Thing-a-day.com

20 years ago, my studio was at the bottom of a stairwell, and I spent a lot of time looking up at those stairs. A stairwell is a great challenge, because there are so many planes interacting, and because the eyes tendency to flatten angles can really lead you astray. In this sketch, I started drawing the banister at about a 60 degree angle, and then realized its was actually closer to 85 degrees.



And, since I too sucjk at Photoshop, I’ve also been looking at filters, and this patchwork texturizer seemed interesting, not so much because it makes the drawing better to look at, as because it makes it clear where either the contrast or angles are off — here, I made the angles to flat and the contrast to strong on the left-hand side, relative to the middle of the drawing, where all the depth is.

Last 5 posts by cshirky

• Woman on the subway - February 14th, 2008
• Self-portrait, done from camera-phone shot, on the subway - February 13th, 2008
• Guy reading in the subway - February 12th, 2008
• Three Trashcans - February 11th, 2008
• Kid in a coffeeshop, all about his gameboy... - February 10th, 2008