A New Perspective in Perspective New Technique Debating Old Hand-Drawing Perspective Methods Taught in Schools of Architecture
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American Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology (AJEST) Volume 7, 2021 A New Perspective in Perspective New Technique Debating Old Hand-Drawing Perspective Methods Taught in Schools of Architecture Yasser O. El-Gammal, Saudi Arabia Abstract This paper introduces a new technique in hand-drawing perspective that is more convenient for students, instructors, and architectural design professionals - than the difficulties associated with old hand drawing methods taught in schools of architecture. The paper starts with an overview exploring origins and fundamental concepts of perspective drawing in an attempt to find a better approach in perspective drawing by investigating the works of ancient artists and painters, Afterwards; The paper proceeds with debating older perspective drawing methods taught in schools of architecture through exploring both students and instructors opinions about disadvantages of the old methods, and the recent trends in teaching perspective drawing. At the end, the paper introduces the concept of the suggested new method, its relationship with the magnification factor option in the AutoCAD universe, and its advantages, together with some early experimentation Keywords: Perspective Sketching, Perspective Drawing Method, Perspective Drawing Techniques PROBLEM Students learning perspective hand drawing in schools of architecture find old drawing methods very tedious, time consuming, and end up with unsatisfactory results, not to mention the difficulty they experience when setting the building perspective scene measurements into scale, and from within too many drawing construction lines. Although both undergraduates and architects nowadays are heavily depending on 3Dimensional computer software for developing accurate perspective scenes; There will always still the need for using perspective hand-drawing; Since every architectural concept starts with a hand-drawn sketch. The cognitive design process works at brain speed is usually faster than drafting and designing simultaneously when using computer aided applications like AutoCAD and/or conventional 3D modeling software applications. 1 On the other hand, instructors too have their own issues with these old methods, they find such techniques exhausting when trying to follow-up a students' work, never to mention the difficulty they experience in grading. As a whole, both students and instructors claim that once such old methods were learned, they never use them again in practice. LITERATURE REVIEW Research findings expected to improve quality of the students' perspective drawings with respect to effort and time consumed in producing and grading their drawings RESEARCH GOAL The goal of this paper is to investigate the possibility of introducing a perspective drawing technique that is more convenient for both students and instructors of architecture through suggesting a new perspective drawing technique called "The Scale Magnification Method" while keeping the resulted scene in proportion RESEARCH SCOPE The research paper is focusing on debating the most two commonly known methods of perspective drawing among architects, which are: "The Proximity Method", and "The Building Plan (Footprint) Method", The research work introduced in this paper represents an attempt to investigate the possibility of creating a simpler new perspective drawing method that may reduce the complexities of these two methods. Exploring perspective drawing methods other than these two methods are not within the scope of this research paper METHODOLOGY AND PHASES For the research paper to fulfill its goals; it starts with a quick overview exploring two of the most widely practiced perspective drawing techniques in ancient civilizations, and medieval times. The purpose of this section of the paper is to search for simpler perspective drawing techniques in older times that might be used instead of the debated complicated methods. The second phase in this paper discusses both the "Proximity", and the "Building Plan (Footprint)" methods taught in schools of architecture, and introducing both the students and instructors opinions about such methods. The last section of the paper introduces the new suggested method. 2 American Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology (AJEST) Volume 7, 2021 DISCUSSION OVERVIEW "Perspective" is originating from the Latin word: "Perspicere" which means "To see through". It is an approximate representation of the image seen by the human eyes on a flat surface such as a paper or a drawing board. The main characteristics of perspective drawing is that objects that are near to the eye of the observer are drawn in a scale that is larger than those that are at further distances from the same point of observation. Fig. (1): Is a schematic explaining how real life objects are projected on 2Dimensional Surfaces and the eyes of an observer Source: (Researcher) ANCIENT PERSPECTIVE DRAWING TECHNIQUES FORESHORTENING Is a simple technique for creating the illusion that the observed objects are extended into depth in space. To explain "Foreshortening"; Imagine there are some 3Dimensional objects in nature that are grouped at distances from each other, and that each of them is represented by a drawing in a separate board or a transparent sheet paper that is placed at the exact distance of its drawn object. 3 When looking from an angle of view that is almost perpendicular to all these transparent sheets together, they will appear as a collective of all images stacked behind each other, where objects at further distances are drawn in smaller scales while nearer ones are drawn in larger scales. Fig. (2): Is a schematic explaining the "Foreshortening" drawing technique. Source: (Researcher) "Foreshortening" has been widely practiced by medieval artists, this is clear in renaissance paintings, and the interior architecture in the churches of medieval Europe. The technique is also used by today's modern artists of comic arts. Fig. (3): Left: Shows a Foreshortened painting of Christ, "The Mourning over the Dead Christ", The SCALA/Art. Middle: Shows use of foreshortening in comic arts. Right: Shows use of foreshortening in the interior architecture of a medieval church. Source: (Guerrero Tony, 2012), (Satyavrat Nirala, Blumberg Naomi, 2015), (Boundless, 2017) 4 American Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology (AJEST) Volume 7, 2021 VERTICAL PERSPECTIVE Ancient civilizations like Egypt and many other communities in South America, and Africa draw major events, characters, and social practices through stacking the drawn topics in a vertical manner; by sizing royal, social, and community public figures hierarchically according to their spiritual, and social status, and not according to their distances from the viewer. Royal figures or masters are drawn in a larger scale and placed on top of their servants, slaves, and/or people that are lower in the social status. In General, most ancient civilizations were following the same drawing pattern instead of "Foreshortening", they developed the "Vertical perspective" technique. (Bowling Frank, Clark Ed, Pindell Howardena, 2016), (Edwards Amelia, 1891), (Edwards Amelia, 1891) Fig. (4): Left: Is a wooden yellow Egyptian wall art canvas showing servants drawn in bottom, while their masters are drawn at a larger scale and on top. Right: Shows the ancient Egyptian "Procession of the negroes", from a wall- painting in the tomb of "HUI" at "EL KAB", reproduced from a photograph by Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie. Source: (Bowling Frank, Clark Ed, Pindell Howardena, 2016), (Edwards Amelia, 1891) DEBATING OLDER PERSPECTIVE DRAWING METHODS TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE In architecture; most common perspective drawings fall between two "Sceneries"; The "Human level (Eye level)" scenes, and the "Arial level (Bird eye level)" scenes, regardless the type of perspective used or projection angles of the scenery. For a long time in architecture schools; some methods are practiced in perspective drawing yielding into what may be called a "Relative" expression of the drawn building figure. In general, the common characteristics of all these old techniques are "Approximation". The following argument is debating older perspective drawing methods used in the architecture design studio from both the students and instructors point of views 5 FIRST: THE PROXIMITY METHOD In this method, the positions of the two vanishing points (V1), and (V2), were "Randomly" located on the "Horizon line", the distance between the two vanishing points is then "Equally" divided by a point (M1) that will be later used as a leader point for locating "Real measurements" on another horizontal line called "Ground line". Then, again; the distance between (M1) and (V2) is "Equally" divided by a "Vertical line". This vertical line, and according to this method is suggested to be fallen in a "Plane" where the final image will be generated. It is also suggesting that this "Plane" represents the image falling on the "Eyesight" of the observer. Then, the final division step is "Equally" dividing the distance between the vertical line and the vanishing point (V2) by a point (M2) that will be also used as a leader point for locating "Real measurements" on the "Ground line" Fig. (5): A schematic explaining old perspective drawing "Proximity Method", Source: (Researcher) SECOND: THE BUILDING PLAN (FOOTPRINT) METHOD This method uses the projected plan of a building. The later is drawn with any "Scaled" dimensions and rotated at a specified angle of choice either (300/600 or 450) around