Well if you wanted to challenge yourself you certainly picked a good one. Spiral staircases are very fiddly things to get the perspective correct. Overall you did a really good job, it just started to get away from you because you were trying to draw the staircase as individual stairs. The key is to simplify what you’re drawing. Simplifying can be difficult because you need to switch off the analytical part of your brain that says “stairs” and instead try to see the encompassing primitive form. So instead of thinking about drawing a spiral staircase, you’re instead drawing a cylinder. Then to get from a simple form to a more complex one, you need to understand the perspective and how it affects what you should see. The cylinder is actually a stack of different layers. Each layer represents a single step on the staircase. The edge of each step is a line going to the middle of the cylinder and is oriented differently compared to the other steps. This is compounded by the fact that the perspective of each layer changes as the stairs move closer or further away from the viewer. So at the bottom of the stairs you will see more of the lop part of the stair, but as the stairs move up closer to our eyeline that shape of the tip step will flatten out. I’ve drawn that at the bottom to illustrate what I mean. In order to draw the stairs then, you have to keep track of the changing perspective and orientation of each individual step. I drew in fewer steps just to keep it easier on myself (and still got it wrong lol). So to practice, I would recommend drawing a smaller section of stairs to make it easier on yourself and try to get to grips first with the cylinder and the slowly refining the shape to see where you need to cut into it. Think of it more like a sculptor starting with a block of marble. Look for the bigger shapes first and then start to refine. That is a very fiddly process. So for future drawings when you want to do it a little quicker, I recommend using the form wrapping technique. Still starting with the large primitive shape, but then drawing in the line of the steps as it wraps around the outside of the cylinder. You still need to keep the perspective in mind as you start to carve in the steps and that’s why I recommend doing it the long way first to help your understanding. Let me know if you need me to clarify anything. | Artwod Feedback