Creating 3-D Shapes in Art
By learning techniques for drawing 3-D shapes, students can create realistic drawings.
By Amy Medico
As children develop their art abilities, creating artwork that looks realistic becomes more important. Especially as students enter middle school they measure their success in art by their ability to create drawings that look real. Learning how to use 3-D shapes in their artwork can give students the tools they need to create realistic artwork. Art teachers can introduce students to a variety of techniques, including how to draw 3-D shapes, show perspective, and use shading.
Three-dimensional shapes are, mathematically speaking, those that have length, width and height. Our world is made up entirely of 3-D shapes: cubes, spheres, pyramids, and other 3-D shapes are the building blocks of the world around us. The challenge is for students to figure out how to create 3-D shapes using the 2-D mediums like drawings and paintings.
The first step to being able to draw realistically is to be able to recognize the 3-D shapes in the things you are drawing. Students are introduced to 3-D shapes early on in their school careers and should be able identify them because of their math education in lower grades. Some of the most basic 3-D shapes are easily drawn. Younger students can gain satisfaction from drawing a house that is not just a rectangle with a triangle for a roof, but a cube-like shape with a prism for a roof!
One more advanced way to create 3-D shapes in drawing is to teach students one-point perspective. One-point perspective is defined as a way to show three-dimensional shapes on a two-dimensional surface. Lines appear to move away from the viewer and meet in a single point on the horizon. One-point perspective is useful for drawing interiors of rooms as well as views of streets and hallways. One-point perspective effectively creates 3-D scenes.
Shading can also be used to make individual objects look 3-D. Using shading can especially be helpful in making rounded and organically shaped objects appear 3-D. Shading is done by filling an object with a gradation of light to dark tones. The lightest areas will be those closest to the light source and the darkest areas those that are receiving the least amount of light. What follows are more 3-D shape lessons.
3-D Shape Lessons:
In this lesson, students learn to identify 3-D shapes and to differentiate between 2-D and 3-D shapes. Students use this knowledge to create a 3-D drawing of a city. This is an appropriate lesson for introducing younger students to 3-D drawing. The 3-D city gives students an opportunity to master 3-D shapes while using their creativity.
This lesson allows students to explore 3-D shapes in 3-D media as well as 2-D media. Students first construct 3-D structures using toothpicks and chickpeas (could be modified to use marshmallows), and then create drawings of their structures. Creating 3-D shapes before drawing them could be useful in deepening students’ understanding of 3-D shapes.
Students are introduced to one-point perspective and use it to create a poster with a school theme. Students explore art history and discover how artists use one-point perspective. This lesson provides a great look at how one point perspective has been used in art history and teaches students how to use it in their own artwork.
Line and Shading = Shape and Form
This lesson teaches students how to add basic shading to geometric shapes as well as objects from nature. This would be a good building block to introduce student to shading before having them draw a still life with shading.
