How to Draw (Robertson's book) study thread

[iReddog]

Reddog I hope I understood your question right - you're asking why not draw arbitrary guidelines to a VP, then drop in a vertical and multiple that to get the ortho grid in perspective?

I think in reality you can do that no problem. If you do it the ellipse way though, you can be certain it is definitely, absolutely, 100% a square and not a rectangle. Depends how accurate you want / need to be and how good you are at estimating squares. (I hope I got the right question).

As to buying ellipse guides - you can train yourself to do them freehand. It takes a lot of consistent effort (I've been training nearly daily since xmas and still struggle), but mastering that will help you in sooo many ways as an artist - so many objects you might want to draw are cylindrical and you don't want to have to bust out an ellipse guide every time you want to draw one.

I think mostly Scott Robertson does them freehand, then uses the ellipse guide to clean them up (which you could also do in photoshop with the ellipse tool). Some of those videos he uses an ellipse guide so it's precise for educational reasons (like he also uses a ruler in some vids which I'm sure he doesn't do much in real life). The exercises in the front of the book are great and youtube has some more fun / interesting exercises for when those get boring.

Ok, makes sense. Thanks man!