welcome to the first day of week five of the art and science of drawing or for those of you who are going through the program in order day 21 the focus of this week is on measuring and proportion learning to measure takes all of the guesswork out of drawing and this week you're going to learn a series of measuring tools and strategies that are going to allow you to quickly and easily evaluate the proportions of your drawing subject and get them on the page the strategies are going to learn this week are going to include proportional measuring where you're going to use your pencil to evaluate the proportions of a subject you're going to learn how to use plumb lines which are using vertical and horizontal lines to compare points of your subject to one another and finally you're going to learn angle sighting which will allow you to actually extract an angle from your drawing subject and bring it over to the page learning how to measure will dramatically increase the accuracy and believability of your drawings before we get into today's subject I wanted to address a couple of things the first is that measuring just like any other skill and drawing requires a huge amount of practice the second thing is that it's important to remember that learning to measure will get us much closer to the actual proportions of our subjects but no measuring strategy is without its faults so while you're learning the different strategies I'm going to talk to you about the benefits and drawbacks of each one so the idea is that after this week you'll have a whole series of strategies that you can use and you can mix them and match them depending on what your subject is what measuring strategy you're most comfortable with and you'll be able to design your own approach to evaluating the proportions of your subjects in getting them to your drawing learning to measure takes a good amount of discipline and dexterity but once you've mastered the techniques you'll be amazed at how quickly your drawings will improve and how easily you'll be able to actually capture the proportions of your subject accurately on the page so before we get into technique let's take a look at some theory so what exactly is report proportion refers to the size relationships between various parts of your drawing subjects when you're drawing accurately depicts the proportions actually found in your subject we say that that drawing is in proportion but if parts if you're drawing are either too big or too small particularly if it's recognizable to the viewer we say that that drawing is out of proportion so to do drawings that are in proportion we need to measure as many parts of our drawing subject as possible and compare them to one another now before we apply these ideas to the drawing process let's just talk about what proportion is on its own let's start off by introducing what proportion is and how you can think about it here you can see a simple square the distance from one side of the square to the other is called its width the distance from the top to the bottom of the square is called the height on a perfect square the width and the height are equal to one another meaning that the ratio of width to height is one to one let's change this proportion by adding another square on top thereby doubling the height of our shape now the height of our shape is two times the width of the shape therefore this rectangle has a proportional relationship of 1 to 2 it is twice as tall as it is wide it's important to remember that the number for the width is on the left side of the colon and the number for the height is on the right now let's return to our simple square instead of increasing the height let's double the width of our shape this creates a rectangle that is twice as wide as it is high giving it a proportional ratio of 2 to 1 let's return once again to our simple square when you're drawing it's actually pretty rare for the proportional relationship of the width to the height to be solvable using whole numbers so let's take a look at some very simple fractions so instead of simply doubling the height of our shape let's only add half of the height of our square now our rectangle is one and a half times higher than it is wide giving us a ratio of 1 to 1.5 now most of the objects you're going to measure while actually drawing won't even be this clean so you should get comfortable with approximating you can see here that if we increase the height of our box just slightly even though it's no longer exactly one and a half times high as it is wide it's still approximately the same proportion so let's apply these ideas to an axe we'll subject as always it's critical when you're learning a new idea to start off as simply as possible so our subject here is going to be a simple upright egg first let's evaluate the width of the egg the initial evaluation of the width on any drawing subject should be taken at the subjects widest point we will assign the width as our unit of 1 now let's see how the width of the egg compares to its height we can clearly see that the egg is taller than it is wide but most people can make that evaluation without measuring at all so the question becomes how much taller is the egg than it is wide to figure this out let's imagine our unit of 1 as being divided into thirds now if we take one-third of the width of our subject and add it to the height it gets us very close to the height of our egg so now we know that our subject is approximately 1 in 1/3 times as high as it is wide it's important to note that this is still just an approximation but proportional measuring will usually get you closer to the actual proportions of your subject than just looking with your eyes alone so now let's take a look at the tools and processes you'll use to measure your subject while actually drawing so now that you have some basic ways to think about proportion let's learn how to actually measure our drawing subjects so we can bring the measurements to our drawings to start you're going to select a measuring tool now I tend to just use my pencil but you can use knitting needles you can use a paintbrush really anything that is straight lightweight and rigid the next thing you want to think about is your posture now while you're measuring it's critical that you put yourself in a single position and don't move I would recommend sitting up straight and you want to make sure that you're not moving at all you really want to watch to make sure that you're not moving forward or backward or side-to-side even subtle shifts in your relationship to your drawing subject will invalidate the proportions here you can see me in my studio actually measuring a subject while taking measurements I keep my body in the same position I'm using my pencil as my measuring tool you'll notice that my arm is held straight out in front of me with my elbow locked you'll also notice that my head is tilted towards my shoulder I'm using my right eye to measure and keeping my left eye closed bringing my head closer to my shoulder brings my measuring eye in line with my arm this can help minimize distortions particularly if you're citing a large subject like a figure and you're moving your arm great distances up and down or side to side now let's take a look at the sight lines first let's follow the sight line at the top you'll notice that it moves from my eye touches the top of the pencil and moves until it hits the top of my subject now take a look at the sight line on the bottom it moves from my eye and hits the tip of my thumb which I'm using to mark the bottom of my subject on the pencil from my point of view this is done by placing the top of my pencil so that it appears to be touching the top of my subject from my point of view and then sliding my thumb up and down the pencil until my thumb marks the bottom of the subject from my point of view you'll use this technique regardless of what proportional measuring tool you're using now let's apply all of this to an actual drawing of an egg here you can see me capturing the width of the egg by holding my measuring tool at arm's length with my elbow locked putting the tip of it at one edge of the egg and my thumb on the other edge we'll use this measurement as our basic unit of 1 now let's see how that measurement compares to the height whenever you compare one proportion to another you must make sure that your elbow remains locked and that your posture hasn't changed remember any shift in your posture or your arm will invalidate the proportions that you've captured here we can see that the width of the egg gets us about three-quarters of the way up the height one of the things you're trying to do is train your brain to visualize these kinds of proportional dimensions another way this can be done is to find the height of the egg first and then compare it to the width once again you can see that the width is roughly three-quarters of the height next I'll show you how to actually use these proportions in your drawing here you'll see me making a vertical line that will roughly establish the height of the egg you can see me make two marks one at the top and one at the bottom we know from measuring that the width to height ratio is one to one and one-third or to understand this another way if we divide the width into thirds and add one of those thirds onto the height we'll arrive with a proper proportions what this means is that I can divide the height into quarters and only use three of those quarters to establish the width you'll see me do this by first dividing the height in half and using my pencil to compare the two halves together to make sure that they are the same next you'll see me divide the lower half of the height in half again I'm also using my pencil once again to make sure that the two halves are equal we know from measuring that it will take three of those smaller units to equal the width so using my pencil with a dimension marked with my finger you'll see me bring this dimension across for the width three times now I've established the width and height at a ratio of one to one and one-third or for those of you who are comfortable simplifying fractions we could also say that the width to height ratio is three to four with our width and height established we can easily complete the box and then using the skills we explored during weeks one through four of the art and science of draw I can lightly draw in the egg you'll remember that when we measured the egg it was actually slightly taller than the one-to-one in one third box that we have here you can see this reflected in my final drawing now let's apply these same ideas to a slightly more complex object in this demonstration you'll be introduced to a variation on the width to height ratio instead of starting with the largest width to height box I'll begin measuring this subject by finding the width of the rim of the vase with the width marked at my measuring tool and with my arm outstretched elbows locked I'll measure the height by figuring out how many of those units it takes to get from the top to the bottom of the vase you can see that it's approximately three and one-third with the width of the rim still marked on my pencil next I'll see how many of those units it takes to get across the vase at its widest point you can see here that it takes exactly two of those units to get across on these rare occasions when you're proportional ratios occur in whole numbers it makes measuring and drawing the subject much easier so now we know that the width to height ratio of the entire vase is two to three and one-third to draw this box you'll first see me make a box that has a width to height ratio of two to three next you'll see me divide the top third of the height into thirds and finally you'll see me place one of these thirds on top arriving at a box that has a width to height ratio of two to three and one-third finally at the center of the top of the box we can place the rim which is half of the overall width of the box to do this you can see that I've divided the width into quarters in marking the location of the width of the rim with the essential proportions measured and marked I can lightly draw in the basic shapes and volumes of the vase you can even use the width to height comparison to arrive the proportion of the rim of the vase although measuring items this small can be cumbersome you might have better luck just assessing it using your eyes alone but while you're practicing today I would encourage you to try both once you're comfortable capturing a width or height on your pencil in hearing it to others you can apply this skill in a countless number of ways so here's your project for today you are going to select a minimum of five simple subjects and explore their proportions you're going to do this by applying the proportional measuring technique that you learned today and while you're doing this be creative you want to evaluate as many proportions on your subject as possible and compare them to as many other parts of the subject as you can just like you saw demonstrated today for each of your objects I'd like you to draw the box that is derived from the width and the height of your subject found at its highest and widest points once you've lightly drawn your simple box go ahead and use the skills and strategies that you've learned to the previous weeks to draw a light volumetric foundation for your subject there's no need to go into any detail today remember the focus of this week is on measuring and remember producing these five drawings is the bare minimum amount of practice the best thing you can do if you really want to expediate your learning is to do more practice double triple quadruple the amount of practice you're doing remember your development is directly linked to how much you're willing to practice and when we're dealing with fundamentals like measuring you cannot practice too much one of the things I'd like you to notice is how familiar the object becomes to you after you've really explored its proportions through measuring one of the greatest benefits of practicing these proportional measuring techniques is it trains your mind to start to make these evaluations before you even pull out your measuring tool in order to measure things well go to your practice and I will see you here for the next session where you're going to learn about plumb lines you