A mirror is a smooth surface that reflects light or other radiation. It comes in a wide variety of shapes and types. And since a mirror tends to reflect objects, it is better to learn to draw it without reflection, which is not at all difficult to do.
How to draw a mirror
To draw a mirror, you will need: a landscape sheet, an eraser, a ruler, medium (HB) and soft (B) pencils. Here's how to draw a mirror with a pencil:
- First, draw a rectangle 11 x 18 cm on paper, slightly rounding its edges.
- Stepping back 2 cm from each edge, draw another similar one inside the rectangle. This way we get a mirror frame.
- Using a soft pencil, begin to paint the inner rectangle, making soft and smooth lines.
- Use a medium pencil to fill in the left half of the mirror.
- Lightly blend the painted parts. This can be done with your finger or a small piece of paper.
- Again add some lines in the top left and bottom right corner of the mirror.
Make a pattern inside the frame. For example, you can draw a pattern in the form of waves consisting of semicircles or curls. To the left of the frame, add a small shadow and blend it.
How to draw a reflected object
Drawing an object reflected in a mirror is a little more difficult. For example, let's try to draw a vase. Let's place it on the left side of the mirror to make the composition look more interesting. The reflection will follow the shape of the vase, but at a slight angle. Draw the silhouette of a vase in the mirror, fill it in with a medium pencil. Left side make the vases a little darker, add shadow.
How to draw a mirror with a handle
If you want to draw a fairy-tale mirror with a handle, then you will need the same materials as for a large mirror.
To begin, mark the place on the sheet in the form of a rectangle where your mirror will be located, making light, barely noticeable lines. Then divide this rectangle into three parts with lines.
Make the bottom element a little larger than the rest. There will be a handle in this place. Erase a line at the top of the rectangle. You should end up with two rectangles of different sizes.
Draw a vertical line through the center of both rectangles. Then through the center of the upper quadrilateral we make another line horizontally. Place dots in places where the lines touch the sides of the rectangle. Using these points we draw an oval. After that, draw another oval inside.
Using a diagonal line we divide the inner oval into two fragments. The top should be a little larger. It needs to be painted over soft pencil and blend, leaving a small light area at the bottom. Then we make the top of the mirror a little darker.
You can draw a pen different shapes. For example, in the form of an elongated rectangle. You can make the handle widen towards the bottom and resemble a drop in shape. The frame can also be designed as desired. For example, by finishing or drawing a pattern of circles of different shapes.
A lesson on how to draw a mirror step by step was prepared at the request of Svetlana Kudryavtseva and many other girls, readers of DayFan. I won’t name everyone’s names, because the list will be too long. I hope you enjoy the lesson, and as an example I took an image sent by one of the readers, here: A mirror is the only way a person can look into his own eyes. This is the amazing property of smooth surfaces to reflect light. Understanding how light rays travel is very important if you want to depict someone's reflection in a mirror. In our example, we will try to depict the object itself; no one will be displayed in it. Therefore, we will not cover the principles of reflection here, but if you want, you can practice on your own in front of a mirror.
A few more ways to use this item:
- The distorting mirror is a special type of art, the basis of the caricature genre, and also the brainchild of Petrosyan (yes, Evgeny Vaganich, this is not a joke);
- A symbol of another world that writers often use. Good example This is a fairy tale about Alice through the looking glass;
- Erised - a magic mirror that can show a person’s deepest desires (from the book about Harry Potter);
- There is also a myth that vampires are not reflected in the mirror;
In addition, the mirror still often appears in Russian folk tales. Try to draw it yourself:
How to draw a mirror with a pencil step by step
Step one. Let's mark the place on the paper where the mirror and its leg, or stand, or whatever it may be, will be depicted. 
Step two. Let's sketch out the outlines of an oval shape. 
Step three. Let's draw in more detail. Step four. Let's remove the excess and correct the contours. Let's add some shading: 
We have already accumulated a large number of lessons on drawing useful things, try to draw them.
April 6th, 2016
I have seen such drawings and examples of such creativity more than once. This is when the drawing looks like some kind of mountains, but you put a shiny cylinder and see a real image. I always wanted to know how they draw it. Now let's figure it out...
Anamorphosis is a deliberately ugly distorted image of an object, which under certain conditions appears correct. The images in anamorphic paintings are highly distorted, but if you look at them with a mirror, you can see an undistorted image of the subject. Anamorphic pictures can be linear, conical, cylindrical, etc.
According to some sources, it is believed that anamorphosis, or otherwise the art of distorting projection, was once invented in China, and later brought to Europe. Although it is possible that similar inventions may arise independently of each other in different parts of the world, but in different time periods. The founder of anamorphism in European art considered to be Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519).
The first known example of an anamorphic drawing is considered to be his drawing, which scientists-researchers found in one of the artist’s treatises - the Codex atlanticus. When viewed in the drawing plane at an angle, a clear image of the child's face appears.
In the Middle Ages, artists painting cathedrals and temples in Italy introduced anamorphism into high art paintings. In order to see the correct image, it was necessary to look at the painting from a certain angle. Since the Renaissance, anamorphic works have been created on cathedral lampshades in such a way that the viewer viewing them from below can grasp the correct perspective.
Often a similar technique was used by artists to depict “forbidden” scenes that, for example, have an erotic connotation. In the 16th and 17th centuries, such anamorphoses made it possible to distribute political and religious cartoons and store prohibited images.
From an early 17th century engraving:
Many artists created anamorphic paintings with educational goals in mind, some of them were also mathematicians.
A famous example of partial anamorphosis is Hans Holbein the Younger's painting The Messengers, created in 1533 and currently exhibited in London.
The artist's depiction of the skull in the lower center becomes clearly visible when the painting is viewed from a very low angle on the lower left side.
Below is the anamorphic work unknown artist(about 1550 g), which is an example of linear anamorphism. Here the distortion lies in the incredible stretching of the picture horizontally.
If you look at the plane of the picture under acute angle or using flat mirror, you can clearly see the images of the apostles Peter and Paul and other characters.
Anamorphic portrait of Carlos V private collection. From the catalog of Carolus Charles Quint 1500-1558 Kunsthal De Sint-Pietersabdji a Gand
If you hold up a small mirror and look into it, then
This is an example of linear distortion...
During the Renaissance, anamorphic painting was one of the favorite techniques. The paintings were painted in such a way that they could only be viewed using a special anamophoscope device. Because of their unusual nature, anamorphic paintings were believed to have magical properties.
Another anamorphic work of “old” artists: a portrait of Charles I. The place where the cylindrical mirror needs to be placed is indicated by a circle with a skull.
Now let's move on to the "physics" and talk about cylindrical mirrors, which are so often used to view anamorphic drawings.
Cylindrical mirrors come in both convex and concave forms, and interesting effects can be observed when using these mirrors.
In the old days, copper, brass or bronze cylinders, polished to a mirror shine, served as cylindrical anamorphoscope mirrors.
Images that are obtained undistorted in a cylindrical mirror are called cylindrical anamorphoses.
An anamorphic picture for a convex cylindrical mirror can be recognized by a circle, usually located somewhere in the middle of the picture. To view anamorphic cylindrical paintings in an undistorted form, it is necessary to place a cylindrical mirror on it in the center of the circle.
In the novel "Invitation to Execution" by Vl. Nabokov has this passage:
"... I remember: when I was a child, they were in fashion - ah, not only among children, but also among adults - such things were called “netkas” - and they were supposed to have a special mirror attached to them, not much else crooked - absolutely distorted, nothing could be understood, gaps, confusion, everything slides before the eyes, but its curvature was not without reason, but just so fitted... Or, rather, they were matched to its curvature in such a way...
No, wait, I'm not explaining it well. In a word, you had such a wild mirror and a whole collection of different nonsense, that is, absolutely absurd objects: all sorts of shapeless, motley, holes, spots, pockmarked, knobby things, like some kind of fossils - but a mirror that ordinary objects were distorted, now, therefore, they received real food, that is, when you placed such an incomprehensible and ugly object so that it was reflected in an incomprehensible and ugly mirror, it turned out wonderful; no to no gave yes, everything was restored, everything was fine - and from the shapeless motley a wonderful harmonious image emerged in the mirror: flowers, a ship, a figure, some kind of landscape. It was possible - to order - even your own portrait, that is, they gave you some kind of terrible mess, and it was you, but the key to you was in the mirror. Ah, I remember how fun it was and a little scary - what if nothing happens! - to pick up such a new incomprehensible net and bring it closer to the mirror, and see in it how your hand is completely decomposing, but how the meaningless net is folded into a lovely picture, clear, clear..."
How does a cylindrical mirror “work”?
A straight line drawn on a sheet of paper turned into a curve in a cylindrical mirror, and vertical parallel arrows turned into diverging rays.
In order to see an undistorted image of an anamorphic picture, you need a polished metal cylinder, and for this you can roll a sheet of foil into a cylinder. Then you need to come up with a picture and draw it in the original rectangular coordinate grid.
For example, in a rectangular grid there is a circle, a square and a triangle. After which it is necessary to draw a new, but already radius coordinate grid, and transferring the coordinates of the points of the original drawing to it, trace the contours. When anamorphizing, a square becomes a rectangle or rhombus, and a circle becomes an oval.
The higher the reflection of the design in the cylinder, the further and wider it should be on the paper.
Now we place a cylindrical mirror at the central point and look! Although the drawing is distorted on paper, on the surface of the mirror the reflections of the figures have the correct outlines: circle, square and triangle.
As we can see in the above old drawing, in order to accurately transfer an ordinary image onto a sheet of a future anamorphic picture, you need to clearly calculate the possible distortions of the objects in the picture. To do this, the usual pattern is divided into cells, and a radial grid is created on a sheet of an amorphous pattern with a center where in the future it will be necessary to place a cylindrical mirror. Have you ever had to enlarge a drawing by redrawing it cell by cell? Here it’s the same thing, only the cells are curved. Usually artists draw such anamorphoses, constantly checking with the mirror; this is very painstaking and tedious work. Now this can be done easier: not manually, but on a computer.
One of contemporary artists Who revives the technique of creating anamorphic images is the Hungarian artist István Orosz.
For this purpose, Oros uses a conical or cylindrical mirror, which transforms indistinct strokes on paper into a three-dimensional image on the walls of the mirror.
It turns out that there is another type of anamorphic paintings. And it is completely incomprehensible to an outside viewer how the artist paints such pictures, how is he capable of such a “vision”? This is exactly what you saw in the first GIF.
In these paintings we see on the sheet a pattern that is completely understandable to the viewer, BUT as a reflection on the side surface of the mirror cylinder, a completely different pattern appears! Are there any calculations here? What laws of mathematics and physics help the artist in this work on the painting?
How do you like these things, these are the works of Jonty Hurwitz:
Here are more works by other masters.
On the convex surfaces of shiny objects - such as a nickel-plated teapot - you can find very interesting distorted reflections. Drawing such reflections with a pencil is quite difficult, but very interesting.
A surface polished to a mirror finish does not always accurately reproduce the object reflected on it. If the surface is convex or concave, objects will be reflected on it in a distorted way and take on a strange, unexpected shape. In order to correctly sketch such reflections, they should first of all be studied very carefully, since it is completely impossible to predict the reflected outlines.
How to compose a still life
In this case, the still life is organized around a metal teapot with convex walls. However, instead of it, you can use any other convex shiny object - for example, a nickel-plated iron or even a car hubcap. Having chosen such a ((reflector), place various objects around it.
Remember that the shapes of objects with regular, even edges will be most interestingly distorted. It is best to lay out objects on a white surface - it will not create additional distorted reflections that distract the viewer’s attention.
By the way, on a smooth convex surface you can see your own reflection. Include it in your composition - it will be interesting! But it is better not to transfer reflections such as windows and furniture to the drawing. This will make your still life look overloaded with details. So that you don’t have to “weed out” these reflections during your work, it is better to immediately isolate yourself from the interior of the room with a white cloth.
For the pencil drawing lesson you will need:
Sheet of watercolor paper
Simple pencils: 2B, 4B, 5B and 8B
Craft knife
Mastic eraser
Tonal shading of a pencil drawing.
To ensure that the reflections on the surface of the teapot do not discord with each other, it is necessary to create areas of different tones and combine them with smooth tonal transitions - in a word, apply a graduated tone. In this case, areas of light, then medium and finally dark tones are created first.
1 Making an initial sketch
Using a 4B pencil, outline the outlines of the teapot, bottle, mug and apples. Make sure that the shapes and sizes of objects, as well as their location relative to each other, are drawn correctly. Special attention pay attention to the ellipses: one of them forms the rim of the mug. Sketch the outlines of the main reflections on the teapot, following the curve of its walls,
2 Refine the sketch lines
Take a 2B pencil and follow the lines of the sketch to make them clearer and more precise. When describing curves, hold the pencil further from the lead and draw these lines with a smooth movement of the hand from the wrist. Add a shadow under the reflection of the bottle on the surface of the teapot,
3 Create light and gray tones
Take a 5B pencil and start adding tone. Lightly shade the reflection of the mug and the white surface of the table. Cover the reflection of the bottle, the shaded side of the mug, and separate areas background. Remember to leave the paper bare where the highlights will be located. Apply diagonal strokes of light and medium tones to the bottle and mug.
4 Moving on to dark tones
Using the same 5B pencil, press a little harder to shade a dark stripe running down the center of the bottle. In this case, to the left of this stripe there should be areas of the lightest tone. Then shade the black plastic handle of the kettle, the ring on its lid and the whistle. Begin to describe the shape of the apples and mugs using free, multidirectional strokes. Return to the reflections on the teapot: deepen the tone of the bottle, and then draw a dark line - the reflection of the teapot handle on its lid.
5 Apply the darkest colors
Take an 8B pencil, sharpen the tip and draw the edge of the teapot lid. Deepen the tone of the bottle's reflection. Mark the lines at the base of the teapot, and then deepen the tone of the teapot handle and the ring on its lid.
6 Drawing your own reflection
If you want the same as shown here. include your own reflection in the drawing, surround the outline of your head and upper body with shading. Check all reflections and correct them if necessary. Cover the teapot spout with a light tone and further deepen the tone of the ring on the teapot lid and its reflection.
7 Working on a still life
Make the edges of objects even clearer - for example, the spout of a teapot. Refine the round shape of the apples using simple and cross hatching. Deepen the shadow lying inside the mug. To highlight the dark color bottles, once again use a pencil to follow the dark line going from top to bottom. Apply light shadows cast by objects on the white surface of the table.
Reflections on the walls of the teapot vary from abstract to completely recognizable forms. Now, if you wish, you can apply additional shadows and check if any reflections are missing.
8 Clarifying the tones
Take a 4B pencil and deepen the tone at the edges of the bottle. Deepen the tone in the reflections of the apples with additional shading. Shade the top edge of the kettle handle and its lid with the side of the lead.
9 Finish the work on the white surface
The shadows cast by objects on a white horizontal plane are barely noticeable, so indicate them with light shading. These shadows will help “tie” objects to the table surface.
Step-by-step pencil drawing lesson - result
A Rounded shapes
This composition is united by smooth, rounded shapes of objects. The bottle with its rounded but too elongated shape brings contrast to the outlines of these objects.
B Dark bottle
The same bottle also plays an interesting role in the tonal range of the composition. Its dark outlines stand out sharply against the background of the reflections of other objects.
In Curved Reflections
The convex surface of the teapot causes all objects to be reflected on it in a distorted form. All contours of the reflections, narrowing, bend upward, towards the lid.
For us, this type of drawing is useful because it promotes the development of interaction between the right and left hemispheres of the brain of children and adults: the exercise is useful at any age.
Mirror drawing
Drawing with both hands at the same time helps to develop a sense of symmetry, which is lacking in some schoolchildren and adversely affects the learning of mathematics. It is also used as a method of art therapy, relieving excessive anxiety in schoolchildren and adults.
We begin work with the so-called double doodling - mirror drawing with both hands.
Double doodling options:
- tracing the drawing with both hands;
- actual mirror drawing.
Tracing with two hands
Let's start by tracing the drawing. This kind of drawing can be started quite early - at 1.5-2 years.
The drawing is simple, with a minimum of details (house below). We draw an extraneous (not related to the drawing) line intentionally. She helps the kids initial stage distinguish between the right and left parts of the drawing, find a point to start drawing. You can explain to older guys that this is a special line. If you bend a sheet of paper along it, the halves of the drawing will coincide. Learn about the importance of understanding symmetry for learning here.
Walking around with two-year-old Seryozha
A two-year-old is not able to complete the task on his own. You can follow our example.
Take a board and attach a drawing to it with masking (paper) tape. The adhesive tape will hold it in place. Sit on the floor, place the child on the floor between your legs with his back to you. A board with a drawing in front of you.
Give your child a felt-tip pen (or marker) in each hand. The child holds markers, and you hold his hands. Place the tips of the markers at one point - the top of the roof. We begin to trace the drawing with both markers at the same time, but in different directions. Make sure that neither hand is in a hurry. The point is in the simultaneity of actions.
Older children can do mirror drawing on their own. But don't leave them alone, especially at first.
Seven-year-old Artyom couldn’t get it to work left hand. The right one easily slid across the pattern, but the left one barely moved. The guys advised Artyom to stop right hand, which he also could not do. This pattern during drawing is evidence of weak interaction between the hemispheres. The left one carries the main load, while blocking the right one. The boy needed external help: an adult sat next to him and held his right hand, limiting its movements so that the left could keep up with it.
Let's complicate the task. Children 3 years old and older can practice tracing a line drawing with both hands.
We advise you not to skip tracing a symmetrical pattern with both hands, focusing on the age of the children. If tracing works well, just reduce the time spent on it.
Drawing with two hands
Actually, double doodling is accessible to older children and is performed in two ways:
- based on part of the drawing (complete drawing),
- free drawing
I write “older”, without being tied to the “passport” age, because many factors influence the skill of two-handed drawing, and a four-year-old can easily outperform a six-year-old. Here each child progresses at his own pace. Comparison only with yourself, and not with Vasya or Petya.
Reliance on part of the drawing
Draw half of the object: for a right-hander - the left, for a left-hander - the right. We fix the sheet with half the drawing with paper tape. There is a felt-tip pen in each hand. The leading hand draws the missing part of the object, and the “subordinate” traces the drawn half.
Without relying on part of the drawing
Free two-handed work is best started with doodles. Drawing with two hands starts from the line of symmetry. Both hands try to produce the same but symmetrical appearance. I repeat: the main thing is the simultaneous work of both hands. From scribbles you can go to simple drawings: house, tree, flower, etc.
Or you can draw two drawings at the same time. It will look like this.
Wet sand is perfect for adding variety to your summer holiday. We draw with our fingers or a stick.
Art therapy
Double doodling - great option art therapy. Useful for anxious kids high level self-control. We draw with paints: gouache is better suited for children. You can also take acrylic paints, but they have a drawback: they dry quickly. Art therapists believe that drawing with two hands removes fears and blocks.
Entering the topic step by step
- alternate drawing with the right and left hands;
- we draw with both hands at the same time: we go from simple to complex (first scribbles, then objects);
Mirror drawing– it’s not an easy task even for adults, so two conditions are important: leisurely and systematic work. This will undoubtedly have a beneficial effect on the children’s education and the development of their minds. The site Non-standard children wishes you success.
