![](https://www.watch-me-paint.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Angles-1-1024x399.jpg)
During last week’s workshop, Beth, Sharon and I were looking at a house on Pearl Street in Camden. I’d given them a lesson on two-point perspective and then said, “That’s just so you understand the principle. In real life, you’re going to measure angles rather than draw to a vanishing point.” That’s harder to do, because angle drawing takes practice. However, all drawing rests on angles and measurement.
“That gable end looks like it’s at a 90° angle,” Sharon said. Beth and I immediately disagreed. Of course we were roughly twenty feet away from her, so what we were seeing wasn’t what she was seeing. I heaved myself up (it was a hot day) and looked at what she was doing. She was holding an L-shaped composition finder up to the sky. Immediately I grasped an important new idea.
![](https://www.watch-me-paint.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Angles-4-876x1024.jpg)
If you hold something that you know to be a right angle up to the angle you’re measuring, you can see how it deviates.
We’re all carrying around something that’s got a right angle: our sketchbooks. Failing that, we always have our cell phones.
Sharon’s view was, in fact, exactly 90°, but the idea was also useful to Beth and me. From our location, the angle formed by the gable end was about 10° flatter than Sharon’s view. I experimented holding my sketchbook up to various angles in the landscape and was pleased at how easily I could see angles.
(By the way, a roof where the gable end is at 90° looking straight-on would be a 12/12 pitch, which is pretty steep. Most of the time, when you see a 90° angle, it’s because you’re looking at it from off to one side.)
What if it’s so far off 90° that it’s hard to make a comparison?
I was on a roll, so I estimated other angles using Sharon’s idea. That was fine until I was so far off 90° that making a comparison no longer worked.
![](https://www.watch-me-paint.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Angles-2-1024x868.jpg)
What if I held my sketchbook level with the ground and marked that angle as a hash mark in the corner, I asked myself. Then I can easily translate that line into a parallel one where it belongs in my sketch. And, yes, that worked too.
![](https://www.watch-me-paint.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Angles-3-903x1024.jpg)
Angle drawing is important
Angles are critical to representing perspective. They also create the illusion of depth and space. Being able to sight-draw them allows us to draw objects from different viewpoints.
But, wait, there’s more. Angle drawing is important for:
Measurement: it’s often easier to see spatial relationships through angles than with the thumb-and-pencil method of drawing. (Fast, loose painting rests on a base of good drawing. If you haven’t been taught to measure with a pencil, start here, here and here.)
Anatomy: Angles are essential for capturing the relationships between different parts of the body. This is particularly important in drawing limbs, posture and facial features.
Shading: Angles influence how light falls on an object and how shadows are cast.
Dynamism: Angles contribute to a sense of movement and energy in a drawing.
Foreshortening: You can’t foreshorten an object if you can’t see the angles, period.
That means any trick that makes angle drawing easier, I’m going to use, and I hope you do, too. Thank you, Sharon.
My 2024 workshops:
- Art and Adventure at Sea: Paint Aboard Schooner American Eagle, September 15-19, 2024.
- Immersive In-Person Workshop: Rockport, ME, October 7-11, 2024.
Thank you for expounding on this subject. Its extremely useful. I also want to thank you for another wonderful week-long painting workshop. We learned so much, visited beautiful places and and had great fun doing it. I am still in recovery mode. 🙂
Good one. I covered (very briefly) perspective in class Saturday and two students came up to say I was the first instructor they had who had done so. You’re right; it’s so important. We should pay more attention.
Any painting instructor who can’t/won’t teach perspective should be fired, stat.