Drawing Ellipses

How to draw an ellipse – or how to correct a squashed turnip shape.

Many people struggle to draw ellipses. They normally end up looking something like this a squashed Turnip:

Now there’s nothing wrong with a squashed turnip if that is what you wanted to draw, but normally we were trying to convey the perfect circle of a cup, created on a machine, with not a hint of a wobble, normally, unless you brought it from the seconds shop, then you may have a hint of a wobble.

Firstly lets think about what we know about ellipses. The one I am trying to create is really a circle seen from an angle. The axis is flat and horizontal.It has no pointed corners. It is symmetrical about it’s two axis, so the top half is the same

On our squashed turnip shape we can see the horizontal axis is not horizontal giving it the feeling that it is leaning over – fine if it is on a slope, but normally it is not. Also the top half is smaller than the bottom.

So first draw a horizontal line. Run your little finger down the edge of your sketchpad as you do this to ensure a straight line – this is usually OK if it’s a pad otherwise as we all know there is nothing worse than an paper cut. Although I have considered that having your head cut off may be worse!

Then draw two lines which will be your top and bottom marks the same distance from the middle one. Draw a vertical centre line and then mark on where the two side lines are, again these should be equidistance from the centre line.

Now we just play dot the dot to join up our ellipse. Making sure that it meets all four of the small outer  lines. The curve is quite flat at the front and back but gradually gets tighter as it meets the edges.

I hope this has been useful to you. I would welcome any feedback you can give.

Mono Lisa

I've never quite understood why people seem to think the Mona Lisa has such a strange smile. To me the answer is obvious - she wasn't a very good sitter and kept changing her facial expressions. Which is why when you look at the Mona Lisa her smile only seems to appear when you don’t directly look at her mouth.

Creating a realistic image is most important if you are attempting a portrait. It has been made easier since photographs as you have one fix vision of a person. Da Vinci had to work from life, and as anyone knows who has tried painting a real person – they move. They start off happy, smiling and looking directly at you, and then they get bored and their head drifts and their expression changes. So you start off painting a happy person with happy eyes and by the time you get to their mouth you have a non smiling mouth. Which gives you the impression when you look at the eyes that she is smiling then you look at the mouth and the smile seems to have disappeared.

What do you think? Am I over simplifying it? Have I missed something?

Avoncroft Ex

It was the Avoncroft Annual Exhibition this weekend, which I help to organise. It is always good to see what all the members have created, and everyone worked hard to make it a success – even if I do say so myself. The only trouble was I was spending so much time sorting it out I didn't really get much time to finish the painting that I wanted to. Still I managed to paint the Walled Garden at Avoncroft for the demonstration I did today, so that was enjoyable.