I’m loving Dianne Mize’s online lessons and am getting a lot of new pointers and perspectives with them. The latest one I bought was Foreshortened Drawing because I was noticing that while drawing from the practice photos she provides for the 4 Steps to Skillful Drawing lesson, the foreshortened horse photo was really hard for me to draw. Horses gave me the biggest challenge during my gesture studies of animals focused practice exercise as well.

I concluded that those were challenging for me because horses are often photographed in a foreshortened way, and decided to get some more tips on that topic. Dianne covers how to get started and demonstrates moving through the shapes in the subject step by step. And as with the other lessons, her instruction really spoke to me and now I have more tools in my drawing tool belt.

I blocked in the shadow areas on this study of foreshortened boats which really helped describe their forms better and bring things together. The horizon and tree line is also lightly indicated at the top. Measuring this distance from the boats was critical — my eyes told me that it was much higher up than in reality.

My hope is that with more experience doing this type of drawing, my skills will grow to the point where it won’t be necessary to stop for so many measurements and that the drawings will come together more quickly. Especially when it comes to preliminary drawings for paintings!