The last few days have been all-Roorkee chair during all hours. I’m building a pair of them that reflect the two ends of the chair’s design spectrum – one chair from 1900 and one from Kaare Klint in the mid-20th century.
And, of course, I’ve been drawing leg profiles like crazy for the chapter on Roorkee chairs. As it turns out, these legs are difficult to trace from photographs. No matter what I do, the turnings look odd. A snarky reader might blame the turner. But I blame perspective. I wish we had never invented it, and we all still lived in a parallel projection world.
So I’ve taken to simply drawing these legs instead of tracing a Photoshopped image.
Now all my leg profiles look like penguins to me.
At least they don’t look like my first tracings – lumpy penguins that had spent too much time in the reactor core.
Tomorrow I’m cutting leather.
No, that is not a euphemism.
— Christopher Schwarz
At least they’re nice looking penguins now. Seriously though, drawing turnings is hard and that looks like a good rendering.
Two words. Sketchup.Styles.
Contact Dave Richards at the Design.Click.Build. blog on Fine Woodworking. He is the master!
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Save the penguins for the Antarctic (and New Zealand)
Sorry. These will be hand drawn.
I have been using SketchUp since day 1 and have drawn all of my projects in it for the magazine and my books. And I’ve used many of the SketchUp styles and have yet to find anything that looks hand-done (without making it a multi-step process where a hand illustration is faster).
Truth be told, SketchUp is great when you are designing – changes to your design are easy. But when making a sketch of a final construction, it can be cumbersome.
His latest styles all look hand done to me and indistinguishable from what you’ve shown (so far) done by hand. But I’m just an amateur! Just thought it might speed things up a bit, but if it doesn’t satisfactorily give the hand drawn approach, then it is the wrong approach!
Trying to capture a real-life three-dimensional object in two dimensions is not as straightforward as most people think. I got into an argument with my art professor, because he said my drawing was wrong (it was a figure study… and not a penguin). I told him it was exactly like model. He said that didn’t matter. What matter was whether the observer believed it was correct.
They decommissioned the reactor at McMurdo in 1972 and it has since been removed. The penguins are safe. And they do not taste like chicken.
Nice outline.
Perhaps add some shading to help the eye interpret the shape of the turning?
Can you give a recommend size for the leather per side for the stool. I’ve got 24″ per straight side before cutting curves, in my sample but it seems too big. I’ve been mocking it up before I cut any leather.
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One we get electricity back tonight and lighting for the computer equipment, I’ll post some details on the leather.
Most of your teaching on woodworking is amazing! However I do not agree with your view on Perspective. We always need to have a good perspective on how we view things. There is nothing wrong with a good PLAN view either, but you do need perspective – you know that.
Congratulations on your graduation from tracing to making your own drawings, that’s a big step forward, and the penguins look great. Next you will have to animate them. And you will have to draw blind dovetails. 🙂
I think the “2.5D” profile drawing shown is the best approach for this sort of thing. Though not technically correct as a pure elevation (the lines at the foot would be horizontal), it conveys the shape in a straightforward manner.