I was talking shop with an artist in the studio today and I shared this page from Andrew Loomis, which might be the single most valuable page I’ve ever encountered in a how-to-draw book. I can’t BEGIN to say how many hours this “hanging figures on the horizon” technique has saved me.
(EDIT: Over on another site, someone said they didn’t understand how to read this pic, so maybe adding a second pic and some explanation will help?)
Let’s say I want to draw “Joe” standing further back. I need to know where to place him so he looks like he’s the same height, even though he’s further away. If I get it wrong, he’ll look giant or tiny.
I can do that by making sure that the horizon cuts thru Joe AT THE SAME HEIGHT, no matter how close or far away he is. In the original picture, it cuts thru the original Joe at the waist.
So let’s look at three different Joes.
A: Wrong. Horizon goes thru his knees. In this context, he’s a giant.
B: Correct. Horizon goes thru his waist, just like the original Joe!
C: Wrong. Horizon goes thru his head. In this context, he’s tiny.
Reblogging because it’s been 75 years and Loomis is still right.
mod post
happy new year!
after slowly chipping away at it for months, i’ve finally gotten through the backlog of reference posts i’ve saved over the years. i’ll still be queuing posts i come across, but going forward i will be going through old posts and deleting or fixing ones with broken links and images. i’ll also be reevaluating the tag list and retagging or changing tags as i see fit. there are over 1,000 posts on this blog so i expect this will take quite a while, so thank you for your patience during this process!
Hi! I’m really sick of whitewashing and the various excuses that artists come up with, so I wrote a guide! How To Not Whitewash, at least with regards to skin tone. Please make use of it, and encourage other artists to do so as well. Here’s a link to this guide on a Google Doc - this document has image descriptions. Feel free to contact me if the link stops working, or if you have questions (in good faith).
If the “Thriving Rate” calculation empowers you to double your quote on your next job, please consider hitting the “Buy me a coffee”button. It keeps the server running and the code flowing <3
hello fellow artists. google has fallen. pinterest/duckduckgo AI filters don’t work. do not despair; here is a list i made of places to find reference images without having to sift through piles of worthless garbage. (for future editing convenience i am just linking my blog post on dreamwidth.)
