How to Draw Spheres in Perspective

How to Draw Spheres in Perspective

Video by Vladimir London, the Life Drawing Academy tutor

In this lesson, I will show you a very special method developed by me for students, who receive personal tutoring at Life Drawing Academy.

The sphere's outline will always appear as a perfect circle. Its contours in perspective will look like perfect ellipses. To draw an elliptical oval, which is a circle in perspective, we can depict a square in a two-point perspective. For this purpose, I draw two vanishing lines and divide the distance between them in half. Another vanishing line is pointing into the second vanishing point. The vertical axis of symmetry goes through the center of the sphere. An elliptical oval is located between two vanishing lines. It touches those lines in two green dots. The square in a two-point perspective gives us good understanding at what point of view we see the sphere. Its outline is a perfect circle. The axis of the sphere will be used for plotting its contour. This axis is perpendicular to the central vanishing line. This oval is the contour; it goes through two green dots. Two more green dots will be used for the second contour. Its axis is perpendicular to another vanishing line in this two-point perspective. Check out how I indicate the aerial perspective by varying the boldness of two contours. These contours describe the chosen two-point perspective and point of view. This drawing was done from the center and only at the end we could see where this sphere touches the ground. Its footprint is a point indicated in red here.

But what about if we want to start a drawing from the ground? I will show you how to do it. Let's begin with the square that lies on the ground and is seen in a two-point perspective. The distance between two vanishing lines is divided in half. One more line is pointing to another vanishing point somewhere on the horizon. The vertical axis of symmetry goes up from the footprint, indicated here in red. The projection of the sphere's equator to the ground is a circle that appears as an elliptical oval. This oval touches two vanishing lines in green dots. Two more vanishing lines complete the square in perspective. Here comes the interesting bit. Because a sphere is a three-dimensional object and we look at it from above, from this point of view we won't see its footprint. These blue lines will help us to establish the angle of view and calculate the distance between the footprint and the sphere's outline. This distance is indicated as "A" here. Now we can use that dimension "A" to offset the outline from the footprint in the drawing. The width of this outline is equal in size to the width of the circle on the ground. Through the center of the circular outline, we can draw axes of symmetry, one horizontal for the equator and two tilted axes in the two-point perspective for contours. Four green dots on the ground, where the elliptical projection of the equator touches the square side, can be projected upward to the equator level. These dots are used to draw the sphere's equator with precision. It appears as a perfectly elliptical oval. The boldness of this contour tells which part of the sphere is closer to a viewer and also reveals the point of view from above. The contour's axis is perpendicular to the vanishing line. I will mark it as 90 degrees. An elliptical oval goes around that axis and crosses the equator in two green dots marked earlier. One more contour axis is perpendicular to another vanishing line. I will also mark it with 90 degrees. The second vertical contour crosses the equator in two other green dots. These two vertical contours that appear as tilted ovals are perpendicular to each other and depicted in the chosen two-point perspective. These contours cross each other in two points marked here in red. The top cross-point is the North Pole, while the bottom one is the South Pole. I will also mark the equator here.

I hope you have learned something new in this video. This is just a small part of one task out of 100 assignments in the Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course. Imagine how much more you will learn in that course from how to draw geometric objects to how to draw portraits and human figures. We guarantee that you will reach the advanced level of drawing skills in this course should you complete all 100 tasks. To see what this course is about, visit Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course

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