Guide 3 of 3 · by hand

3Draw on Paper

A flat drawing looks 3D when it follows the rules your eyes already use: things shrink as they go back, parallel lines seem to meet in the distance, and light falls on one side of a shape and not the other. Learn to see those rules and you can draw anything in depth. Everything here is practice with a pencil, ten minutes at a time.

01What you need

• A pencil, any kind. An HB for lines and a softer 2B for shading is a good pair.
• Plain paper, plus a ruler for the first few boxes.
• An eraser. Draw guide lines lightly so they're easy to lift later.

02Eye level: the line everything hangs from

Look straight ahead. The height of your eyes is the horizon line, also called eye level. Outdoors it's where the sky meets flat ground; indoors it's invisible, but it's always there at the height of your eyes. One fact follows from it:

• Anything below eye level, you see from above: the top of a table, the top of a box on the floor.
• Anything above eye level, you see from below: the underside of a shelf, the bottom of a hanging lamp.
• Anything at eye level, you see edge-on: neither top nor bottom.

Before any drawing, decide where eye level is and draw it lightly across the page.

03One-point boxes

Stand in the middle of a straight road and the edges run together at one point on the horizon. That's a vanishing point. In one-point perspective, lines going straight away from you all head for it, while lines across and up and down stay flat and upright.

1. Draw the horizon and put one dot on it: the vanishing point.
2. Draw the front of the box as a plain square, anywhere on the page.
3. From each corner, draw a light line to the vanishing point.
4. Decide how deep the box is and draw the back edges parallel to the front edges, stopping where they meet the guide lines.
5. Darken the edges you'd see. Keep the rest light, or erase them.

04Two-point boxes

Turn the box so a corner points at you, and its sides run off to two vanishing points, one left and one right, both on the horizon. Uprights stay upright. This is the view of most real rooms, streets and objects.

1. Draw the horizon with a dot near each end. Keep them far apart: close vanishing points stretch boxes out of shape.
2. Draw the nearest corner as one upright line.
3. Run light lines from its top and bottom to both points.
4. Choose how wide each side is and draw two more uprights.
5. From the tops of those uprights, run lines to the opposite points. Where they cross is the back corner of the top.

05Looking up and down

Look up at a tall building and its uprights lean in toward a third vanishing point high in the sky. Look down from a height and they lean toward a point below. That's three-point perspective. Use it only when the view tilts: skyscrapers, drone shots, a bug's-eye view of a chair. The steeper the tilt, the closer the third point and the harder the lean.

06Isometric: drawing in blocks

Isometric drawing drops vanishing points altogether. Every edge going back runs at 30° to the horizontal, parallel lines stay parallel, and nothing shrinks. It's less true to life, but it's measurable, and it's exactly how block worlds, pixel-art games and the studio's voxels look.

• Get isometric dot paper (search “isometric dot grid printable”), or make a triangle grid with a ruler.
• Draw one cube: a hexagon with a Y inside it. Every other block is that cube, shifted.
• Shade the three faces three ways, keeping the same face on the same side for every block.

07Ellipses and cylinders

A circle seen at an angle is an ellipse. The rule follows from eye level: the closer a circle is to your eye level, the flatter it looks. Right at eye level it closes to a straight line.

• An ellipse has smooth, round ends. Pointed ends (a “football” shape) are the most common mistake.
• Draw ellipses in one quick loop, going round two or three times lightly, then pick the best line.
• A cup is two ellipses joined by two upright lines. The bottom ellipse is rounder than the top, because it's further below your eyes.

08Balls and round forms

A circle on its own is flat. Two things make it a ball: contour lines that wrap around its surface, and shading (next section). A contour line is like a rubber band stretched around the form. It curves in a way that shows which way the surface turns.

Any round thing works this way: an apple, a head, a hill. Before shading, wrap a few light contour lines around it to feel which way each part faces.

09Build things from boxes

Almost everything is a combination of boxes, cylinders and balls. Find those first, draw them lightly in perspective, then carve the real object out of them.

Draw through: sketch the hidden edges of each part too, so the pieces sit together properly. Erase them at the end.

10Light and shadow

Shading is what makes a drawing feel solid. Choose one light source and stick to it: every shape is lit on the side facing the light and dark on the side facing away.

• Highlight: the brightest spot, where the surface faces the light most directly. Leave it as bare paper.
• Light side: the tones slowly darken as the surface turns away.
• Core shadow: the darkest band on the object, where the surface turns fully away from the light.
• Reflected light: a slightly lighter rim inside the shadow, from light bouncing up off the ground. Keep it darker than anything on the light side.
• Cast shadow: the shadow the object throws, away from the light. It's darkest and sharpest where the object touches the ground.

Shade with gentle overlapping strokes that follow the contour lines, building tone in layers rather than pressing hard.

11Seven depth clues

1. Overlap: whatever hides part of something else is in front.
2. Size: the same object drawn smaller reads as further away.
3. Height on the page: below eye level, further things sit higher, closer to the horizon.
4. Convergence: parallel lines going back meet at a vanishing point.
5. Spacing: evenly spaced things bunch up with distance.
6. Air: distant things are paler, softer and less detailed.
7. Line weight: press harder on near edges and lighter on far ones.

12Quick fixes

13A week of drills

Ten to fifteen minutes a day. Speed doesn't matter; noticing does.

• Day 1 · twenty boxesOne horizon, one vanishing point. Scatter boxes above, below and across eye level, and draw through each one.
• Day 2 · a street cornerTwo-point perspective: three buildings of different heights on one horizon, with doors and windows running to the right points.
• Day 3 · ellipsesA page of ellipses in one stroke each, then three cups at different heights. Check the bottoms are rounder than the tops.
• Day 4 · the ballOne ball, lit from the upper left, with all five zones and a cast shadow. Then an egg, then an apple.
• Day 5 · from lifeThe corner of the room you're in. Find eye level first, then the vanishing points of the walls and furniture.
• Day 6 · in blocksYour initials in isometric on dot paper, three faces shaded three ways. Then build them in the studio and compare.
• Day 7 · paper to studioDraw an object with bold outlines and flat colours, photograph it, and load it into the studio as a relief (here's how). Light it from the same side you shaded it.