How to Draw Perfect Squares in 1 & 2 Point Perspective

Please note that this method is accurate so far as I’ve been able to compare it with 3d models, and also this was one of the methods used in a book I was reading, but as cover in the next video below there’s something off about using this to construct perfect cubes so I’m not sure if there might be some minor error or there’s something I’m not taking into consideration when constructing perfect cubes.

How to Draw Perfect Cubes in 2 Point Perspective

How to Rotate Objects in Perspective

Patreons can get access to the 3d models I made and the PSD for the animation here.

If you have any questions or there’s something else you have trouble with concerning perspective leave me a comment and I’ll try and help.

I’m trying out something slightly different. I want to do more video but the editing always takes so long I avoid it. So I’m thinking of doing videos like this one, possibly even more concentrated (one hand at a time) because it’s so much easier to edit. Then maybe once I get the hang of it (and a proper mic - 50% of is getting the iPhone audio bits in sync) I’ll start making longer ones. Anyways enjoy.

Patreon Only Full Size PSD

You can also find this post as an Instructable.

I finally got around to complete Part 2 of the Ears video. I’m still having some recording issues. If you have any questions please comment. Feedback is appreciated. I worked on cutting down the time to 15 minutes this time. Currently working on trying to sound less monotone.

First Part: How to Draw Ears - Part 1 - Structure

The two ears used for reference in the video where:

“Mean me” by Pierre Vignaue used under a CC-BY 2.0 License / Cropped

“Backlight 2” by Travis Pawlewski used under a CC-BY 2.0 License / Cropped

Read More…

I was doing a very realistic portrait from scratch and I was having some trouble with the ear so I thought I’d do some ear studies and record it while I’m at it. The best way really to learn how to draw something is to draw it until you can draw it without reference. There’s no way around the hard boring work that studies can be. Looking at videos and posts will help guide you on what to observe and pay attention to, and mistakes to avoid, but nothing can replace practice.

A great place to get reference images for studies is morgueFile. You could also look around Flickr and such for CC licensed images but if you’ll be posting your work anywhere, those require crediting. morgueFile was made with artists in mind, as long as you modify the image you can do whatever you want with your work and that can be useful so you can just worry about doing your study and not whether you can share it later or you have to attach a giant list of credits.

Update: Part 2 is up!

I planned on talking about how to paint the ear and how it can be lit up from behind (subsurface scattering), but the video was too long already. I’ll do a second one and repost this post when I upload it. I’ve got some cool stuff ready for that video.

I think, I hope. This video was kind of nightmare to make. My computer was throwing blue screens. Turns out the damn video cache was in the wrong place. Also my internet sucks and the files are huge. Just want to mention this because I discovered this cool site called clipchamp that compresses your videos extremely well. I mean, it’s kind of astonishing. Even set on high quality it shrunk a 380MB file to 60MB! (ignore the estimate they give it’s way off). And you can queue the YouTube upload, so you can leave it to do the whole process overnight. I’m sure Premiere can probably compress as well, but I’m not very familiar with all the export settings and this is super easy.

I was fooling around with MyPaint and this just sort of happened. It might look pretty rough because I drew it very small. It’s more the size you see in the sketchbook thumb. The infinite canvas in MyPaint is really cool, but it also makes it hard to judge at what resolution you’re sketching so when you export drawings they might be bigger at 72-300 ppi than you were expecting.

I don’t remember which Croquis Cafe number it was, sorry. If you’ve never heard of Croquis Cafe it’s a youtube channel that films live models so people at home can practice “live” figure drawing.

I wasn’t using any reference so some might look odd. I was just practicing drawing them from memory. …and then got a bit carried away and started painting one.

Fooling around in Photoshop.

I love doing exercises like this where it’s just about painting and getting the colors right (I did not use the included color picks) and I don’t really have to think about the drawing part. I find it very relaxing. You can download the file here if you want to try it yourself.