• A sphere is made from millions of circles that all share the same diameter or central axis line. This is how the world spins on it’s axis and how we separate the world into lines of longitude and latitude.
    Imagine the Earth, spinning in space, and draw an imaginary line all the way around from the North Pole to the South Pole and back to North Pole again on the other side. Now draw another, imaginary, line at 90 degrees to the first, from the North Pole to the South Pole and back to North Pole again on the other side.

    Finally draw an imaginary line around the equator. This line will be at 90 degrees to the first two lines. There will be 6 points where the lines cross each other. Just as a circle fits perfectly inside a square, a sphere fits perfectly inside a cube.

    The six points – where the lines we drew crossed each other – touch the outsides of the cube at the centre of each of it’s faces.

    We can find the centres of each face, by drawing lines from corner to corner on a wireframe drawing of a cube. Then we use those six points as guides to let us draw three ellipses each at right angles to each other, creating the wireframe drawing of a sphere inside a box.

    Now – can you see how everything we have done so far has led us to this point? If so, your task is to take a deep breath and have a rest – but only for a minute! There’s work to be done in the next lesson! The index for this course is at http://www.shooraynerdrawing.com/..

  • 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/..

  • Cones-and-pyra-small

    Click the picture on the left to download the pdf sheet. Cut out and make cone and pyramid shapes, so you have a shape to draw, and to understand how the shapes are constructed.

    A cone is like a cylinder but instead of having a circle at both ends, one end is squashed or squeezed into a single point.

    To draw a cone, first draw a circle, then draw a point above the circle and draw two lines from the point to connect with the edges of the circle. Again shading comes in useful here to make the shape look 3D.

    The same goes for pyramids. Draw squares and triangles with a point above them. Connect the point to the corners corners to create a drawing of a pyramid. Drawing flatter triangles and parallelograms will give you a much more 3D representational effect.

    Task: Download and make the cone and pyramid shapes to understand how the shapes are constructed, then draw lots of cone and pyramid shapes. Look around you through the day. See where you can find cone and pyramid shapes.

    The index for this course is at http://www.shooraynerdrawing.com/..