Art Basics -Drawing 3 - The Picture Plane

I'm going to illustrate and explain how to begin every drawing. To start our journey into the world of accurate draftsmanship we must understand what is called the "picture plane". To understand the Picture Plane we must use our imagination. Everywhere that we look with our eyes we must imagine a piece of glass that is exactly perpendicular to wherever we are looking. In other words if our eyes could emit a laser beam straight out to where we are looking, the picture plane is like a piece of glass that is perfectly perpendicular to that beam. It is perpendicular in both the x and y axis.

Now if we are to draw something we must imagine look at the thing we are to draw as if it were inside a Picture frame where the frame is the boarder of our paper or canvas. Imagine the frame having glass in it so that we can see our "object" to be drawn. This is in essence the picture plane. It is always square to our eye no matter where we look, high or low.

Here comes the important part that nobody seems to teach that I've ever observed, the paper or canvas you are going to draw on, must be in a similar relationship to your eye as the imagined picture plane. In other words the paper, when you look at the center of the page, must be perfectly perpendicular to your vision. You can't sit at a table and lay the paper out in front of you. It must at a perpendicular to your vision. You can't be off to one side or too high above or below.

Hopefully those pictures are helpful. The next point is that one needs to be a goodly distance from the paper or canvas, as the size increases. I've seen artists trying to draw on an 18x24 paper while having their nose 10 inches from the sheet. You can't do this. To draw on a full 18x24 one needs to stand at arms length from the sheet to have any sense of accuracy. My illustration above show different placements. The sheet can be low or high but your vision should be square with the center of the sheet. It is practical to draw on a pad in one's lap up to about 14 inches high and one can hold it up to ones chin if drawing about 6 inches high.

If working really large on a canvas of greater that 30 inches, one will need to keep backing up a step or two to judge the drawing. There is, in essence, a perfect angle of view that and artist can effectively work in.

Another point I want to make is this: "Keep ones head level!" You can not accurately draw anything if you bend your head this way and that. You must keep your head level to the "drawing plane" when observing and level to the paper when drawing. This may seem like a "no brainer" but I can't tell you the number of students I've watched twist their heads first one way then the next.