Rotating objects in your head

[demotlj]

@nessillustration Since my son demonstrated these skills from the time he was a toddler, I suspect you are right that some of it is innate. I read a neurobiologist describe skills as roads in the brain. People are born with paths for all skills but some may have dirt footpaths and others paved roads. The person born with a dirt pathway can, with work, get a paved road and if the person born with a paved road puts in the same amount of work, they'll get a superhighway. (And conversely, if you never work on the road, it'll eventually grow weeds!) Right now, I'd settle for at least a gravel road when it comes to spatial relations

[davidhohn]

I think that it can be an innate skill (which will make life easier) but the ability to rotate an object in your head is also definitely a way of thinking that can be learned. Especially if you actively practice using some of the ideas mentioned in this thread. My favorite suggestion is to create the very basic 3D sculptures to draw from. I've used oil based clay, supersculpy, bits of styrofoam and a glue gun and most recently, learned to felt all to build drawing models to make rotating objects in space a bit easier.

[demotlj]

@davidhohn How do you use felt? Do you glue together felt boxes and spheres? I have a friend who felts and would be happy to teach me.

[davidhohn]

@demotlj Here's some in progress shots of the sculpture I made of one of my book characters. Wire frame base and then wool that just gets poked over and over again. As you can see I didn't include much detail in the felt sculpture, but having the big shapes blocked in really helped when drawing this guy from odd angles. Plus the wire armature allowed me to pose the figure in different ways.

Note: Please ignore the mineral spirits in the background. That's not used for this at all, I just didn't bother to move it from when I was last oil painting.

[demotlj]

@davidhohn That's pretty cool. Thanks for the photos.

[Lee White]

@davidhohn you are such a crafty nerd

[davidhohn]

@lee-white Embroider that into a patch and I'll wear it proudly!

[NessIllustration]

@davidhohn I definitely agree! When I was working on my animation graduation movie, I sculpted my main character in clay and it was a tremendous help!

[Lee White]

@davidhohn I'm getting you a bedazzler for christmas

[davidhohn]

@lee-white Whoo hoo!! And since I already promised you a painting smock -- well now it'll be the prettiest, most sparkliest painting smock ever!!

[Buddy Skelton]

I definitely recommend using a site like www.sketchfab.com and rough out how you think an object will look BEFORE you turn the model and then turn it to see if you are right and make corrections as needed.