How to Make a Model of Doric Capital

How to Make a Model of Doric Capital

Video by Vladimir London, a Life Drawing Academy tutor

In this video, I will show you how to make a paper model of a Doric capital. This demo is created for Life Drawing Academy Correspondence Course students, who receive unlimited personal tutoring. Among many topics, they also discover classical architectural orders and learn how to draw capitals. To do it from life, they make various models, like this one.

Here is the template this course students receive free of charge. It is unique to this course and not available anywhere else. It comes as a PDF file that should be printed on thick paper, preferable 180 gsm at 100% scale on A4 sheets.

The front page provides full instructions on how to make this model. Just follow each step from one to six after watching this video. Apart from the template, you will also need a scalpel. Make sure to replace its blade as you need a perfectly sharp one. You will also need a metal ruler. I attached a small handle to mine, but such a handle is optional. In addition, you need a metal needle or some other tool to indent paper. And of course, to assemble a paper model, you need PVA paper glue.

Let's begin in the order of parts as indicated in the instructions. I cut out parts "A" with a scalpel using a metal ruler. Make sure you cut on a special rubber mat. Once again, a scalpel has to be very sharp for good results. The next tip is very important - never put your fingers in the direction of cutting. Each part of this model has to be cut out along the solid black lines. There are also other lines, we will talk about them later. Different parts, in this case A1 and A2, should be glued together according to the numbers indicated on their edges. It is important to use the right glue. PVA wood or paper glue that dries fast and colorless is perfectly suited for this purpose. A disposable glue brush can be made from a piece of paper. Just cut a small stripe and fold it in half for rigidity.

Apply a very small amount of glue, just enough to join two papers. Excess glue would come out as drops and it will also make paper buckle because PVA contains water. Instead of a paper brush, you can use some piece of plastic. This is made of a disposable plastic teaspoon. Using a plastic brush is optional. Disposable paper brushes are easy to make and they should be changed regularly.

All gray flaps should be glued inside the model. At the end, I will add one more part that makes this rule optional just for the parts "A".

Now, It's time to cut out parts "B". Use a ruler for all straight lines. However, if your hand is steady to make precise cuts, you can do some bits freehand, but only those that are around the gray flaps. All other lines must be cut with a ruler.

To achieve good results, you have to be very precise when cutting paper. The error margin here is zero. You cannot make a good model if you cut parts imprecisely. They simply would not fit without distortions.

The first page instructions tell the sequence of steps. Check those instructions before gluing each part.

Now, about the dashed and dash-dotted lines. You need to indent paper with a metal needle along all those lines. You must use a ruler for that purpose. Do not do it freehand. Once again, a high precision is needed here. If you do not have a needle, any metal pointing tool would do, even another side of a scalpel. The indentation should be very thin, precise, not too deep and not too shallow. By pressing too hard, you may damage the paper. Light pressure might not give sufficient indentation.

The paper piece should be folded outwards along all dash-dotted lines. The folded edge should be very crisp and straight. It must be one straight and continuous folded line. You cannot do it with fingers without indentation. It is very essential in achieving a good quality model.

The dashed lines indicate where the paper piece should be folded inward. I have to stress it once again, indenting and perfectly folding parts is as important as cutting them with equally high precision.

Now, look for numbers on edges to find out where each part has to be glued. In the instructions, you will see that some parts are in brackets. Those parts should be glued together before other parts are added. For example, parts "A" were glued together, but parts "B" are connected to the parts "A" one by one separately.

In this model, almost all the parts have to be glued with printed sides inward, apart from three parts that are indicated in the instructions. It is also important to glue the gray flaps inside, not outside of the model. Otherwise, they will spoil it look.

Make sure to insert the part "C" before attaching the final part "B". This bar "C" should be assembled the printed side out because it has some guides written on it. It will be fully concealed inside the model. Just two small drops of glue at its ends are sufficient to fix this part.

While I am making this model, I will tell you a few words about the Life Drawing Academy where students use this Doric capital for drawing from life. The Life Drawing Academy has two courses - Online and Correspondence. In the online course, students have a lifetime access to 51 multi-part video lessons on how to draw human figures and portraits using constructive drawing principles, proportions and anatomy of a human body. This course comes with personal support from the academy tutors. This support consists of artworks critique, answers to your art questions and advice on how to improve your art skills. Such support is unlimited and comes at no extra cost. This online course is suitable for artists who already have some knowledge of constructive drawing and only want to improve their figurative drawing skills.

The Correspondence Course of Life Drawing Academy is very different. It is suitable for art students of all levels from complete beginners to advanced artists. This is because every student gets a personal drawing curriculum that is tailored to one level of skills and needs. To assess your skills and design a special curriculum for you, tutors will give you a drawing test and review your artworks, explaining which skills you are missing and which you have to improve. According to such results, they custom-design 100 drawing tasks for you. Each task covers a certain skill that you have to improve or learn to become a proficient artist. Every next task will be built upon the previous one, so the skills you learn as you go are needed for every next task. That is why tasks are given one by one after you complete the previous one. Because your learning is sequential and incremental, it is very easy to study in this course. All you need to do is to follow the given instructions, watch video lessons, use the provided guidance, check illustration and demos to complete each task. Every artwork you do within the assignment will be checked by the academy tutors, and you will get a review, together with indications of mistakes that you have made and need to fix. Tutors also will explain how to fix those errors. That is why there is no way to fail. We guarantee that by the end of this course, you will achieve the advanced level of drawing skills should you follow the course curriculum and do all 100 tasks as required.

The topics of drawing tasks will include all the subjects you need to know. Depending on your level of skills, you might need to learn how to sharpen and use a graphite pencil, how to apply hatching and cross-hatching the right way, how to draw freehand flat geometric shapes with precision, how to measure from life, you will learn all you need to know about linear and aerial perspective, how to deal with foreshortening, how to use contours to reveal the three-dimensional construction of objects, how to use other constructive drawing principles to draw whatever you see or imagine. You will also make multiple models from paper like this one and sculpt models from clay. Every model-making task will be explained and demonstrated like this one. You will also get the needed templates for each model. Some are simple, like this Doric capital, and some are more advanced, like a paper skull or a shoulder girdle model. You will discover 15 elements of composition and constructive drawing principles. You will learn how to make still-life artworks, landscapes, cityscapes, how to draw architectural details, and, of course, you will learn anatomy for artists as well as classical proportions of a human body, head and face. All this will enable you to draw whatever you see or imagine the professional way, including drawing portraits and figures.

After inserting the structural element that supports this capital and makes it more rigid, we can finally glue the last part from this template - its base. This model is complete, but there is one more step that you can do to make it even better.

Take a piece of heavyweight drawing paper and place this model on top upside-down. Measure seven-millimeter margins and outline the top square on paper in pencil. Add two more margins around this square and cut out the final part. It is bigger than A4 and therefore cannot be printed in one piece. You have to make it manually. After cutting it out, make sure to cut four corners as well. Indent the flaps with a metal needle and fold those flaps inward. All that is left is to glue this final part to the model, so the top surface would look flat and clean without any joints.

I hope this demo was helpful and easy to follow.

To learn good drawing techniques, enroll in the Life Drawing Academy course: