw the reduced-size bounding box.

One Bounding Box/Any Size – With All Other Elements In Proportion

Nothing stops you from making the bounding box any size you want, as long as you enlarge or reduce height and width by the same number.

If you are an extreme math-phobe, keep a calculator in your toolbox to do the dirty work. You can hide it with the ruler under the chamois cloth and tissues.

Adding all the other elements –  Instead of plotting out a bounding box from life for each element in the scene, you can base the measurements for everything else on the first box you drew. This reduces the chances of making a proportional mistake, and it saves a lot of time. I’ll show you how to do that further down in the post, but first, I want to show you another method of proportional drawing that helps you place everything else in the scene exactly where it belongs.

Sizing Square Method/Any Size – With All Other Elements In Proportion And Where They Belong

Using the Sizing Square Method, you draw a square based on one measurement and find all other proportions and placements from that square.

You can use the width or height of any element for the square’s size, but I like to keep it at or under a pencil length to take measurements from the scene quickly.

In this still life, the height of the vase was the best measurement for me to use because it was the clearest to see, and it made the square’s width so wide that it allowed me to center the entire scene on the paper easily.

Square The Line, And Look For Landmarks

You can make the line length on the paper any size you want. That’s the beauty of this method.

So, draw a square using the line length you’ve chosen. As always, ensure the lines are parallel and the corners are true.

Use your pencil held horizontally and vertically to see where all sides of the imaginary square lay in the scene.

Some of the square’s lines will be easy to spot,  like the horizontal lines and the left vertical, and some will take measuring to find, like the right vertical of this square.

Here are some things I saw when I held my pencil over the scene that helped me draw my still life:

The right side of the square touched the rim of the flowerpot. That was good news because now I knew how wide to make the pot.

The bottom line touched the flowerpot, and that helped me locate where to draw that part of the pot.

And I could see the concave curve of vase’s side when I held the pencil vertically next to it on the left.

Add The Center Cross

Draw a cross with long arms in the center of the square to help visualize the center and quarter sections, both on the paper and in the scene.

Once you establish where this cross is in the scene, you have several more anchor points to measure from and refer to.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find a clear landmark at the center of the square in the scene. As you can see here, I didn’t have a very clearly defined mark in this still life, but I could remember where it was generally, which was still very useful.

I used the cross arms of the center point to help place the leaves on the vase, the stem stub of the garlic bulb, the top of the flower pot, and the vertical highlight at the top of the vase.

Add The First Element

Create a bounding box for the first element. You took the sizing square’s measurement from this element, so one side of that square will be its width or height. My sizing square is the vase’s height, and blocks in the left side, so I just needed to add the right side to build a bounding box.

To do that, I held the pencil vertically over the midway point in the scene to see how much vase there was on the other side of the pencil. I quickly moved to the paper and marked that amount to the right of the midway mark there.

I check a measurement like this several times, especially if it’s the first element’s bounding box, and I will refer back to it to size the other elements in the drawing.

If you can’t see one side of the element well, undulating lines and forms that fade into the distance come to mind, align your pencil anywhere on the square’s lines, quarters, or middle cross to help estimate where it is.

To ensure you’re sighting from true vertical and horizontal lines, you can dangle a pencil and let gravity create a vertical plumb-bob, and you can balance it on your fingertips to create a horizontal level. With these two true lines, you can deduce the accurate shape of just about anything.

You can see here how I blocked in and sketched the vase. I added a full-length center cross to the vase’s bounding box. The measurement marks do accumulate, and I usually just let them. If things get too confusing, I erase the extra marks.

Adding Other Elements

After the first element is drawn, things will go much more quickly. You can take easy measurements from life and then draw proportionally based on the work you’ve already done. You can do that in a couple of ways.

To measure a medium-sized element like the flower pot, extend your arm and measure the first element horizontally or vertically, then move over the medium element to see how the measurement compares.

This flower pot is a little over 3/4 of the width of the vase. My thumb is still marking the vase’s width so I can visually estimate the flower pot’s width on the pencil.

Repeat this process on the drawing to block in the medium object’s size, and use the sizing square to help position it.

For example, I already knew that the flower pot jutted out of the main square, and its top rim was a small bit above the center point.

These measurement terms seem obscure when I refer to them as ‘jutting out’ and ‘a small bit,’ but they were solidly recorded in my mind’s eye from the time I spent measuring the scene.

Trust that measurements will stay in your mind, too. If they don’t stay there firmly now, they will with practice.

For something small, like the bulb of garlic, measure it and see how many you can fit into the first object side by side.

You see me here with my arm outstretched, taking the garlic’s measurement.

Then, I move my arm up to the vase and count how many garlic bulbs fit into it. Two fit nicely.

Find that measurement on your sketch, and draw the new element’s width using the sizing square for placement.

Fail-safe And Anchors

The main sizing square is your fail-safe proportional reference, and its center cross lines are your anchors. If you remember to step back and check your drawing against these things regularly, your drawing will remain in proportion.

When I work, I blend the sizing square method with bounding boxes.

The sizing square method is extremely useful for placing elements where they belong in the composition, and bounding boxes are excellent for getting the proportions of each element right. So, practice both techniques by themselves, and then experiment with your blend to find what works best for you.

Turn off thinking and turn on seeing.

I’ve talked a lot about theory in this lesson, so if you’re overwhelmed, remember that drawing is always primarily about seeing. As you work, compare your drawing to reality all the time, and don’t be afraid to make a lot of correction marks.

No matter how many years of practice you’ve had, you’ll still draw the first lines wrong before you draw them right. That’s the exciting thing about drawing. It can be both rewarding and embarrassing at the same time. Just like life!

One more lesson, the last in this series. 

The last lesson in this series is much more intuitive than these last four, and we’ll push line into the interpretation of shadow, light, and form.

Until next time, draw well, draw strong, and never stop!

Carol