If you’d like to try an intermediate technique, try drawing a glass of water or a single flower in a vase. Take a picture of your desired subject matter so you can attempt to copy each detail and the colors of the photo in your painting.
If you’re creating the painting on a canvas, you’ll be able to move around to get the effect, but if you’re planning a large installation, you’ll need to carefully plan the perspective based on where the viewers will be most likely to stand.
Don’t make the squares too small, or it will be hard to see the details of your drawing. The number of lines you’ll use will depend on the size of your drawing, but for a simple sketch, a 5x5 grid is a good place to start. You may want to label the rows and columns with numbers and letters to help you keep track of each square. Even if you’re planning on making a large sidewalk drawing, starting with these graphs can help you plan out your design. You’ll just have to scale it larger once you start working on the actual installation.
If you don’t want to see the lines when you’re finished, draw them lightly, then erase them after you draw the object. If you’re making a larger installation, you can tape off squares on the ground or wall rather than using a separate piece of paper. However, it can be helpful to practice drawing the object on paper before taking on a bigger project.
You can also use photo editing software to overlay the image onto an angled graph, but this isn’t necessary.
For instance, if you’re drawing a sphere and it passes through the bottom left square on the angled grid, you would make sure to add the same curved line to the bottom left square on the second graph as well. The picture will likely look normal in the bottom squares, but the further up the paper you go, the more you’ll have to stretch the image so it fits the squares. This will create a distorted appearance, which is necessary to create the 3D illusion. Don’t worry about filling in much detail here. Just try to get the main outline of the object onto the grid.
To make the 3D effect more realistic, study the lighting in the area where you plan to display the painting. This is especially important if the painting will be an installation. For instance, if there’s a street sign nearby, consider how that would affect the lighting in your painting.
It may help to do an image search in your search engine for a “value scale,” which shows the range of values for a certain color from lightest to darkest. Gray value scales can be especially useful if you’re not using color in your painting. If you’re using color, use at least 2 shades of the same color to produce a light and dark effect. Place the lighter shade wherever the light would hit the object. You can also use yellow on top of your lighter color as a highlight to mimic the warmth of your light source. [9] X Research source
Seeing the object taking on shape and weight can help you draw the cast shadow later. Unless you’re shading around a sharp corner, shadows should typically fade into each other.
For instance, if you’re drawing a Rubik’s cube, you would draw the individual squares and add color to them, paying attention to how the shadows and highlights would affect each hue.
Think about how translucent areas, reflected light, liquids, or other objects might affect your shadow. If you’re using a physical object as a model, study its actual shadow to help you get an idea of what to draw.
If you don’t want to do this, you may want to draw some sort of a background onto the canvas to help the viewer understand what they’re looking at. You may want to draw a straight line to indicate a table, for instance.
You may even want to take a video, starting from the photo point and moving forward until it becomes clear that the object is actually a 2D drawing.
