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Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

Kodak monolith, south of I –531, west of Roichester (RWS)

The text and original art in this document are the property of Robert Stites, all rights reserved Page 1
Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

Lesson Three: Buildings


So much for fundamentals. Now we’re ready to apply them to subject categories, starting with buildings.

To make a good realistic drawing, you need to get three things right: proportion, perspective, and shading. To
make a good, realistic painting, you need to do all these, plus make effective use of color. We didn’t have to
worry about proportion or perspective in our paintings of the apple or the zinnias, but buildings are a differ-
ent story.

Proportion
A correctly proportioned painting shows all parts of the subject in their correct
apparent size, just as we see them. To measure proportions, use a technique
called ―sighting―:
1. Face the subject squarely and extend your arm straight out, all the way.

2. Hold a ruler or pencil at a right angle to your arm, alongside an edge of the
subject.

3. Close one eye, and mark the edge’s length with your thumb; that’s your unit.
4. Measure the other edges in terms of that unit.
―Sighting‖ (RWS)
Try it with these rectangles. If you’re looking at this on a computer display (rather
than a projected image), move back until your eye is about three feet away. Sight the height of the red figure,
then without moving your thumb, see how many times that unit will fit into the width. If you don’t get 3, go
back and try again. Are you facing the figure squarely? Is your arm straight out in front, all the way? Is your
pencil or ruler at right angles to your arm?
Did you close one eye?

Repeat for the blue figure, this time making


the width your unit. You should get 3½ for
the height.

Stating the width first, ratios are 3:1, and


1:3½. You can paint the figures any size, and
still keep them in proportion, so long as you
maintain these ratios.

Perspective adds the illusion of depth to a


painting by showing things the way we see
them. There are three methods, used sepa-
rately and in combination.

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Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

LINEAR PERSPECTIVE is what most people mean


when they say ―perspective‖. It is most apparent
in boxy subjects like a book, a box car, and
conventional buildings. It distinguishes near and
far objects by making the distant parts smaller,
resulting in lines that slope into the distance.
How do you measure these slopes? One way is
to estimate their angle:
We know what a 90° angle looks like; a 45° is ―The Last Supper‖, Leonardo da Vinci , showing one point perspective
half that, and a 30° is a third. By eye, we can
tell that the slope of the yellow line marking the top of the
police box is just a little short of 45° above horizontal.

That’s a good reasonableness test, but not very accurate. There’s


a better way called ―sighting for slopes‖ which is a lot like the
technique just described for measuring proportions. To use it,
close one eye and hold a pencil or ruler alongside the edge you
want to measure. Study the angle relative to a horizontal or
vertical edge of the paper, if it’s a photo, or a vertical edge of the
subject, if drawing from life, and transfer the slope to your
picture. ―San Francisco Civic Center‖, in one point perspective.
photo by Jenny Huey,(Flickr)

Sighting for slopes works because even an untrained eye perceives slopes
surprisingly well. You can tell when a picture is hanging crooked by as
little as 2°, for example.

“One point, two point” You may hear these terms used in connection
with linear perspective. They refer to a way of measuring slopes that is
taught in art schools. It uses ―vanishing points‖ and is accurate and
comprehensive, but more complicated than we need at this stage, so we
limit our treatment of it to the few examples shown on this page.

It’s easy to guess what the terms mean by noticing that the perspective
lines for ―The Last Supper‖ and ―The Civic Center‖ converge at a single
point, but the perspective lines for the ―Police Box‖ converge at two
points.

―Police Box in Scarborough‖ showing two point


perspective; so called because the lines
converge at two points. photo: by Thomas
Tolkhiem ’(Flickr)

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Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

AERIAL PERSPECTIVE results when a subject is seen through a


large volume of air. The many particles of dust, water
vapor, and pollution the light encounters on its way to your
eye, cause distant objects look blue and hazy. Aerial
perspective is limited to long view landscapes, but for these
it is quite effective. You can easily distinguish between the
nearest and farthest peaks in this beautiful photograph.

―Santa Monica Mountains‖ showing aerial perspective;


photo, sbisson's photostream , Flickr

OVERLAP is a way to show the relative position of objects seen at short to


middle distances. Still life artists find it particularly useful. Here, we
have no trouble telling that the apple is in front of the bottle, and the
grapes are in front of the apple

―Still Life‖ showing overlap


photo byDan4th, flickr

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Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

Exercise: One of two Kodak monoliths south of I-531, west of Rochester (RWS photo)

Using hard pastel, a charcoal pencil, and the rough side of a half sheet of paper, trimmed to fit your drawing
board, make a blocked-in underpainting of the building seen in this photo.

Steps:
Put the building in propor-
tion by determining the ratio
of height to width.
1. Sight the height of the
near edge, and make this
your unit (you could use any
edge).

2. Sight the width of each


side in terms of this unit.

This gives us the ratio of height to the width for each of the two sides, and for the building as a whole.

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Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

Put the parts in linear perspective by drawing the slopes:


1. Draw the near vertical edge on your paper. You are creating a new unit now, which determines the size
and position of the building on the paper. You can make the picture as big as a billboard or as small as a
postage stamp by varying the size of this unit. Using the ratios just measured, draw vertical lines to position
the distant vertical edges, left and right—the height of these far edges doesn’t matter at this point.

Step 1; draw the near vertical edge (new unit) and position the left and right edges

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Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

2. Draw the eye-level line, which falls about a quarter of the way down the light colored band around the
base of the building. How do I know? Two ways (1)the two sloped sides, when extended, converge on either
side at the eye level line (2) because I walked up to the building after taking the picture, and the level of my
eyes was about a quarter of the way down the light colored strip.

3. Draw the foundation lines by eye. They have very little slope because they are so close to the eye-level line.

4. Sight the upper slopes on each side, and draw.

5. Inspect, make final adjustments by eye; clean up.

6. Block in the colors.

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Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

The Blocked in underpainting

You now have a blocked-in underpainting in correct proportion and perspective, and can pat yourself on the
back. You would be surprised to know how many amateur artists (and even some professionals) don’t
know how to do this.

Short Break

Assignment
Working from the underpainting just prepared, finish the picture using charcoal pencil and soft pastels.

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Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

Steps:
1. Sharpen the edges of the building by useing a paper mask. (Lay a sheet of paper along an unevenly
drawn edge, so you can erase the edge without erasing much of any thing else. Adjust the paper, and use
it as a mask to draw the sky where it meets the building; repeat to draw the building edge .

2. Adjust the sky, adding a few soft clouds.

3. Adjust the lawn, giving it some color variety and texture.

4. Add a tree or two, and shrubbery.

5. Add a something to give the building scale; a jogger, a cyclist, or a vehicle (I used a truck).

6. Touch up, sign and date.

―Kodak Monolith‖ RWS

Footnote: In case you’re wondering why I chose such an unusual subject, it was to avoid the repetitive details that characterize most
buildings. An office building typically has multiple floors of one window after another. Residential buildings also have their share of
repetitive features which take a long time to paint, and quickly reach a point at which they are no longer instructive. This building is
free of such details, enabling us to concentrate on proportion and perspective—the important parts of this lesson. (RWS)

Revised 2/6/2011

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Pastel Painting: Lesson Three, Buildings

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