Chapter 3 | FIT AND MEASURE
How do you measure the width or height of something while drawing something in your environment, indoor or outdoor?
Exercise: extend your arm with the pencil, just like in the previous chapter. To measure the width of an object, hold the tip of your pencil on one side of the part you want to measure and your thumb on the other side (image). You can slide your thumb back and forth to lengthen or shorten the length of the pencil. In the example I measure the width of a house.
If you now want to compare the width of the house with the height, you just have to turn your hand with the pencil. You will immediately see that the house in the example is higher than it is wide. With this simple example you probably already saw that, but with more complicated shapes/compositions this trick is very useful.
In the same way way you can compare the distance between objects (image), in the example the distance between the human figure and the cupboard..
Fitting and measuring when copying a photo or other image.
When copying an existing image, it can also be useful to first measure some proportions before drawing details. It prevents proportions from turning out to be completely wrong later. I’ll show you how I tried to copy a figure from the Japanese animated film The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki).
Step 1: I started by measuring the ratio (1:1) between the huge nose and the rest of the head. An oblique assisting line for the direction of the collar and the position of the shoulders was also useful (see Chapter 2: How oblique is that line?). Finally, I indicated the position of the arms with some straight lines.
Step 2: Now I could start with the eyes, arms, hands, head and details. Because I still drew lightly, I could easily erase in between.
Step 3: finally I refined the drawing with more contrast and by adding some shadows. Oh yes, I also forgot to finish that strange collar.
EXTRA: try applying the principle of measuring proportions to a self-chosen subject from your environment (or an existing image as I did).