Even adept artists sometimes struggle with crafting naturalistic three-dimensional drawings. Of course they know the fundamental principles and produce naturalistic drawings instinctively. But sometimes even the most skilled find elements in their artwork that look distorted and not natural.

For beginners it is even harder, they have to practice daily to climb a steep training curve. It is long-familiar that outstanding drawing abilities are the outcome of daily practicing. Instead learning the three most crucial rules of three-dimensional drawing can make your life easier for you. They can be a shortcut to improving your drawing abilities and assist even adept draftsmen to pinpoint elements that call for a makeover.

So what makes a picture look naturalistic and three-dimensional? There are three rules that contribute to the naturalistic appearance of your drawings. Each of them has to be understood thoroughly. Collectively they ensure outstanding results:

* Composition
* Perspective
* Lighting and Shadows

Composition

Does composition actually contribute to the third-dimensional appearing of your drawings? Of course! The third-dimensional appearance of any drawing has much to do with the relation between the various objects within the drawing. You can create an image withobjects created according to the rules of perspective and have perfect lighting and dark parts. But a bad composition will spoil most of the third-dimensional effect.

There's just one important composition law: allow your picture's objects overlap! Frequently I see beginners averting to let elements in their drawings overlap , because they are afraid to ruin it completely.

Indisputable - if your drawing has lots of intersecting elements it is more complicated to depict. There are more dark parts and also perspective and dimensions of the objects have to be a great deal more exact.

That's demanding sure enough. Closely composed elements in your picture will reveal all weaknesses. On the other side when you cope to get the perspective, lighting and shades proper, a closer arrangement will strengthen the third-dimensional effect.

So take the courage to arrange your picture's elements closer together. Let them overlap and show how good you can draw them according to the rules of third-dimensional drawings.

Perspective

Producing a drawing employing correct perspective is the point where a bit bit maths is necessary. Don't worry - no complicated know-how, just drawing some extra lines.

By creating a drawing keeping the laws of perspective in mind you make sure that:

* your drawing's elements have the proper dimensions and size
* your drawing's elements have the proper deformation according to the distance of the viewer
* your drawing's elements are correlating properly to one another

All this is accomplished by following one simple law:

"Picture elements and their parts grow smaller the farther they're away."

This law can't be stressed enough. If you fail to apply it correctly, your drawings will look distorted and awkwardly. So drawing some extra lines will help you to apply this law properly.

Light and Shadow

The proper lighting and shading is the 3rd important principle for naturalistic looking third-dimensional scenes. It is because of the lightings in your drawings that shades appear. And shades are necessary for a truthful looking drawing - except you depict "gray rainy day" scenes only.

To create naturalistic shades there are some rules you've to keep in mind:

* you have to recognize where the light comes from
* so you can find the proper dimension of the shade
* the proper angle and alignment for the shade
* and the proper shape of the shade

Unfortunately naturalistic shadows are not that easy to create. But there are some helpful techniques. Just now I am working on a how-to revealing these methods stepwise. It will follow here soon.