Master Your Elliptical Anatomy! (Drawing Fundamentals - Super Simple Exercise For Cylinders)

How to fix the top 5 head construction drawing mistakes: www.thedrawing...
Ellipses and Circles are everywhere! Figuring out how to draw them is critical. In this video I go over a simple exercise for practicing your cylindrical forms.
I also cover the Anatomy of An Ellipse. What you need to know to draw one properly!
Which is useful because cylinders are made from Ellipses...
It's easy to get discouraged with structural drawing and learning the fundamentals. In the beginning these concepts seem very technical.. but it's critical to understand that you get better as you practice and that they unlock a lot of creative potential.
The more you practice in a technical manner the less technical you need to be in your day to day drawing.
I recommend a small but steady percentage of your time as an artist be spent studying the craft.... 15-20% in the beginning. Fold these techniques into your normal everyday drawing bit by bit. And keep the focus always on drawing fun stuff you enjoy.
Happy Drawing!
Tim Mcburnie
Learn Drawing and Illustration from me: www.thedrawingcodex.com
Portfolio: www.timmcburnie.com
www.artstation.com/tim-mcburnie
timmcburnie
timmcburnie

[@pillowfeathers]

your videos are quite enjoyable, I didn't really need this video but I still wanted to give you the watch time.

[@TheDrawingCodex]

Thanks!

[@tim_dunks]

Tim, I watched 20+ of your videos and fall in love with your teaching skills! Every question I ever had now can be solved because of you. In two weeks with your lessons I improved more than in two months my art school. THANK YOU, CODEX!!!

[@MAIfaether]

Thanks a lot for this helpful video. I was always struggled with anatomy parts. Hopefully there will be more videos about human anatomy (arm, leg, torso, etc) just like what you did with nose anatomy. I really enjoy watching how you drawing everything in your linear style.

[@TheDrawingCodex]

Thanks MAI! I’ll do some more on different body parts for sure!

[@bingoswap]

Thank you man, you are a life saver

[@jybutbynyn]

i really have problems drawing cylinders and ellipses, thanks for this!

[@TheDrawingCodex]

Awesome! Best of luck with your Ellipses! :)

[@luisbaez5903]

Best KZbin video on cylinder anatomy thanks !!!

[@chiarinadp]

Thank you so much! I come from CG and I almost never hold a pencil in my hand. I was really scared! I still have a long way to go, but your tutorials are soothing and really help to take things step by step in a way that makes everything less frightening 🥰

[@TheDrawingCodex]

Thanks! That's awesome to hear. I really appreciate you letting me know these were helpful 🙂

[@NoFearZero]

Another great video! Learning tons from your channel.

[@TheDrawingCodex]

Awesome! Glad it’s been useful!!

[@tita-mita9314]

I’m literally leveling up just by watching your videos XD

[@user-gt5tm9kc5w]

It’s so helpful.

[@CarpeDean]

Good practical instruction. Thanks for the video.

[@6_zubadi]

Thank you so much ❤️

[@rubinarana4996]

Thank you for a very helpful video. Could you please share something comic character development process.

[@artwhat..]

Very good,thanks..

[@omarelric]

You are a saint

[@cory99998]

Does perspective (non-spherical) ever break the perpendicular rule? Like something with a lot of foreshortening.

[@TheDrawingCodex]

Do you mean the perpendicular relationship between the major and minor axis? Yeah a lot of 1 and 2 point perspective breaks down outside the Cone of Vision. Which is another super important aspect of these 123 point perspective grids. Once you get distortion that would be similar to a fish eye lens (which is exactly what you are imagining with extreme foreshortening) then a lot of these rules don't apply... or at least if you were to use a proper grid to draw then it will look wrong. This is really obvious in a situation where you use the vertical non converging dimension of a 2 point grid as the minor axis of a cylinder. Imagine a 2 point grid, the vertical is not converging, just parallel to the picture plane... it will look fine towards the middle of your grid but if you draw it way out to the side a circle drawn with it's minor axis pointing straight up will look really off (apologies that is probably an impossible to follow description, I'll see if I can do a video sometime explaining the limitations and practical application of perspective grids.) You gotta remember that these grids are just a cheat to make it easy to plot the world onto a 2D surface :) They work as great tools when you apply them properly. But they do break. Same as how you can break the world if you view it through a fish eye lens :) The major minor axis relationship is still a good guide for getting things to look right though. Even if you are pushing the limits with crazy foreshortening. Also remember that this is drawing and we can do whatever we want as long as it looks cool ;)

[@cory99998]

@@TheDrawingCodex Thank you! Yes, that description does make sense and is what I was wondering about. I think the 'cheat' is super helpful, will be using it going forwards since its great for my uses and dramatically sped up my ability to draw these. Just wanted to make sure.

[@dairic]

I find that my cyclinders always looked squished. I think it has to do with the fact that when drawing a circle in perspective, the ellipse should not be symmetrical on either side of the major axis. A proper ellipse that represents a circle in perspective is one that is drawn by constructing it from a square in perspective. In this case it's clear that the major axis does not intersect the center of the ellipse. thoughts?

[@johncapelle4096]

What kind of pencil is used in thuis video?

[@TheDrawingCodex]

This is a blackwing matte :-)

[@hineko_]

you should put your camera even further away because I still managed to figure something out on the screen of my phone.

[@SONOClBrIOH]

This really helps me a lot in trying to understand how to "see" things 🥲 I've been struggling with this for years Thank you for the video✨