How to Draw Three Dimensional Shapes
Drawing three dimensional shapes can be challenging and takes practice in addition to understanding some basic concepts. Like any drawing, remember to begin drawing lightly with a pencil and have an eraser handy for mistakes. The tips below will be helpful when trying to draw three dimensional shapes.
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Instructions
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Have a source to view. Especially as a beginner, it is much easier to understand how light forms shape by seeing it. Set the object in a place that has only one source of light, such as next to a big window or in a dark room with only one lamp on.
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Sketch in the basic shape. Do this lightly with pencil, not toiling too much over perfection of the shape. The outline of the shape will be only a guideline of the space the shape will take up, and will be removed later.
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Think about the way light hits the object. Highlights and shadows in logical places are what create the illusion that a picture on a two-dimensional surface, such as paper, is three dimensional.
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Leave highlights. If drawing a ball that is lit from a source above the ball, the very top of the ball will have an area that is completely white. The shading will gradually grow darker as it moves away from the center of the light.
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Begin shading. The shading will be darkest in the places that are blocked from any light. Using the ball lit from above as an example, the area on the bottom of the ball will be completely shadowed due to the light being blocked by the fattest part of the ball.
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Include a shadow of the object. Unless the object is floating in midair, which is unlikely, the object will block light on one side of the surface it sits on. The shape of the shadow depends on the angle the light hits it and how close the light is.
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Remember perspective. Perspective is a key concept in making an object look three dimensional. The idea of perspective is complicated and wasn't even discovered until the fifteenth century. The idea is that as an object moves farther away from the viewer, it grows smaller. To draw a person in the foreground of a picture and a tree in the background, the person may actually be larger than the tree in the drawing.
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