Thanks for the response. I logged into the Vitruvian site to see about the upcoming live streaming class and saw where you responded to my comment regarding triangulation. I’m thinking about taking the class and I have a couple questions regarding materials for the class. I’ll send them in a separate comment.

Regarding your question about getting the angles right without the protractor is interesting. Using the protractor and ruler for each point does take time. (By point, I mean a pencil mark on the page determined by the angle and distance calculated from the app.) So not using them should speed up the work. I spent about an hour on a sketch using the tool to get the correct angle as done with the typical triangulation method. I haven’t done a freehand sketch in a while, so lessons learned requires a grain of salt.

The first thing I noticed was it’s nice having a straight line (leg of the triangle) to get the correct angle from the reference. I did have to move back and forth from the reference to the sketch several times to make sure the angle was correct or close. This probably isn’t a problem for someone with more experience. After I made my pencil mark, I got to where I almost always used the ruler to check the distance. (The app shows the angle and distance of each leg of the triangle.) This actually took very little time and I think my sketch improved from doing that. I believe it is helpful in getting the angles right since you are actually lining your pencil up with a straight line and not two parts of the reference. For example, you might typically line up the corner of an eye and the bottom of an ear. The app puts a straight line through the eye and ear. The line seems to make getting the correct angle easier. And as a check, with the ability to quickly and accurately measure between two points I think the tool becomes very helpful.

Your question also got me thinking about how to simplify the current way of using a protractor and ruler to create the sketch with the app. Currently, I’m dealing with the protractor, ruler and pencil on every point. I discovered a couple of ways to position the protractor so it can stay in one place to map several points before having to move it. That helped. I now add a light horizontal line across the center of the drawing and tape down the protractor (I truly am a hacker!) on the far left side of the drawing, adding all the points that I need, and then moving it to the right side of the drawing and doing the same. So for any one point I get the angle and distance from the app and I’m only handling the ruler and pencil to place the point in the correct position. This did speed things up quite a bit. I spent a couple of hours working from the same reference as the freehand sketch. It took more time, but I feel that I got better results.

I took pictures of my sketches, if you would like to see them just let me know. The pictures may help the above make a little more sense.

This is fascinating, Daniel. I love it when high tech and the arts intersect, and this is a great example. I’m also happy to hear when a student employs their own ingenuity and life experience to solve drawing problems in novel ways. I’d be interested to see if your app could provide an assist for getting angles right, even without using the protractor and ruler on the page. In other words, seeing the triangle overlaid on the reference so clearly, it may be easier to “see it” consistently and get better results when trying to just eyeball it on the page. It sounds like that would be fun to play around with…

And sorry for the delayed response on your comment here. Thanks for chiming in!

In a previous life, I was a programmer so I thought why not write an app based on triangulation. So I did! The app has two main functions. The first step is to create a “golden triangle” that overlays the reference photo. The three vertices are placed at well-defined points on the photo, e.g. corner of an eye, where the ear connects to the head, button on a shirt… The app then locks in these three points and calculates the angles and lengths of the golden triangle. (The golden triangle is set in stone and the angles and lengths cannot be redefined.) From there only one vertex at a time can be dragged and placed anywhere on the reference photo. This allows me to measure the angle and the distance for any point on the reference photo based on the fixed positions of the other two vertices. (The angles and distances are automatically calculated.) I then use a protractor and a ruler to place the corresponding dot on the drawing. This does take time, so I limit the number of dots to just enough to allow me to create a rough sketch. So for an eye, I might place three or four dots. There is a button on the app to reset the golden triangle to its original default position. This allows moving one of the other vertices in the same way as described above. The second function, releases all the vertices to let me move them anywhere on the drawing to take measurements, either distance or angle, and to compare the drawing to the reference, e.g. distance from pupil to pupil, chin to hairline, corner of mouth to earlobe… This function serves as a check to make sure all the facial features are where they’re suppose to be.

Hope this makes some sense! Thanks.