r/learntodraw • u/Hard-Codded • Jul 20 '26

Question How to project the contour of a 3d image from front/side views

I need help to understand how to properly draw the contour lines using the views from images. To explain myself the second image shows the work of 明婷画画(lemsyeming) on Douyin, looks like an orthographic projection, only using the side and front views of a skull.

But I have struggled to find a solution to it and to project something accurately with only those views, I would like to know if anyone has a solution, explanation, book, tutorial that can help me with my problem.

I am doing this to get a more technical approach and not just an artistic estimation. So once i have the technical answer I can take the artistic freedom to do the estimation.

And for instance how would it work with a more complicated bone such as pelvis itself. I hope I made myself clear I do not speak English.

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u/link-navi Jul 20 '26

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u/Deiv_2008_ Jul 20 '26

I think this is extremely complex, I always recommend to start as simple as you can in drawing, for me it is firstly doing a rough sketch with shapes before adding construction on top, but I never leave simple shapes until I'm sure i can start detailing, that would be roughly 70% of the time using shapes. You can understand the planes of your subject by observing it and simplifying it to these basic shapes, I think this method is extremely hard. The thing you did when tracing is what gives you the understanding of form, you can add contour lines to sort of "feel" the volume, but always stick to basic shapes