Exercise: Boxes and Books

05.09.12 Exercise: Boxes 

I found this exercise very difficult. I first tried drawing the boxes freehand. Unfortunately it is so long since I last drew on a regular basis that I found it impossible to achieve the control I needed to draw a straight line. I also had very little memory of how to deal with the perspective. 

I used my 11 year old son's school book 'Progetto Laboratorio D'Arte' Katia Brandinardi, Walter Moro (La Nuova Italia 2009 ristampa 2011), which had a concise section on geometric perspective to remind myself how to construct the boxes. 

Unfortunately the placement of my horizon line was such that most of the vanishing points were off the side of the page so I ended up guessing whether the lines I'd drawn looked approximately correct. Towards the end I realised that I'd spent most of my time looking at the paper rather than the subject with the result that the last box I drew (the back one which is upright) ended up being too short and squat relative to the others. Also the third box in the stack is wonky and not symmetrical, particularly the back wall of it is narrower at one end than the other.

The boxes do look three dimensional, but this definitely needs more practice.