An ellipse is a sort of squashed circle. We really need to understand ellipses before we move on to the next lesson – Drawing Spheres – which is probably the most useful shape of them all.

We have already learned that a circle fits perfectly inside a square, touching the midpoints of each the four lines that make up the outside of the square. If we squash the square into a rectangle the circle is squashed too – it gets squashed into an ellipse.

The rules are still the same. The Ellipse fits perfectly into the rectangle, only touching the midpoints of each the four lines that make up the outside of the rectangle. The same rules apply to parallelograms and trapeziums. These shapes will become incredibly useful as we go on.

Whatever the four-sided shape, find the mid points of the lines to guide you as you draw ellipses. Eventually you will be able to draw ellipses by eye and create more convincingly 3D cylinders

Task: Draw four-sided shapes – squares and quadrangles – and draw ellipses inside them, using the midpoints of each line to show you where the ellipse will touch the line and guide you to create the ellipse drawing. The index for this course is at http://www.shooraynerdrawing.com/..