Drawing from observation
Art & Design · Key Stage 3 · The School
Measuring by eye
Hold a pencil at arm's length, lock your elbow, and use it to compare lengths: how many times does the width of the object go into its height? Working relative to one chosen unit keeps proportions right even when the drawing is a different size from the subject. Locking the elbow matters, because a changing arm length changes every measurement.
The symbol problem
The main obstacle to accurate drawing is that the brain substitutes a SYMBOL for what the eye sees — a remembered idea of an eye or a hand rather than the shapes actually in front of you. That is why drawing something upside down often improves accuracy dramatically: the symbol no longer fits, so you are forced to draw the shapes.
Negative space
NEGATIVE SPACE is the shape of the gaps: between a chair's legs, between an arm and a body. Those gaps have no name and so trigger no symbol, which makes them easier to see accurately. Drawing the gaps and checking they match is one of the fastest ways to find what is wrong with a drawing that feels off.
Hold a pencil at arm's length, lock your elbow, close one eye, and align the tip with the top of the jug and your thumb with its base — that is one 'jug height'. Now turn the pencil sideways: how many jug heights wide is the table? Two and a half. Every proportion in the drawing can be checked against one chosen unit, which is how you catch a head drawn twice too big before you have inked it.