Drawing a pentagon

If you can draw a circle and you can draw a square, you can draw an equilateral pentagon. How? Well, the first thing you have to realize is that all sides have equal length and all the angles in the equilateral pentagon are the same. If we turn the drawing so, that one of the sides of the pentagon is horizontal, we call that side the base side. The two adjacent sides have an angle that is less sharp than in case of a square, so they point—so to speak—outwards. The two other sides that are further away from the base side, point inwards and close the pentagon, by joining just above the center of the base side. If you turn the pentagon over one fifth of a full turn in the drawing plane, the next side becomes the base side, and the same relationships apply to its closest two neighbor sides and the remaining two sides. You can check this by turning your drawing and adjust until it looks right from all five sides.

Of course, this takes a lot of time, so the next step is to do this without physically turning the drawing, but, instead, doing this in your mind's eye. This exercise will learn you to see proportions. You can check if you drew a perfect pentagon with the method described earlier.

In fact, this is the way I draw my squares now. Making the angles straight (perpendicular) and all sides equal in length in my mind's eye, and then checking if the proportions are correct by turning the drawing in the drawing plane. This is a simple exercise to get a feeling for proportions. Drawing a pentagon is just a little more complicated, and will fine-tune your feeling for proportions even more.

A circle is a bit more complicated than a square, but not as complicated as a pentagon. If you draw the top, bottom and side points of the circle, drawing a circle is so much easier. Of course, you should always check before drawing the circle, if those four points are drawn at the proper positions. Are the imaginary line piece connecting the top and bottom points and the imaginary line piece connecting the left and right points perpendicular to each other, and do they have a common center point? These are some of the tricks I discovered while drawing squares and circles.

Drawing and learning how to draw is doing several things simultaneously. I have started to read a copy of the book "The Joy of Drawing" by Bill Martin (ISBN 0-8230-2370-2). The first chapter has some great tips on what to draw with and what different ways there are to hold a pencil, and what's its use in drawing. The chapter deals with other useful things for beginners as well. I will not repeat those things, and leave it entirely up to you to buy the book or not. You might have a look at Amazon for book reviews to help you decide.