Sketching of "sculptors drawings"

The method of “sculptors drawings” means, that you try to approximate the motive by using three dimensional geometric figures like cubes, cylinders and spheres. If you know the basic perspective rules it is very simple to foreshorten figures.

This method was very often used by sculptors, who sketched drafts of sculptures. It is a constructive drawing method. Therefore it is seldom used when sketching existing motifs, but on the other hand it is the favourite procedure of people, who want to layout not existing motifs.

Sketching comics and mangas it is the standard procedure. Particularly comics, which are drawn by teams (i.e. movies) the main characters are defined with geometric three dimensional elements. That’s a requisite, that figures, drawn by different people have the same appearance.

With growing experience you’ll draw not the complete geometric elements, only parts of them. They are drawn with hard pencil or little pressure. And this method too is mostly used in combination with the other strategies.

Fig. 1:

The arms and legs have to be foreshortened. Knowing the basic rules it is easy to construct the main “grid” of any pose.

Luca Cambiaso, 1527-1585, Skizzen

Fig. 2:
There is a theory of visual gestalt perception, that people can recognize objects so fast as they do because there are simple three dimensional geometric forms, coded on neuronal level in our brain. These elements are called “Geones”.

If that is true, the sculptors drawing would be a visualisation of this geons. It would be easy for us to sketch them because we are operating with them anyway in our brain.

Anyway, soon after the discovery of the perspective rules “sculptors drawings” appeared and where used for composing of sculptural or painted ensembles. The picture above shows an old example of a drawing of this kind.