What Is Analytic Drawing?
Updated: May 27, 2020
I've heard about analytic drawing a lot of times but I've never really understood what it meant until now. I've done some research to tell you about analytical drawing now if you're also wondering.
What is analytic drawing?
Analytic drawing is often used in architecture and product design. The analytic drawing artist constructs an object often from everyday life with basic, straight lines at first and defines it over time. Analytic drawing can also be used in other drawing methods.
Analytic drawing is often directly connected to the perspective drawing techniques. How this looks like in architecture and design and what the purpose of analytic drawing actually is will be dealt with today.
I. Types Of Analytic Drawing (With Examples)
As I've already mentioned you can use analytic drawing in many drawing areas. There are mainly five different sections in the world of drawing in which analytic drawing is almost crucial to succeed in them. What are the types of analytical drawing?
Product Design
Still Life Drawing
Figure Drawing
Portrait Drawing
Concept Drawing
1. Product design is probably the biggest and most important type of analytic drawing because probably every product designer (except for few exceptions) uses perspective drawing, basic shapes, and forms to construct products.
These products can be as simple as this...
or more complicated and complex constructions as this typical iron.
Whatever product has to be designed, it will most likely begin with basic analytic structures on a piece of paper.
2. In still life drawing, you normally don't pay attention to special techniques such as analytic drawing. Especially as a beginner you're just focussing on where to start and getting the measurements correctly.
However, if you want to add a more realistic or three-dimensional look to your still life artworks, analytic drawing structures will be key for you. It will help you understand the structure and form of the objects in front of you.
You can read more about still life drawing in another article here on Mac H. - Creative which I've written for beginners to understand the basics of still life drawing and what it really is. Click here to get to the post about still life.
3. Figure drawing is normally also nothing that you can instantly connect to analytical drawing techniques. If you break down the model in front of into very basic form like cylinders, spheres, triangles, or rectangles you will be able to understand the model better in its entirety.
Additionally to that, you automatically give your figure drawing the three-dimensional look that it is supposed to have anyway.
Figure drawings are primarily based on movement and gesture studies you're doing while observing the model or reference photo (which is never recommended). These are supposed to be fast and very rough.
Nevertheless, it can tremendously increase your understanding of the human body, its proportions, the relationships, and forms that it consists of. You can also read more about figure drawings on another page of this site by clicking here.
4. Analytical observation and actual drawing can also help you with portrait drawing if that's what you're interested in learning or improving. Believe it or not but yes, in this case, an analytical understanding of face proportions can again enhance the 3D look.
It can look something like the drawing above or you can go even further and break it down more drastically into very basic shapes. Another option is to erase all the analytical structure lines and blend the shaded parts better with a blending tool.
This will make it look very realistic and not as constructed as a product design anymore.
5. In concept drawing, analytical drawing is the absolute basis and the most monumental skill you can possibly have to succeed.
If you want to draw and design beautiful houses or entire streets you have to master the perspective drawing skills mentioned in the following section of the article.
II. Analytic Drawing In Architecture
Generally, the different types of perspective drawing play an important role in analytic drawing because architectural or conceptual drawing is mostly nothing else than perspective drawings.
You differentiate between 6 different kinds of perspective drawing. Mostly only the second one and the third one are being used for analytic drawings. The different types are the following:
One Point Perspective
Two Point Perspective
Three Point Perspective
Four Point Perspective
Five Point Perspective
Six Point Perspective
Before we look at examples of the different perspective techniques together let me say one thing. The word "point" in all those names always refers to the number of vanishing points in a drawing. The points where all the
One point perspective drawing is often used to show the interior of a room. For example, you can use the one point perspective method to draw a kitchen in a house.
You can also use the one point perspective to draw a street in a city as seen below.
Two point perspective is perfectly suited and often used for depicting an architectural building as if you would diagonal at it and not directly from in front of it. Most architects use this method to design modern houses and entire city blocks.
The three point perspective drawing craftsmanship allows you to draw an architectural building or multiple buildings from two main perspectives. You can either depict your buildings as if you were observing them from above like a bird or from below.
Four, five, and six point perspective drawings are very rarely used in architecture. They can generally be found only sporadically throughout the Internet. Nevertheless, here are a few examples.
Four point perspective:
Five point perspective:
Six point perspective:
III. Purpose Of Analytic Drawing
The purpose of analytic drawing depends on the kind of drawing you use it for.
If you are a product designer and want to create outstanding or simple products with the analytical designing method, the purpose is pretty clear. Analytic drawing will grant you the ability to create a basic structure for your product.
In that basic structure, you can now add basic shapes like cubes or spheres. The next steps are to refine these objects and by that adding more and more detail until you have a finished product on your paper.
Analytic drawing makes it possible to slowly work yourself towards a finished product instead of having to have a complete product in your head already that you now have to put piece by piece on a paper.
Analytic drawing in product design is a step by step process like basic sketching.
For figure drawing or still life set-ups, analytical drawing has a completely different purpose. As you can probably already guess, it is not helping you to build a product step by step. At least not primarily.
In those types of drawing it has the primary purpose of helping the artist understand and create the human body or still life objects better. It is also used to give the artwork a more realistic, more three-dimensional looking form.
When you take a close look at this drawing you can detect exactly what basic shapes and forms the artist had in mind as he or she was breaking the still life subjects down. Also, you can instantly see how plastically the objects look without significant shading.
These are the main purposes of analytic drawing. Are you now considering to use this drawing technique to give your next still life or figure drawing a more realistic look? Are you about to try to design an innovative product or a beautiful modern mansion?