Reflections In Watercolor

Mulan wonders when her reflection will show, in the water. But how do we display that reflection the Disney artists showed us. I read up in the reflection chapter of my book, Understanding Perspective by Stephanie Bower to understand the reflection behind bodies of water. To do this I looked up many lakes surrounding homes and neighborhoods. The specific painting I followed along with from the book shows a village street in Rua Dr. Pereira, Paraly, Brazil by Mathew Brehm.

Bower says that they're two properties in the combinations of reflection; "Smooth vs. rippled water... Be sure to look carefully, as the object and its reflection are not identical" (Bower 90). In my reference drawing Mathew Brehm follows a village street with no ripples. The water is simply standing. This makes sketching a bit easier as the reflection should now be an identical mirrored copy of  above the reflection or water. The valley above the street is focused in the middle to let the readers eyes follow down towards the water, so are the houses. In each painting an artists thinks carefully about every angle, because an angle can be crucial. Perspective is what draws the reader in, the artist shows what they want the reader to see by using perspective to train the eyes to follow an object down to their focus.

Bower explains reflections as a mirrored image that starts at a piece of lined reflection (Bower 91). Bower shows this in diagrams, like folded paper. Wherever the line of reflection is at is where you paper or house in this case will be folded. I took note of this advice when i got past the line of reflection and started drawing my mirrored homes. I lifted the object below the reflection line and flipped the house upside down. I found this part was easiest when i just turned the paper upside down. I did sketches before I attempted to draw the whole thing. This helped to watch out for mistakes I made while sketching prior in my rough drafts.



Personally I love the look of reflection on a body of water. So what is your favorite tactic of perspective? What is your favorite thing to draw or doodle? I know I love to draw Instagram models, but for the blog assignment I wanted to challenge myself to try something new.

Creative Drawing: Landscape and Perspective

David Phan

Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be by Kathryn Temple

In order to be able to draw, you'll need to know where you're looking from, or your perspective. In Kathryn Temple's book, Drawing: The Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be, Temple talks about different perspectives and their purposes. The one I'd like to highlight here is landscape perspectives. Temples delves into the process by stating, "I used these tricks of what's called atmospheric perspective to create the illusion of open space: Things get fuzzier the farther away they are; Things tend to appear lighter in value the farther away they are; Things appear to get smaller the farther away they are; Things appear closer together the farther away they are" (Temple 74). These four rules of landscape drawing allow the piece to show where everything is exactly, and allows you to judge the distance between each object in your drawing.

In my drawing, I've decided not to use a picture this time. Instead, I'll use what I know of my own surroundings (living in Washington means there's plenty of trees to look at!) and Temple's advice on landscape drawing to create an image of a meadow with a forest and mountain backdrop. I decided to contrast the image with a wild fire as well to make it more interesting. Here, you'll see I used the landscape techniques by blurring the background, defining the foreground, and shrinking the backdrop. I also used the shadowing and realism techniques from before to give it a final touch.

Do the landscape techniques really seem to allow you to judge different distances in the drawings? How do you think the blending of shadowing and landscape techniques helps give the drawing better depth?

Works Cited

Temple, Kathryn. Drawing: the Only Drawing Book You'll Ever Need to Be the Artist You've Always Wanted to Be. Sterling Children's Book, 2014.

Two-Point Eye-Level Perspective Drawing

                                     Two-Point Eye-Level Perspective Drawing by: Olivia Nguyen 

The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte  is a historic baroque in Paris. In my newest drawing however it is a two-point eye-level perspective drawing. When you draw you can express how you feel without writing the details. The paintbrush is your friend and the words are the paint. This sketch was by far the most time consuming, it was not however as tricky as last posts, but still i needed help. I am using Understanding Perspective by Stephanie Bower as a reference in my follow along drawing. In this drawing I used my Pang water color eight set, Bic pencil, Pentel aquabrush, and notebook paper. This time I decided against pen. I thought it might give the drawing a more realistic work, because obviously in real life there are no lines just shadows and contrast. 

When doing two-point perspective sketches Bower says "Try to place the closest vertical edge off-center to create a composition with better movement. Placing that corner in the middle of your drawing splits the image in half and leads the viewer's eye out of your sketch" (Bower 53). When I was sketching I placed my vertical edge off just a little bit. It made a huge difference. The drawing had much better composition and flow. The viewers eye now was directed off page. It has a cool effect where everything seems slightly taller and gives a worms eye perspective. Many great and everyday artists use this technique in urban sketches, such as Eduardo Bajzek, Paul Wang, and Josiah Hanchett.

The reason why most sketches aren't straight on are because of the effect you get when it is angled to the side. When a drawing is not straight forward you can usually see more than one side of a building. This gives a more natural and raw way of looking at the drawing for the viewer. Bower explains that extending converging lines on each side will take the vanishing point separate ways. Both of the ways on the eye-level of the sketcher or viewer (Bower 52). In these types of drawings the vanishing point will be off the page. This will make things much harder as you might have to guess where many of the lines will lead. This can lead you to inaccuracy and make your whole drawing off. 

I will leave you with a question, do you believe the risk of inaccuracy is worth the better drawing in the end if you leave the vanishing point off the page? Also what is your favorite drawing of mine so far?

One Point Aerial Perspective

One Point Aerial Perspective by: Olivia Nguyen

Let me take you to the rooftop loggia of the Basilica San Marco in Venice, Italy. It is described by many as a simple space to sketch. All you do is start with a box and build you vanishing point and you have got the perfect basis for Venice, Italy. But there are many arches when looking upon the loggia. How do we achieve a realistic look of arches and beautiful doors? On site drawing is great because taking a picture can be done in two seconds, but a drawing you really take time to take in all the little details. Once your done and can look back upon it you can remember all the smells, weird sights, weather, noises, and maybe even the taste of the air that day. I don't recall a phone camera doing all that. With a camera you miss so many of those little details. As I am much better at drawing sketches of people rather than buildings helping me guide through my perspective drawing I will use the book Understand Perspective by Stephanie Bower. The great thing about this book many of the artists featured are right here from Seattle. 

Bower uses a term called foreshortening to achieve the flattening out affect something has as it gets closer to your vanishing point. Bower explains that the closer at eye level something is the flatter it should seem (Bower 34). When I did the first rough sketches I made sure the building, arches, and windows farther away had more dimension verse the ones that were closer to the vanishing point. This added to the sketches realism. 

During the detailing process of my sketch I got stuck on patterns and which way they went. How would I make sure I kept the realistic characteristics of the buildings when I drew them? In the book Bower explains the difference of horizontal shortening and vertical shortening "The angled lines of the molding on the side walls flatten to a horizontal line at your eye level. When sketching, look for architectural elements like course of stone or brick to flatten at the eye level too" (Bower 35). This helped a lot during my watercolor period of my drawing I made sure to add texture at angled lines and none to some others. This gave my artwork a nice flattening at my horizon line. My horizon line is at eye level. Before my sketch I sketched many lines, dots, and a persons head for eye level. All of them had meaning to ensure my keeping of perspective. If you look the sketch before water color you maybe able to see some of them. This kept my windows in order and everything else nice and neat. 

This perspective drawing took me about an hour to do. I am definitely making progress from my last drawing. I used a Pang watercolor set 8, Bic mechanical pencil, pen, notebook paper, and a pentel waterbrush. Don't forget to watch out for more posts from me with more artwork. I want to leave you with a question, what is your favorite building? Taj Mahal? Seattle Space Needle?

Understanding Perspective

Olivia Nguyen
Understanding Perspective by Stephanie Bower

Ever see those hipster artists in a Seattle coffee shop. Most likely these artists are doing something called drawing on location. It is a great way to save memories of where you have been.

A book called Understanding Perspective by Stephanie Bower features many artists from Seattle. The book teaches you skills and terms you need to make your own perspective drawing.


Bower says "A common error in eye-level sketches is to put the vanishing point a little too high, in effect raising your eye-level and 'floating'" (Bower 43). Your vanishing point is one of the most important parts of starting your sketch because it bases where everything will be in your drawing. So when I did my eye-level sketch (which is a perspective sketch set at eye-level) I made sure to set it not too high other wise my whole sketch would be off.

The follow along sketch I decided to do from the book is a elevation eye-level sketch. An elevation sketch can be described as a your line of sight perpendicular to the building face. Basically straight forwards from you (Bower 18). When I was drawing the sketch I kept in  mind the line of sight should be perpendicular to the building's face. If you look closely at the drawing you may be able to see my vanishing point line.

The building I drew took about 30-45 minutes to do. The landscaping in the drawing could use some work, but my building is pretty good. I used a Pang watercolor 8 set, Bic pencil, Notebook paper, Pentel waterbrush pen, and a pen.

Make sure you keep up with my posts to see my progress and more artwork to come.

Drawing: Realistic Techniques Part 5

Hello everyone! For my last blog post, I decided to draw a hand. This is the last lesson in the book You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler. In this lesson, Kistler not only gives step by step procedures on how to draw a hand, but goes over the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing that were taught throughout the book. I know I didn't read every single lesson in the book, and that I only have attempted 5 of the lessons, but I like how Kistler went over all the important techniques for drawing in this lesson. Kistler says "In this lesson we will pull together all of the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing that we have learned so far and apply them to this drawing" (Kistler 234). Kistler goes on and explains each law and how they apply to this lesson. The nine laws that he mentioned were foreshortening, placement, size, overlapping, shading, shadow, contour, horizon, and density. I believe that all these laws are important when drawing a realistic picture because they help you add depth, perspective, and more realistic features to your picture. Here is a picture of my finished drawing of a hand:

In this drawing, I used the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing explained in the book to help create a realistic drawing with depth and perspective. I used foreshortening because the hand is tilted away from the point of view. I used placement because I placed the fingers and the thumb in a way that helps create a realistic depth to the picture. I used size because the fingers are all relative in size to each other, and I used overlapping because some of the fingers overlap each other. I used shading because I shaded parts of the hand to give it more depth and realistic qualities, and I used shadow because I shaded the shadows between the fingers which separates each finger and also adds to the depth. I used contour because I drew wrinkle lines on the palm and fingers to add shape, volume and depth, and I used horizon because the picture is drawn at eye-level. Each technique that I used to make this drawing helped create the illusion of depth in the finished picture.

I think that I definitely improved my drawing skills this quarter and added to my knowledge and understanding of the different drawing techniques. I learned how to use these drawing techniques to create a realistic image with depth and perspective. I hope to continue using these techniques in the future and that I can continue to develop new drawing skills and build on my knowledge.

What do you think of this drawing? Is there anything I could improve on? Do you believe that the Nine Fundamental Laws of Drawing are important when making a drawing look realistic? Is there any law that you think is the most important when adding depth and perspective to the picture?


Kistler, Mark. You Can Draw in 30 Days. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2011. Print.

Drawing: Realistic Techniques Part 3

Hi everyone! For my third blog post, I decided to focus on the technique of using a two-point perspective. In my previous blog post, I showed how I used the one-point perspective technique by using a vanishing point to create a city where the buildings seem to vanish in the distance. I now want to show you how I used a two-point perspective to draw a picture. In this lesson in the book You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler, Kistler teaches step by step on how to create a castle in two-point perspective. Kistler defines two-point perspective as "using two guide dots on a horizon line to draw an object above and below your eye level" (Kistler 186). Here is a picture of my finished drawing of a castle in two-point perspective:

Like the one-point perspective drawing technique, the two-point perspective drawing technique can also give a picture depth and perspective. The only difference is that the two-point perspective has two vanishing points instead of one. This technique, similar to the one-point perspective technique, gives the drawing more realistic and complex qualities and features because it allows you to see the picture at an angle that you would normally see it at. In this drawing, the two point perspective makes you feel like you are looking directly at the middle of the castle and the castle seems to vanish or get farther away to the left and to the right. I also used some of the shading techniques I learned as well from previous posts that also helped give this picture a realistic feel to it. I believe that this two-point perspective technique, along with the one-point perspective and the shading techniques, can really make a picture stand out and can give it more depth. This lesson in the book has expanded on and added to my knowledge and understanding of a vanishing point by using two vanishing points instead of one to give a picture a different perspective and more realistic features and qualities to it.

So what do you think of this drawing? Do you think that it turned out better than my last drawing? Does the one-point perspective technique or the two-point perspective technique give a drawing more depth and perspective?


Kistler, Mark. You Can Draw in 30 Days. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2011. Print.

Drawing: Realistic Techniques Part 2

Hello everyone! For my second post, I decided to focus on drawing in one-point perspective. In this lesson in the book You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler, Kistler teaches step by step on how to draw a city in one-point perspective. One of the main techniques that is taught in this lesson is using a vanishing point. Kistler defines a vanishing point as "a drawing technique involving alignment of all objects to a single focal point in a picture" (Kistler 172). A vanishing point is important when adding perspective and can help a drawing look more realistic. Here is a picture of my finished drawing of a city in one-point perspective:

In this drawing, the buildings and road appear to vanish in the far distance at a single point, which gives the picture depth. I never understood the concept of a vanishing point before and how to make a picture look like it disappears in the distance, but this lesson has really helped improve my understanding and skill of how to do that. I learned how to take a flat surface and add some depth and perspective to it by drawing and using the vanishing point technique. I believe this new technique that I learned can really give a drawing more realistic qualities and features and can help a drawing stand out more. This lesson of how to draw in a one point perspective has really expanded my knowledge of different drawing techniques and has helped me develop more realistic techniques in my own drawings.

What do you think of this drawing? What are some areas that I could improve on? Do you believe that a vanishing point can help add depth and perspective to a picture?


Kistler, Mark. You Can Draw in 30 Days. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2011. Print.

Camila Kang - Perspective Drawing

Now it's time to explore the wonders of perspective drawing. There are multiple types of perspective drawing, but it all comes down to a few things: a vanishing point, horizon line and straight lines. Perspective looks complex, but it is actually very simplist.
The first one I drew is one-point perspective. "One-point perspective is the simplest form of perspective and often the only one you need to know" (Barber 78). The steps to this is "you need to establish a horizon line, or eye level" (Barber 78). In the book he established a "viewing point" which is "perpendicular to the horizon line" (Barber 78). What I have done or have been taught to do is use a vanishing point, a point where all the line will meet. Here I used one-point perspective to make 3D words and a simple room. Two point perspective is used when "you're dealing with much bigger spaces and with large objects" (Barber 80). Here I used two vanishing points to create a scenic view of a imaginary town. Three point perspective I didn't have time to play around with, so I drew an example. It's mainly used to "draw very tall buildings" or have a bird's eye view of objects (Barber 82).

Examples of point perspective. The number of perspective is represented by how many sides you see. One point you can see only one side as three point you can see three sides.

Drawing of a two point perspective city. See how are the lines are connecting straight back to the vanishing point? That's how perspective drawing mainly works.