How to Draw a Book
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Draw the spine as a short line down the middle.
It should be vertical and near the middle of your page.
E tātuhi ana ki runga pepa?
Ka whakatūtū, ka whakamātauria e tātau te whakaahua mō koe. He ōrite tonu te tatau pepa.
Mo tēnei tātuhi
A book is a box, and boxes are the foundation of drawing anything man-made. Get a book right and you can draw a phone, a table, a building and a room, because they are the same problem at different sizes.
The rule that fixes almost everyone's box: the lines going away from you are not parallel on the page. They converge, slightly. Draw them parallel and the book looks like a badly folded piece of card.
He hipanga ki te hipanga
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Ka taea te whakahau 1
Draw the spine as a short line down the middle.
Everything hangs off this. The spine is the hinge, and both page halves are measured from it - which is why drawing it first stops the book coming out bent.
Whakawhanake Starting with a page and adding the spine afterwards.
Whakamātautau It should be vertical and near the middle of your page.
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Ka taea te whakahau 2
Draw the top edge of each page, leaning slightly toward each other.
These are the edges going away from you, so they converge. Not dramatically - a few degrees is enough. This single detail is what separates a box from a folded rectangle.
Whakawhanake Drawing them parallel, or worse, diverging.
Whakamātautau Extended, the two lines should eventually meet.
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Ka taea te whakahau 3
Close each page with an outside edge coming back toward you.
These are the short edges of the covers. Keep them roughly the same length as each other - the two halves of an open book are the same size, and any difference reads as a mistake rather than as perspective.
Whakawhanake Making one cover visibly longer than the other.
Whakamātautau Both outer edges should be about the same length.
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Ka taea te whakahau 4
Join the outer edges back to the bottom of the spine.
This closes the two page shapes. Corners must actually meet - overshoot slightly and let the lines cross rather than aiming to stop exactly on the point, because a crossed corner reads as closed and a gap does not.
Whakawhanake Stopping just short, leaving four small gaps.
Whakamātautau Every corner should be closed or slightly crossed.
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Ka taea te whakahau 5
Draw the thickness: short lines down from each outer corner.
A book is a solid, not a sheet. These three short verticals turn the flat shape into a box, and they must all be the same length - unequal ones make the book look warped.
Whakawhanake Making the three drop lines different lengths.
Whakamātautau All three verticals should measure the same.
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Ka taea te whakahau 6
Join the bottoms of those lines to close the underside.
Now the box is complete. These lines run parallel to the edges directly above them - if they do not, the thickness of the book changes along its length, which is the classic wobbly-box look.
Whakawhanake Drawing these at a different angle from the edges above.
Whakamātautau Each bottom edge should run parallel to the one above it.
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Ka taea te whakahau 7
Add the page stack as two or three short lines on each edge.
Pages read as a stack, not a slab. Two or three lines following the cover edge is enough for the eye to fill in hundreds - drawing more just makes it look hatched.
Whakawhanake Drawing one hard line, which reads as solid wood.
Whakamātautau You should see distinct layers, not a filled band.
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Ka taea te whakahau 8
Draw a slight curve into each page near the spine.
Open pages are not flat - they dip toward the spine. Adding that curve is the difference between an open book and two flat cards taped together, and it takes one stroke each side.
Whakawhanake Leaving the pages perfectly flat.
Whakamātautau Each page should dip slightly as it approaches the spine.
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Ka taea te whakahau 9
Add lines of text, following the page angle.
Text lines run parallel to the top edge of the page they sit on, which means they are NOT horizontal - they lean with the perspective. Drawing them level is the fastest way to flatten a book you have just built.
Whakawhanake Drawing the text lines horizontally.
Whakamātautau The text lines should lean the same way as the page's top edge.
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Ka taea te whakahau 10
Shade the side of the book away from the light.
Work in one direction rather than scrubbing back and forth. Scrubbing gives an even grey, which is exactly the thing that makes a drawing look flat, so lay the strokes the same way and build the darkness in passes.
Whakawhanake Being too timid. Beginners routinely stop two or three steps short of dark enough.
Whakamātautau The dark side should be clearly darker than the mid tone, not slightly.
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Ka taea te whakahau 11
Add the shadow on the surface underneath.
The cast shadow is darkest where it touches the book and softens as it moves away. It also anchors the object to a surface - without it the book floats, however well you have shaded it.
Whakawhanake Drawing it as an even grey blob detached from the object.
Whakamātautau It should touch the object and be darkest at that contact point.
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Ka taea te whakahau 12
Go over the lines you want to keep, and lose the guides.
This is the step that turns a construction drawing into a finished one, and it is the one most people skip. Press harder on the outline and the features; leave the small stuff light. That difference in weight is what makes a drawing look deliberate rather than traced, and it costs thirty seconds.
Whakawhanake Going over everything at the same weight, which flattens the drawing back out.
Whakamātautau The outline should be clearly darker than the smallest details.
He pēhea te āhua o te whakamutua
Ko te tātuhi ōrite me ia kaiārahi i whakakoretia, ā, ko ngā raina anake i hiahiatia e koe kia pupuri, i te taumahatanga i hiahiatia e koe kia pupuri. Mēnā kei roto tonu i ōna raina pū me ngā hanga ārai-i roto, ko tēnei te hipanga kāore i mahia e koe - ā, tata ki te toru tekau mā rua ngā taki.
Kāore e āhua nei a koe, ā, kāore e hiahiatia kia. Ko tēnei te hanganga me te whakawhāiti i te whakawhāiti, ehara i te tātuhi i hangaia e tētahi tangata hei whakamātautau - ko te take kia whakaaturia ki a koe he aha o o koe ngā raina kaiārahi.
Ko te mea e whakaako ana tēnei i a koe
This is a perspective lesson disguised as an easy object. The specific skill is convergence: parallel edges in the real world are not parallel on your page, and how much they converge tells the viewer where they are standing.
It also drills placement hard. A box has eight corners that must all agree, and a corner a few millimetres out is instantly visible in a way a wobbly cat ear never is. This is the lesson where people first notice their own accuracy.
If that sounds unforgiving, it is also why a box is the fastest thing to improve at. The feedback is immediate and unambiguous - you can see the error yourself without anybody pointing it out - and five boxes drawn on five days will do more for your drawing than an hour spent on any one of them.
Whakamātautau i ēnei: Line confidence Proportion Corners and joins
Ko te mea e hiahiatia ana e koe
A pencil, because you will draw through the form lightly and lose half those lines later. Put a real book on the desk - this lesson is much easier with something to look at than from memory.
Mēnā he hē te haere
If the book looks bent, your two page halves meet the spine at different angles. Draw the spine first and build both halves off it.
Draw the whole box lightly before any detail, including the edges you cannot see. Drawing only the visible edges is how the corners end up disagreeing with each other.
Do not press hard on construction lines. The method depends on being able to lose them, and a deeply grooved line stays visible long after the graphite is gone.
Pānuitia nga hipanga
E tangohia ana i te mata. Ka tātuhia te pepa hipanga ki runga i tētahi pātaka.
Ko nga pātai e pā ana te tangata
- Why does my book look bent?
- The two halves meet the spine at different angles. Draw the spine first and build both sides off it.
- Should the edges be parallel?
- No. Edges going away from you converge slightly. Parallel edges are the single most common reason a drawn box looks wrong.
- How do I draw the pages?
- As a stack of short lines along the edge, not one hard line. Two or three are enough to read as paper.
- Do I need vanishing points?
- Not for this. Just make the far edges lean toward each other slightly and it will read correctly.
- Should I draw the parts I cannot see?
- Yes, lightly. Drawing through the form is what keeps the corners agreeing with each other.
- Open book or closed book?
- This lesson draws an open one. A closed book is the same box with fewer steps, so try it straight after.
- My corners do not line up.
- That is the actual lesson. Draw it again - corner accuracy improves faster than almost any other drawing skill.
- What should I draw after this?
- The mug. Boxes and cylinders together cover most man-made objects you will ever want to draw.