Level 2: Shapes and Form

You can finish a drawing, but it comes out flat.

Level 2 8 lessons ~2h Free, no signup

What you'll be able to do

By the end of this level you will be able to draw a box that looks like a box, an ellipse that sits flat, and judge proportions by comparison rather than by hope - which together cover most man-made objects you will ever draw.

The lessons, in order

Who this level is for

People who can finish a drawing and are not happy with it. The specific complaint this level answers is flatness: the outline is roughly right, everything is where it should be, and the whole thing sits on the paper like a sticker rather than occupying space.

You are in the right place if you can draw a cup that is recognisably a cup but the top of it looks wrong and you cannot say why, or if the objects in your drawings look like they were cut out and arranged rather than photographed.

Go back to Level 1 if you routinely abandon drawings partway through - accuracy is not the problem you have yet, and working on it first is how people conclude they are bad at this. Skip to Level 3 if your boxes and ellipses are already solid and the missing thing is that nothing looks lit.

What each lesson trains

The apple is form: a sphere that is not symmetrical, shaded so the darkest band sits inside the edge rather than at it. The mug is the ellipse lesson, and an ellipse is really a lesson about drawing what is in front of you instead of what you know - you know the rim is a circle and it does not look like one from here.

The book is convergence. Parallel edges in the world are not parallel on the page, and how much they converge tells the viewer where they are standing. It is also the first drawing on the site where a corner a few millimetres out is instantly visible, which is uncomfortable and the fastest possible feedback.

The fox is the comparison habit - every proportion set by measuring against something already on the page. The tree is restraint: you cannot draw two hundred thousand leaves, so you draw six masses and let the eye supply the rest. The dog puts both under pressure, because you already have strong opinions about what a dog looks like and those opinions will fight the measurements.

Three drills pair with this level, and five minutes of the right one before a lesson is worth more than twenty minutes of redrawing it afterwards.

Ellipse drills - for the mug · Box drills - for the book · Proportion drills - for the fox and the dog

How to work through it

One lesson a day again, but start each one with five minutes of the drill it pairs with. That warm-up is not optional advice at this level - the mug lesson is unpleasant with cold hands and straightforward after five minutes of ellipses, and the difference is much larger than five minutes ought to buy.

When a lesson goes badly here, redo it. That is the opposite of the Level 1 advice and the reason is specific: you can now tell what went wrong. A second attempt at a mug when you know the base ellipse was too flat is a targeted correction, whereas at Level 1 a second attempt was just a second guess.

Draw through the form, every time, even though it feels like extra work. Sketching the corners and the far edge of an ellipse that you cannot see is the entire reason the visible ones end up agreeing with each other, and it is the habit most people skip and then cannot work out what is wrong.

Put a real object in front of you wherever the lesson has one. A mug, a book, an apple - all three are within arm's reach of most people, and drawing from life removes the single largest source of error at this level, which is your memory's opinion about the shape.

What gets measured as you go

The same five dimensions, but the two that matter here are placement - whether a mark lands where you aimed it - and corners and joins, which is whether your shapes actually close. Both move measurably within a fortnight of daily work, which makes this the level where the numbers first become useful rather than decorative.

Proportion moves too, and slowly. Its number is worth watching over a month rather than a week; the useful thing it reports at this level is the direction of your bias, because most people are consistently wrong the same way.

Convergence is not measured, because we do not know where you intended the viewer to be standing. That one stays with you and with the checkpoints in each step.

How the measurement works

Questions about Level 2

Why do my drawings look flat?: Usually because they are outlines with an even fill, and because nothing overlaps anything. This level fixes the first half with form and the second half with construction; the shading half is Level 3.
Do I need to know perspective?: Not formally. Making receding edges lean toward each other by eye reads correctly and covers everything in this level. Vanishing points are a separate study you can add whenever you want to draw architecture.
Should I be drawing from life or from photos?: Life, at this level, and it is not close. A photograph has already flattened the thing you are trying to learn to see - depth - so it removes exactly the information the level is about.
My ellipses are still wobbly after a week.: Almost certainly because you are drawing them too slowly. Go round three or four times in one fast continuous motion and keep the best pass - a hand physically cannot hold a smooth curve at low speed, so care makes it worse rather than better.
How long does this level take?: About two hours of drawing, and realistically two to three weeks, because the drill time is part of it and the lessons reward being repeated.
What comes after this?: Level 3, which is value and edges - seeing a subject as shapes of light and dark rather than as an outline. It is the slowest of the three levels and the one that changes drawings the most.