Everyone's entries look great! This is my first time posting for the monthly contest. The prompt was very fun.

I don't know if anyone will actually use this, but I worked out a formula for where to put vanishing points in 2-point perspective. I watched several of the SVS courses that teach perspective and noticed that there were several questions about how you know exactly where the vanishing points are supposed to go. The general answer seemed to be to start drawing the cube, or building, or whatever it is that you are drawing and when it looks "right" you can figure out where the vanishing points are based on what you have already drawn. I totally agree with the instructors that the best and most efficient way to do this is to get a feel for it and to be able to draw with perspective that looks "close enough" so that it looks good. But the question stilled nagged at me and I thought that there must be some way to figure out the exact, correct place to put vanishing points.

I did some googling and found a cool tutorial about 2-point perspective at http://guidetodrawing.com/linear-perspective/two-point-perspective/ . This shows how to start with a top down view of a building and then draw it in perspective, and it explains how to find the vanishing points based on the top down view. But I wanted to a way to figure out the location of the vanishing without going through the whole top down view process. So I did some math and worked out the formula in the image below.

In this formula, w is the width of your paper, theta is your field of view, and v1 is the distance from the center of your horizon line to your first vanishing point. Yes, you have to choose what field of view you want and where one of the vanishing points is. But the formula should always spit out the distance from the center of the horizon line to the second vanishing point to give you totally accurate perspective. The formula should work when both vanishing points are on the paper, when one is on the paper and one is off, and when both vanishing points are off the paper. According to the wikipedia article about field of view, 84-114 degrees is "ultra wide angle," 64-84 degrees is "wide angle" and "normal" is 40-62 degrees. So your drawing will look most natural if your field of view is 40 to 62 degrees.

Hello!

I am an amateur artist just starting to use the SVS courses. I have liked drawing since I was a kid, and I did a lot of art up through high school and then mostly stopped throughout college because I focused spending my time on other things. The university I went to had an "introduction to drawing" class that I attended but beyond that all of the art classes were for majors only. I got a degree in chemical engineering and then a law degree, and now I work full time as an intellectual property attorney. Almost all my experience is with patents, but if you have questions about copyright or trademark law feel free to send them my way!

My wife recently decided to go back to school to be a nurse practitioner, and it made me think that it would be fun to go back to school to learn about something I enjoy. I live in Utah and I was actually considering trying to take art classes at UVU or another college nearby, but I decided that online courses would probably be a better fit for me since I already had the "university experience" and I have a job and a family. I am glad that I found SVS and I have loved the courses I have viewed so far.

I went through the "How to Draw Everything," "Light and Shadow," "Creative Composition," "Visualizing Drawing in Perspective," and the "Rabbit Cycle Demo" classes. I feel like if I just watch the courses and do the exercises in the courses then I am going through the material too fast. Do any of you have advice about what I should do to study in addition to just watching the courses and doing the exercises? Should I do sketchbooking, or rewatch classes multiple times, or do different exercises, or something else?

Thank you for your advice! I admire all the work I have seen posted on the forums. Here is a mech I drew after I watched Jake's Rabbit Cycle demo, tying to use some of the things I learned.

@burvantill tan is short for "tangent," which is a trigonometric function. It has a different meaning in this context than in the context of composition, where tangent means things that are touching on the edge. Scientific calculators should have a "tan" button and you can even find a tangent right in the Google search bar. Try typing "tan(45)" into Google and it will bring up a little calculator that tells you the answer. The number you put in the tan() parentheses is an angle. In the vanishing point formula, the angle you use is half of the field of view. You have to make sure the calculator is set to degrees if you are entering the angle in degrees. In the Google calculator there is a slider that lets you switch from radians to degrees.

I know using the formula is complicated : ) That's why everyone just eyeballs it. This is more than you need to know, but the tangent of an angle is equal to, when the angle is one of the angles in a right triangle, the length of the side of the triangle opposite from the angle divided by the length of the side of the triangle adjacent to the angle.

It's interesting that I saw this post on the same day that I read another news story about fair use. There has been an ongoing lawsuit about the book "Oh, the Places You'll Boldly Go!" which is a Star Trek themed book that mimics the style of "Oh, the Places You'll Go" and other Dr. Seuss books. Just the other day the judge dismissed the lawsuit and said that the book was a fair use. As has been said in this thread, fair use is complex (the judge wrote 33 pages explaining why she decided it was a fair use).

The court decision is a good example of how courts decide whether some is a fair use or not. The decision can be found here if you are super interested: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5766629-Seuss.html. The most important points were that the Star Trek book was "transformative" because all the writing and illustrations that were copied from Dr. Seuss were always changed to be Star Trek-centric; and the judge found that the Star Trek book would not likely harm the market for Dr. Seuss books. Those are just two of the four factors in the fair use analysis; the court said that the other two didn't weigh heavily in either direction.

As far as the Little Heroes book, it seems like it is definitely transformative, since the characters have all been creatively modified. So that would likely weigh in favor of fair use. But the market harm factor could weigh in the other direction if there are already Marvel publications with child versions of their heroes.

@smceccarelli Good idea! Having an accurate grid would make it easy to place things where you want in the picture. I think what you're asking is if you want to draw a perfect square in perspective, and you draw one side of the square (you can arbitrarily decide how long to make the first side since you are choosing the size of the square), then how do you know how long to make the next side of the square so that it actually is a square and not a rectangle? That is a good question and I'm sure there is a way to figure that out. I'll think about it. Once you have one perfect square drawn you should be able to expand it to a grid of any size you want by drawing lines through the midpoint of the sides like Jake does with telephone poles or fence posts in the perspective course.

@smceccarelli This looks awesome! My favorites are the robot and the skeleton.

@davidhohn Thanks, very interesting - The Cat NOT in the Hat seems to have a lot of the same things going for it as Oh, the Places You'll Boldly Go. I wonder if the opinions in these two cases could be reconciled! Like you said, a "parody" must comment on the original work. Usually the point of a parody is to make fun of the original work itself. However, you don't necessarily have to be making a "parody" of the original work for your work to be a fair use. In fact, in the judge's opinion for Oh, the Places You'll Boldly Go, the judge came right out and said it is not a parody, but nevertheless it was still transformative enough. So, I guess the take away is you can either make a parody, which means you are making fun of the original work or otherwise commenting on it somehow, or you can just transform it in some other creative way. As long as the other factors of fair use don't weigh too heavily against you.

@demotlj I like the idea of reviewing specific SVS videos that are pertinent to a particular project. I've been thinking recently about how to study better too. I'm in the same boat of having full time job and not a lot of extra time to spend on art. I am going to do what this episode recommended about keeping a note-taking sketchbook to write and draw notes from the SVS videos, and doing assignments from the videos. That should help me learn a lot better than just watching the video alone.

I also really liked what this episode said about figuring out what your art goals are. I am just doing art as a hobby, so my goals aren't to get a job in art or make any money. Generally, I like the satisfaction of having finished something that I am proud of, so I have a goal of getting to point where I can finish personal projects like paintings, drawings, maybe short comics, etc. just for fun. Since I really only want art to be a hobby, I try not to feel guilty when I don't have a ton of time to spend on it. Thanks to Jake, Will and Lee for the episode!

I like the idea of having James about to crawl into the hole in the peach. I was thinking about doing a cover for the BFG, another Roald Dahl book.

Everyone's entries look great! This is my first time posting for the monthly contest. The prompt was very fun.

I like the style of your painting! Personally, when I draw buildings I like to start by freehand drawing the biggest outlines of the building, while paying careful attention to what angles the lines have. Then I like to figure out where the vanishing points should be based on those outlines, and I either draw vanishing points on the paper or just mentally keep track of where the vanishing points should be. One thing to remember is that in two point perspective views like this, the two vanishing points will always both be on the horizon line, and the horizon line is at the eye level of the camera. In your apartment building all the windows and siding lines are converging well toward the vanishing point on the left, but the issues are with the lines that should be converging toward the vanishing point on the right (like the stairs and sidewalk lines). If you think about where the vanishing point on the right side should be (which should be somewhere along the horizon line) then you can make the lines in the stairs and sidewalk converge toward that vanishing point.

I want to join too! I drew some poses from line-of-action.com. It's hard to know what lines I'm supposed to draw and what I'm not supposed to draw. Looking at my sketches after the fact I think I should probably try to make lines of action more instead of drawing the outline of the figure.

@davidhohn I specialize in patents, particularly for chemical engineering related inventions. It's not something that comes up often on these forums, so I tend to chime in when people are talking about copyrights

I don't have very much practical experience with copyrights except for a few law school classes, but I am interested in it. I am always interested in your posts on the subject because you seem to know a lot about it.

I'm not sure if I like the outcome of the Boldly Go case or not? I wonder if the authors got a license from the owners of the Star Trek copyright. If not, I'm not sure how I feel about the prospect of anyone being able to take two things that they don't own and mash them up without having permission from either rights holder.

@davidhohn Thanks, very interesting - The Cat NOT in the Hat seems to have a lot of the same things going for it as Oh, the Places You'll Boldly Go. I wonder if the opinions in these two cases could be reconciled! Like you said, a "parody" must comment on the original work. Usually the point of a parody is to make fun of the original work itself. However, you don't necessarily have to be making a "parody" of the original work for your work to be a fair use. In fact, in the judge's opinion for Oh, the Places You'll Boldly Go, the judge came right out and said it is not a parody, but nevertheless it was still transformative enough. So, I guess the take away is you can either make a parody, which means you are making fun of the original work or otherwise commenting on it somehow, or you can just transform it in some other creative way. As long as the other factors of fair use don't weigh too heavily against you.

I love your truck and airplane blimp!

I like the idea of having James about to crawl into the hole in the peach. I was thinking about doing a cover for the BFG, another Roald Dahl book.

It's interesting that I saw this post on the same day that I read another news story about fair use. There has been an ongoing lawsuit about the book "Oh, the Places You'll Boldly Go!" which is a Star Trek themed book that mimics the style of "Oh, the Places You'll Go" and other Dr. Seuss books. Just the other day the judge dismissed the lawsuit and said that the book was a fair use. As has been said in this thread, fair use is complex (the judge wrote 33 pages explaining why she decided it was a fair use).

The court decision is a good example of how courts decide whether some is a fair use or not. The decision can be found here if you are super interested: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5766629-Seuss.html. The most important points were that the Star Trek book was "transformative" because all the writing and illustrations that were copied from Dr. Seuss were always changed to be Star Trek-centric; and the judge found that the Star Trek book would not likely harm the market for Dr. Seuss books. Those are just two of the four factors in the fair use analysis; the court said that the other two didn't weigh heavily in either direction.

As far as the Little Heroes book, it seems like it is definitely transformative, since the characters have all been creatively modified. So that would likely weigh in favor of fair use. But the market harm factor could weigh in the other direction if there are already Marvel publications with child versions of their heroes.

@demotlj I like the idea of reviewing specific SVS videos that are pertinent to a particular project. I've been thinking recently about how to study better too. I'm in the same boat of having full time job and not a lot of extra time to spend on art. I am going to do what this episode recommended about keeping a note-taking sketchbook to write and draw notes from the SVS videos, and doing assignments from the videos. That should help me learn a lot better than just watching the video alone.

I also really liked what this episode said about figuring out what your art goals are. I am just doing art as a hobby, so my goals aren't to get a job in art or make any money. Generally, I like the satisfaction of having finished something that I am proud of, so I have a goal of getting to point where I can finish personal projects like paintings, drawings, maybe short comics, etc. just for fun. Since I really only want art to be a hobby, I try not to feel guilty when I don't have a ton of time to spend on it. Thanks to Jake, Will and Lee for the episode!

@geoffrey-gordon Welcome! I’m a beginner here too. I have been watching the introductory SVS courses. The thing I know I should do better at this point is spending time practicing. I think I will start doing the monthly contests and posting work-in-progress images. I’ve seen that the forum users give great feedback on work-in-progress images. Since I’m just a beginner I don’t think I need a website now, but in the future I might be interested in your website design offer. Thanks!