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Measuring to get the "standard
unit" |
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Measuring the other side of the slice |
We're continuing from the
previous page. Click HERE for
the still life fruit photo. See the right edge of the
slice in the sliced apple? That line is a fairly
straight line, pretty centered in the photo, and looks
like a nice medium-length line in relation to the rest
of the photo. If you haven't already done so, click on
the small photo to get the large photo and hold your
pencil as above and place the tip of the pencil at
the top of the slice and position your finger or thumb
at the bottom of the slice like this. This will be your
"standard unit" for this drawing. To get the sizes and
proportions right in this drawing, measure everything
using this measurement.
About a third of the way up
from the bottom of your paper, draw a vertical line that
represents the side of the apple slice. Make this
vertical line about the same length as you measured on
the apple. Now, keeping your "standard unit" with your
finger on your pencil, measure the widest point of the
other side of the slice by putting your finger right at
the line of the apple slice. See that the other side of
the slice is just about half of you standard unit? On
your drawing, measure your standard unit, turn it 90
degrees like you did on the photo, and make a mental
note as to where half of your standard unit is. Now,
draw the crescent moon shape of the other side of the
slice and make sure the widest part of the crescent is
about half the standard unit.
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Measure the other side of the apple. |
Now, still using your
standard unit, on the photo, measure the other side of
the apple. Do you see that at the middle of the other
side of the apple is also about half a "standard unit"?
So, on your drawing, get your "standard unit" on your
pencil, and putting the tip of your pencil right on the
slice edge, measure about half a standard unit to the
right, make a mental note, and make a small dot on the
paper where you measured to. This will be the middle
point on the right side of the apple. Can you lightly
make a curved line all the way from the bottom edge of
the slice counter-clockwise and connect with your
crescent moon shape of the other slice edge? This will
be the contour of the entire apple.
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Draw the stem of the apple. |
The reason I
wanted you to lightly draw the contour of the apple is
because you might have to erase a bit of the top portion
of the apple so you can draw in the stem. As you can
see, the stem is slightly above and to the right of the
top of the slice area. the stem is close enough that you
probably don't have to measure the distance from the
slice to the stem, just eyeball it and take your best
guess. Draw the contour of the stem, not just a single
line. Remember that a "contour" is the outside edge of
an object. Drawing just a single line for the stem is
one dimensional, if you draw the contour of an object
you get height and width.
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Watch a Flash measuring demo |
Now you can draw the mango
to the left and behind the apple by just drawing a
circle which starts slightly to the right of the stem of
the apple and ends about halfway down the left edge of
the apple. And notice that the widest point on the mango
is also about half a standard unit. Do you see it? You
can do this entire drawing by doing measurements like
this. You can even measure the negative spaces in the
same way so all the negative spaces will be correctly
spaced between the positive spaces. |
