Lesson five is the measured drawing.
Now, measurement is absolutely central to drawing.
Somebody much smarter than me actually said that drawing was all about
the collecting of measurements.
And the business of drawing was recording those measurements on paper.
To do it we use two strategies.
One of them is to actually use a ruler and measure things.
You say it's that wide or high.
Another way is to estimate.
And so I look at my hand, and I say, well,
it's about nine inches from there to there.
About an octave on a piano.
And you measure octave on a piano and
it probably comes out around about nine inches.
So a lot of drawing is done by estimation.
But today, we're going to look at more accurate measurement.
In the drawing we're going to look at, Raskin was trying to draw a shield,
a heraldic shield.
A shield that might've been carried by a knight in shinning armor.
Now, to arrive at his drawing of a shield, there are many different shapes of shield.
He used a compass to get an accurate circle.
He also used a compass to break down that circle into segments.
And then a ruler to describe the straight edge across the top.
Later on, we're going to actually make one of these shields on paper.
And I'll show you a very simple construction.
But at the moment, I think what is important to bear in mind is that so
many good drawings are done as a result of measurement.
It's not simply a question of learning to be good at estimating,
learning to draw with wonderful gestures with a brush.
But also, being able to measure something and record it quite precisely on paper.
So now I'm going to show you how to make a precise drawing of
a shield using a ruler and a compass.
Using a pair of compasses I'm drawing a four inch
across circle which means I need the compasses open two inches.
I measure that on the ruler.
Draw the circle.
Then using that same two inch distance,
I work my way around the edge of the circle, marking it off into segments.
The top two segments form the top points of the shield.
And the lowest point of the section of the circle forms the point of the shield.
By joining the top two with a ruler.
So by opening out my compass and placing on the two top points and
connecting them to the lower point, I create the shield form.
Now, this is the starting point of a drawing that could either have heraldic
devices on it, patterns on it, colors on it, but it is a measured starting point.
The important thing is that it could be repeated several times as a pattern.
And that any drawing that is going to become part of the pattern needs to be
measured.