Hi, Tom here, welcome to my new video
How to Draw the Penrose Stairs, the Penrose
stairs is a variation on the impossible
triangle made famous by the artist
M.C. Escher, in this optical illusion
developed by Roger Penrose, the stairs
look like they continually rise!
the first step is to draw a vertical
line at an angle
and then add another diagonal line from
this going up towards the left
next draw another diagonal line, this time
going down towards the bottom of your
page and then another diagonal line going
left, which should make a sort of wedge
shape, not be parallel to the first
diagonal line at the top right, and now we need
a shorter line at the back,
next, add two more vertical lines and
this completes the basic shape that we
need for the endless stairs,
now we need to add four more lines for
each of the diagonal lines that we have
on the top of the shape
now each of these
diagonal lines, that goes away from us
need to get closer to the original
diagonal line,
so once your drawing looks a bit
like this, you'll find we've made four
squares on each of the corners
the next step is to
draw some steps between each of these
squares
now the first line of steps that I'm
going to draw, just go up in a normal way,
a straightforward way towards the left,
and then the second line of steps go up
towards the middle again just rising
steps, quite straightforward to do...
but the third line of steps from the top
center to the right, they're going up, but
to draw these we need to be careful to
each of the squares of the steps and
sort of shifted a little bit towards the
right as they go up along the line, the
guide line that we drew earlier on,
now it is time to draw the last line of
steps and for this I start my drawing
from the first step at the bottom center
of the drawing and then I draw the steps
going to the right as if they're going
downwards,
to work this out
they just need to shift a little bit to
the right as they go down and the way
that I've drawn it didn't quite touch
the last step, so they do work, but
they're not quite straight enough, so I'll just
erase some of the lines and
straighten them up a little bit,
and at this stage also it's really
important to look carefully at how the steps
overlap each other at the four corners
of this block of stairs, because
that's where the illusion lies, in the
four corners, how you can look at this
stairs and that they're continuously
going up, which of course is an
impossible thing for stairs to do!
and it's just a matter of how they link at
corners
now once the Penrose Steps are in place,
I'll add some tone to the drawing
putting some shadows on the steps as
well and putting some tone on the
right-hand side of the block the steps
are resting upon
next I'll add some windows to the
thickness of the walls, and now I can add
some other buildings in the background,
just some simple block shape buildings
which sort of funnel downwards, so the
vertical lines going straight down don't go
straight down, they to go straight down but
towards the center of the page as well
as sort of funneling down to the center
now for these drawings were looking down
on all of the buildings, so I need to
draw the tops of each of the buildings
and i think I'll add some windows too
I've made all the other building smaller
than the first buildings of the steps on
top, which is in the foreground, so I want
the foreground to be coming forward, so I
just make everything else a little bit
smaller and that will make it seem like
it's coming forward, again I can add some
tone to the right-hand side of all of
the buildings and maybe some tone in
some of the windows as well, once the
buildings in place you could add some
people walking up the stairs
I'd like to do this and I think I'll try
and keep it simple, so I'll draw some
stickmen, I work out where their feet are going to
land on each step, so each person is of
moving from one step to another so I
need to draw the two shadows of
where their feet go first and then just a
really simple stick person and then I'll
just add some black pen to make them a
little bit more realistic
I hope you liked this video and I hope
you find it useful for your own drawings!
Please give a thumbs up if you liked it
and subscribe to my youtube channel
Circle Line Art School, for a new How to Draw
video every week, there now over 200 of
my videos to watch!
Thank you very much for watching and
Happy New Year! (2017)
