Wide Angle Perspective Techniques in Your Artwork

Ever notice that in one point and two point perspective that a supposedly square tile can look pretty strange in some of the more extreme areas? You can compensate with carefully thought out vanishing points. However, there are limits as painter Rob Adam's explains in his Spherical Perspective tutorial:

"So here we go… We might assume from what we are taught about perspective that this is the way we actually see. But it’s not. In the outside world there are straight lines, so we put them that way into our pictures. We have developed complicated schemes of geometrical rules to guide us. We take photos with cameras that have lenses that carefully distort the world to make it fit with the expectation that straight line should be straight. But visually they are not.

Have you ever tried to draw that really large checker board floor? Somehow at the far right and left it goes all stretched. Do the same thing with circles on the floor and it gets really wild."

My own understanding of spherical perspective, quadilinear perspective and cylindrical perspective definitely needs some expansion. If you're like me and have trouble wraping your head around it, Rob's tutorial can help.

Spherical Perspective (treeshark.com)

Drawing portraits with more character

When drawing (or painting), the toughest part is capturing a persons personality. A face can be a huge part of creating an emotional connection in your art.  You can make or break the believability of the moment with a glint in the eye or a smirk in the lips.

I was reading the tutorials on the blog of MAD Magazine caricaturist Tom Richmond. Sure, he has a great anatomy tutorial on understanding hands that's a must read. The tutorials on inking and digital coloring are amazing.  It's his bread and butter, however, when he gets into the details of the face. 

Making a successful caricatures takes a pretty good understanding of the facial features. You have to capture a likeness. You have to manipulate them into an expressive statement.  From the blog:

"I would say there are three essential elements that transcend style and medium and must be present in a caricature:

Likeness- If you can’t tell who it is supposed to be, then it is not successful. All good caricatures incorporate a good likeness of their subjects.

Exaggeration- Without some form of exaggeration, or a departure from the exact representation of the subject’s features, all you have is a portrait. The level of exaggeration can vary wildly, but there must be some departure. A straight portrait is not a caricature.

Statement- I believe a caricature must editorialize in some way. The artist must be trying to say something about the subject. It might be something to do with the situation the subject is drawn in, it may just be a play on their personality through expression or body language, it might be a simple as making visual fun of some aspect of their persona or image."

While you may not want to be a caricature artist, learning how to play with caricature can bring a lot into your facial drawing. Finding somewhere between photorealism and caricature might be the thing that takes your art to the next level. What do you think?

Tutorials on Tom's MAD Blog (tomrichmond.com)

Drawing: A free book of 100 hands

Drawing the hands is one of the most difficult challenges faced by an artist when studying anatomy. They are as complex as the rest of the figure. Good reference material can help to simplify the task. Thankfully, the classic fully illustrated text of George B. Bridgman's Book of a Hundred Hands is available free from Google Books. You can download a PDF, read it from your browser or view the book on any device that supports the Google Books app.

Bridgman details the hand in most imaginable positions, detailing fingers, the wrist. Most sections include simplified muscle groups with labels. Other details of interest are the veins, bones and, of course, short texts. The text quickly tells you information that's key to an artistic understanding of anatomy.

If you insist on print, you can also buy the published edition book on Amazon for under $20USD . If you have any other resources, share them in the comments

Download These Free Public Domain Drawing Books for Artists

Learning to draw? The library is probably your first stop if you're on a budget. But the internet has it's own answer with public domain resources such as Project Gutenberg, OpenLibrary.org, Google Books and Archive.org, you have a collection of free drawing books at your fingertips. You can view these online or download it to your Kindle or eReader of your choice.

Courtesy of Ben Leto

The Practice and Science Of Drawing by Harold Speed. This book originally published in 1913 takes an expected classical approach to drawing that holds up amazingly well today. Although the techniques are classical, you can benefit from the discussion presented no matter what style you ain for. This is the kind of title that reminds us the power of a well consolidated book as opposed to the quick-fix approach of internet tutorials. (As valuable as those are.) It's filled with beautiful sketches to study and serves as both a starting point and a reference book.

Pen Drawing, An Illustrated Treatise by Charles Maginnis. Pen and ink drawing continues to astound and amaze the average artist. This bible on the subject would be of interest to the modern comic book inker. The author here has you create a light pencil outline to plan your composition and then you create amazing detail straight to ink. Various styles are discussed and dissected. For the price, it's worth checking out and playing with the techniques.

The Elements of Drawing by John Ruskin. Hailing from the 19th century, this book is written in the poetic language of the time. It's a practical guide that mentors the beginner or advanced artist in how to improve their skills. It lacks in step-by-step illustrations, but instead tells you how to discover and view the world with your own eyes. This book is also available for free from Google Books.

Blackboard Drawing by Frederick Whitney This one takes on a different subject, blackboard and chalk drawing. And thankfully it's filled with images to illustrate the unique look of this type of art.

Constructive Anatomy by George B. Bridgman. Learning to draw the human figure? This book tells you how with over 500 illustrations showing you exactly how to construct a figure. This is a must read for the serious portrait artist and one of the most useful and visual books in this list. It's one of the few books of this type that details and discusses the wrist, movement of individual bones and muscles in excruciating detail.

Composition; a series of exercises in art structure for the use of students and teachers. by Arthur Wesley Dow This one may be self explanatory by title, so I will emphasize that your drawing is only as good as it's composition. Good composition can elevate stick figures, while bad composition can ruin what would otherwise be a technical masterpiece.

The American drawing-book: A manual for the amateur, and basis of study for the professional artist. Especially adapted to the use of public and private schools, as well as home instruction by John Gadsby Chapman. Speaking of self-explanatory titles...

A progressive drawing book for beginners by Philip Henry Delamotte. The first half of this book is text and the second half illustrations for careful study. Perhaps a good place to start if the other drawing books mentioned are overly advanced or technical for your taste.

The essentials of perspective with illustrations drawn by the author; by L.W. Miller Perspective is a must no matter what you're drawing.

Human anatomy for art students with drawings by Innes Fripp & an appendix on comparative anatomy by Harry Dixon

Know of any other public domain artist resources? Let us know in the comments! I'd love to keep adding to the list.

Portfolio: Back to School Designs

Uploaded my lastest designs, this time they're of the Back to School publication. It's a newspaper insert to several Maryland newspapers in association with Maryland Family which is produced by the same company and department as where I work, Patuxent Publishing. There were several original illustrations created as well as stock and submitted photos. The final designs were done in InDesign CS.

Cover to back to school

Original illustrations I did for Back to School