Design Like da Vinci: Sketching Lessons

from the Original Renaissance Man

Brian Sullivan

artwork by Leonardo da Vinci

Figure 1. Famous works by Leonardo da
Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci is the archetype of a
Renaissance man—painter, sculptor,
architect, sketcher, scientist,
mathematician, civil engineer, inventor,
geologist, writer, and more. His famous
works of art include moments of grace:
the mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa,
the icon of human potential known as the
Vitruvian Man, and the shocking moment of
The Last Supper (see Figure 1).
Surprisingly, Leonardo was not as
prolific an artist as he was a sketcher.
Da Vinci produced more than 13,000 pages
of sketches, which are arguably his
greatest legacy.

Within these sketch books, Leonardo

thinks both scientifically and
creatively. You see sketches of
futuristic devices, detailed drawings of
human anatomy, postulations on plate
tectonics, and observations about diet,
cholesterol, and heart disease. You see
sketches of flowers, weapons, horses,
soldiers, and armor. Some sketches are
wireframes for statues and bridges, while
others are early renditions of paintings.
Leonardo’s sketches were his visual
thoughts.

After studying the sketchbooks of

Leonardo and drawing inspiration from
Michael Gelb’s How to Think Like Leonardo
da Vinci (2000), I developed a set of
principles to design like da Vinci, with
the goal to improve my own paper
prototypes, design studio projects,
design reviews, and inspections.

Lesson 1: Strive for Quantity

The first principle is to strive for
quantity when you sketch. Leonardo
frequently sketched things multiple
times, showing an object from different
perspectives or different stages of
development. For example, Leonardo’s
sketches called Study of Flowers show
some flowers with leaves and others
without leaves (see Figure 2). We see
flowers in different stages of
development: budding, fully developed,
withering, and dying. We see flowers from
different viewpoints: above, beside, or
below. We see different sizes: small,
medium, large.

sketch by Leonardo da Vinci

Figure 2. Study of Flowers with flowers
in various stages of development.
Takeaways for UX Projects
You should strive for quantity during the
early design stages. If possible,
assemble a multi-disciplinary team of
five or six people who are required to
sketch a few different ideas before a
wireframe is rendered. A developer,
marketer, designer, and support person
will all see the problem differently. For
projects with one designer only, ask for
at least five sketches. The first idea is
rarely, if ever, the best one.

Lesson 2: Use Annotations
 in Your

Sketches
Leonardo sketched over 700 different
drawings of human anatomy by watching the
dissection of cadavers. Scholars suggest
that Leonardo would alter his brushstoke
after his detailed sketches of the human
body. Da Vinci’s sketches of human
anatomy resemble a modern-day wireframe
(i.e., a drawing with detailed
annotations).

For example, the sketch called The Study

of Arms and Shoulders shows four
different drawings of the shoulder with
annotations between the arms, which was
the only place to put this information
(see Figure 3). Leonardo used the
annotations to show his observations and
assumptions.

sketches of Leonardo da Vinci

Figure 3. (left) Leonardo’s Study of Arms
and Shoulders with annotations. Figure 4.
(right) The Great Lady, the first
documented example of female anatomy.
Takeaways for UX Projects
Your initial sketches should use
annotations to explain the interactions
that you envision, and clarify business
requirements. Annotations are an
opportunity to collaborate with others
and start to build buy-in for your ideas.
The initial sketch starts the
conversation. The annotations from
stakeholders help people solve the same
problem, rallying around a common vision.
Sketch, explain, annotate, and re-sketch.
You will automatically build consensus.

As a UX professional, you should use

annotations in your design reviews and
heuristic inspections. Assume you have
been given a sketch, wireframe, or
prototype to evaluate. The quickest way
to provide feedback to designers is to
take a screenshot and annotate it. Your
annotations to an existing design are
more effective than a bulleted list or
spreadsheet of heuristic violations, as
designers can easily see which elements
you are referring to.

Lesson 3: Sketch Separately, Review

Together
Leonardo created his sketches alone, but
he collaborated with other people to
flesh out details. For example, he
collaborated with Marcantonio della
Torre, an anatomist from the University
of Pavia, on his famous drawings of human
anatomy, such as “The Great Lady” (see
Figure 4). Marcantonio reviewed da
Vinci’s sketches, checking for
completeness and accuracy.
Takeaways for UX Projects
The principle of “sketch separately,
review together” helps your projects at
the individual and group levels. From an
individual perspective, you separate two
distinct types of thinking. Sketching
uses the creative side of your brain,
while reviewing uses the evaluative side
of your brain. You will be more effective
if you focus on just one type of thinking
at a time.

This rule also helps avoid group think,

where people (consciously or
unconsciously) try to minimize conflict
by reaching a quick consensus. Group
think does not allow for individual
creativity, uniqueness, or critical
thinking. With group think, individual
ideas are negated, as the group moves
towards consensus without exploring
different viewpoints.

Encourage people to sketch independently.

Then bring them all together to review
their output and further collaborate on
refined sketches, mash-ups, or final
mock-ups.
Lesson 4: Engage Your
 Imagination
“Why does the eye see a thing more
clearly in dreams than the imagination
when awake?”

—Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo’s sketches are highly

imaginative. They include civil
engineering projects (bridges, roads,
maps), military objects (tank, machine
gun), and robots (knight armor which had
cranks to show movement). Because da
Vinci was curious about flying, his
sketchbook also contains an entry about
an unsuccessful flight test as well as
drawings of a parachute (see Figure 5),
airplane, and glider. In some cases,
these objects would not be created for
over 500 years.

sketch of Leonardo da Vinci

Figure 5. Leonardo’s parachute sketched
in 1483.
Takeaways for UX Projects
When you thoroughly know a product, it’s
hard to engage your imagination. You know
the code and a thousand reasons why
something will fail. You need to
envision, but you are stuck in the here
and now. To move beyond the current state
of technology, use scampering. SCAMPER is
an acronym where each letter serves as a
trigger to think about your problem in a
different ways

S = Substitute
C = Combine
A = Adapt
M = Magnify
P = Put to Other Uses
E = Eliminate
R = Rearrange (or Reverse)
Imagine how Leonardo used scampering.
Consider the parachute, where he combined
rope and a sheet to illustrate how it
might work. Next, consider the mechanical
knight, where Leonardo combined a suit of
armor with ropes and pulleys.

At your next ideation or brainstorming

meeting, write down all the SCAMPER words
on the board. Ask the team to scamper for
ten minutes and then count how many ideas
were created. With a team of five people,
you can easily scamper over 150 ideas in
ten minutes. If a sketcher is stuck in a
design studio, tell them to scamper. If
you are performing a heuristic evaluation
and can’t think of a recommendation, try
to come up with solutions by scampering.

Lesson 5: Defer Judgment

“The greatest deception men suffer is
from their own opinions.” —Leonardo da
Vinci

If you really want to increase your

ability to come up with fresh, innovative
ideas, learn how to defer judgment.
Leonardo seemed to be very good at it.
Consider the story of da Vinci’s bridge,
which takes almost 500 years to tell. In
1502, Leonardo sketched a bridge for the
Sultan of Istanbul (see Figure 6). The
Sultan’s engineers deemed the bridge
unstable because they did not like the
design of the keystone arch. Needless to
say, the Sultan did not build the bridge.
But da Vinci was right—the keystone arch
could be stretched and widened without
losing its integrity. In 2001, Norway
completed a scaled down version of the
bridge with a 300-foot span and length of
400 feet (see Figure 7).

image of Leonardo's sketch and a bridge

in Norway
Figure 6 (left) Leonardo da Vinci’s 1502
bridge sketch. Figure 7 (right) The da
Vinci Bridge in Ås Norway, completed
almost 500 years after Leonardo’s sketch.
Takeaways for UX Projects
Early feedback during ideation can derail
ideas faster than anything the team might
do. Positive feedback is almost as bad as
negative feedback. As positive comments
are made, the team shuts down as people
either talk or listen to the positive
comments. Typically, the team then starts
coming up with ideas similar to those
that received the favorable feedback.
Negative comments, on the other hand,
discourage people from generating ideas
altogether.

You should go through new ideas with an

open mind, trying to understand rather
than judge them. On my projects, I
enforce the following rules:
We will defer judgment (both positive and
negative)
We will use positive judgment first (see
Lesson 6 below).We will use critical
judgment second
We will vote based on our own intuition
and experience.

Lesson 6: Use Positive
 Judgment First

Leonardo was once given the task of
remodeling the Duke of Milan’s kitchen.
Leonardo designed conveyor belts to bring
food to preparers faster, a large oven to
cook at higher temperatures than normal,
and a sprinkler system for safety. He
also invited local artists to carve
individual entrees into works of edible
art.

The comedy of errors began with the

conveyor belts running too slow. With a
quick adjustment, the belts ran too fast
and the food piled up. Next, the new oven
worked as designed, but the cooks weren’t
used to it and burned the food. When a
small fire broke out, the sprinklers were
used, ruining some of the food. Finally,
the artisans were too slow carving the
food. The Duke’s party was a disaster.

Just as the Sultan’s engineers failed to

appreciate the keystone bridge, the Duke
failed to see the value of Leonardo’s
“kitchen nightmare.” Da Vinci was using
conveyor belts long before the Industrial
Revolution. With respect to cooking,
Leonardo experimented with higher
temperatures, developed his own oven, and
used artists to improve food
presentation. Finally, Leonardo’s
sprinkler system is a fundamental design
still used today.

Takeaways for UX Projects

Just as you defer judgment when creating
ideas, use positive judgment first to
evaluate them. Positive judgment forces
you to explore the benefit of a potential
idea. Plus, you remain open to new ideas.

The rule of positive judgment first can

lead to new discussions, too. In one
design studio, the designer could not get
to a fifth idea, so she sketched a
catapult. Rather than rejecting the idea,
the team decided to explore it. What
content could be removed? What content
could be “catapulted” at the customer?
Using positive judgment first forced this
deeper conversation.

Nobody likes it when an executive drops

into a meeting and lists everything that
is wrong with the design. Based on my
experience, you will get less executive
“swoop and poop” and more executive buy-
in if you take the time to explain the
“Design like da Vinci” process—how the
designers have sketched separately,
reviewed together, deferred judgment, and
then used positive judgment first. Ask
the executives to see the good in the
design first and then offer critical
comments.

Conclusions
Leonardo da Vinci is considered the
greatest thinker in our history—some
scholars rank him above Albert Einstein.
As designers and usability practitioners,
we should take our lessons from Leonardo.
You can start by reading Michael Gelb’s
book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci
and reviewing Leonardo’s sketchbooks.
But you need to be more than a fan of
Leonardo da Vinci. Embrace his work and
aspire to be like him. Use these
guidelines and create your own—they are a
starting point in your journey to
becoming a better thinker and problem
solver.
As far as intelligence is concerned Da
Vinci was the greatest genius of all
times. His IQ was estimated to be
around 220!
A "genius" score on the standard IQ test
is a 140. So you see he was way above,
all those,whom you or I would call a,
"genius". So to think like him, I guess…,
needs a God's gift. He was a precocious
child, who grew up to be a great artist,
botanist, mathematician, sculptor,
geologist, anatomist, inventor,
cartographer, musician, inventor.

To be a painter like him- Apart from the

innate talent to paint, a lot of patience
and some techniques are required.
One such trick, widely used by Da Vinci
was the, use of the “divine Golden
Ratio”, in almost all of his famous
paintings. This “golden”
ratio, 1.61803399, represented by the
Greek letter Phi, is also known as
the Golden Number, Golden Proportion,
Golden Mean, Golden Section, Divine
Proportion and Divine Section.
Golden ratio is said to be aesthetically
pleasing, and is present in nature in
many forms-from the arrangement of leaves
in plants, to the pattern of the florets
of a flower, to the shell of a snail, to
the bracts of a pinecone, or the scales
of a pineapple. Humans and animals too
exhibit golden ratio characteristics. The
Golden Ratio is seen in the proportions-
in the sections of a finger to the golden
spiral in the cochlea of the inner ear,
to name a few.
In mathematics, two quantities are in the
golden ratio if their ratio is the same
as the ratio of their sum to the larger
of the two quantities.
a > b > 0,
(a+b)/a=a/b = phi, where the Greek
letter phi represents the golden ratio.
Golden rectangle-

A golden rectangle (in pink) with longer

side a and shorter side b, when placed
adjacent to a square with sides of length
a, will produce a similar golden
rectangle with longer side a + b and
shorter side a.
Golden section-

In geometry, a golden spiral is a

logarithmic spiral, whose growth factor
is φ, the golden ratio.That is, a golden
spiral gets wider (or further from its
origin) by a factor of φ for every
quarter turn it makes.
The Golden ratio, in the form of golden
rectangles, golden sectors and linear
golden ratios were used by Da Vinci. All
of his paintings followed the sacred
golden ration.
Here are the two most famous-
 Mona Lisa

 The Sacrament of the Last Supper

Image Source: Pinterest, Wikipedia

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Kathleen Grace, 30 years an artist, art

consultant, instructor, 10 years
certified framer
Answered Apr 3, 2014
If you look at Leonardo as more of a
scientist that will give you a clue of
how to work like him. He studied the
body in depth, from the inside out, made
many many detailed studies of the eyes,
the hands, faces, organs, figures - he
knew in great detail how the body looked
and worked. And he sketched multiple
times to understand the subject. And
you'll find he drew from cadavers, knew
how the body looked from the inside
out. You can consider him more of a
draftsman or illustrator of human
anatomy.

If I were to use a word to describe him

and his work, it would be meticulous.

Now as for his actual hand in executing

work, well that is something that is
physiological, he had a gentle but
accurate hand. In simple lines he could
show nuances of light, shadow and
form. The hand was his, the line
distinctly unique to him. It is a skill
that one can learn to draw with
considerable practice but if it is not
your natural hand, then the drawings
would not look quite the same.

The best I can suggest is that you draw

his works, over and over again - practice
the drawing - and painting to copy his
exact style if that is what you want to
do. In that way you learn how he
worked. But you do need to look at his
works in detail, as closely as
possible. I have a bit of a heavier hand
but was able to make quite accurate
reproductions of his drawings, it just
took some time to get a feel for how his
hand worked.

Here's a link to drawing from his

sketchbooks, I suggest you start looking
and drawing - The UnMuseum - Leonardo's
Sketch Books

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Ryan Socha, strong opinions, weakly held

Answered Apr 7, 2014
I think da Vinci might be a good example
of how practice makes perfect. Lots of
research is now showing that optimizing
for quantity of deliberate practice
rather than quality does the best job of
achieving both criteria. We know that the
quantity of material produced by da Vinci
was enormous and that the quality was
high, maybe this is part of the reason
why. My advice to you is to start drawing
nonstop, and to start writing nonstop.
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Ken Forst, I've made some art.

Answered Jul 18, 2015
Here's my suggestion.
how to think like leonardo da vinci
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Set Up Your Account
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Upvote 5 more good answers
Ask your first question
How do I draw like Leonardo da Vinci?
Looking at his notebook, I cannot help
but feel immensely inferior. I feel
inferior in a way that sparks a something
within me. I want to be as good as him
one day. How do I achieve this?
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5 Answers
Jennifer Smith
Jennifer Smith, I try.
Answered Mar 24, 2016
He began sketching nature and spent much
time with a relative on a farm. What we'd
now call the study of natural science
e.g. botany. Go to a park and take the
opposite approach from cartoons - draw
the bulk, the mass, instead of the
outline as we're taught in school. Build
up textures and movement lines e.g. for
branches.
Anyone can draw, as long as you have the
manual ability to write your own name. I
recall he admonished lazy people in his
treatise on painting (art in general)
because the key factor in getting 'good'
at, say, drawing, is time, over talent.
Read from the horse's mouth.

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci —

Complete by da Vinci Leonardo
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Natacha Palay
Natacha Palay, A artist I have closely
studied and learned about.
Answered Feb 22, 2016
Draw from real life, every single day,
multiple times a day. Drawing
realistically is about observing, and
training your eyes and hands to act as
one. In the beginning you will notice
that you are drawing what you think you
see. This is extremely important to take
notice of, if you wish to draw more
accurately and realistically.
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Miljan Stojanovic
Miljan Stojanovic, Master of fine arts,
painter and teacher
Answered Mar 22
Use a silver / led needle instead of a
pencil for sketching, and draw on a white
hard surface prepared with thin gipsum
plaster, then polished. Shade with carbon
powder, and using raster. Use sanguin for
thicker lines and/or ink.

Draw a lot of anatomy studies using those

materials. Use raster that follows form.

Draw a lot of studies of pillows, eggs,

apples, and wood objects. Try to
represent objects using direction of
light and shade as well as values of
shade. Shade using raster lines primarly
depending of a smoothnes of a material.
Shadows are darker toward the border of
the shadow area, and lighter in the
middle.

Leonardo draws using light/shadow

direction and nuances of values in
shadows.

Use some canonical composition when

placing objects.

Draw a lot of studies of hair, and

different types of hair. Draw a lot of
studioes of types of other textures from
natures.

Draw on a large formats first, then try

drawing on small handheld formats.
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Christian Georg Kucera
Christian Georg Kucera, Art Historian,
M.A., University of Aberdeen, class of
2000
Answered Feb 26, 2016
Practise, practise, practise, and then
practise some more. BUT: if it were that
easy, everyone would be drawing like his
or her favourite artist. Some people ARE
geniuses, and some are not. Everyone can
learn to draw, but most will never ever
achieve mastery. And of those that do,
only a fractional percentage will ever
achieve the status of "genius" in the eye
of the world.

Be happy that you have the time and the

means to pursue your favourite pastime
and don't hang your head merely because
you cannot draw as well as one of the
all-time greatest all-round artist in
history.
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Woodward Sarrow
Woodward Sarrow, studied Art History at
The Ohio State University
Answered Feb 23, 2016
Copy his work; trace it and then try to
mimic it yourself with materials that
make the same mark. Feel it and
understand what that means to you. Learn
from it. That is learning from doing.

5 Sketching Secrets of Leonardo Da Vinci

In his lifetime, Leonardo da Vinci filled

over 13,000 pages of his journals with
notes and drawings. Here's how you can
improve your sketching and paper
prototyping abilities by adopting some of
his methods.
Article No :768 | December 6, 2011 | by
Brian Sullivan

You can improve your sketching and paper

prototyping abilities by adopting some of
the methods used by Leonardo da Vinci in
his sketchbooks. Leonardo was a prolific
sketcher, filling his journals with over
13,000 pages of notes and drawings. These
five sketching lessons drawn from his
practices will make you a better thinker.
Lesson #1: Sketch Your Ideas Out 4-5
Times

Flower Sketch

Leonardo frequently sketched things

multiple times, showing an object from
different perspectives or different
stages of development. His different
sketches of flowers show some with leaves
and others without leaves. Some of the
flowers are budding, while other flowers
are mature.

Takeaways:

To better understand something, sketch it

out multiple times.
Quantity leads to quality.
Explore from multiple angles and
different stages of development.
Lesson #2: Use Annotations in Your
Sketches

Arms Sketch
Beside most of Leonardo’s sketches you
will find annotations about the subject
of the sketch. The annotations are used
to clarify the object being studied. For
example, the sketch called “The Study of
Arms and Shoulders,” which was part of an
anatomy study to help him with
brushstrokes for The Last Supper, shows
four different views of the shoulder with
annotation between the arms.

Takeaways:

Leave room for annotations in your

sketches.
Your annotations might answer a question
for someone that sees your sketch.
Your annotations are memory joggers for
you.
Lesson #3: Collaborate With Others When
You Sketch

Internal Organs Sketch

Leonardo made his sketches on his own,

but he collaborated with other people to
flesh out the finer details. Leonardo’s
sketches of human anatomy were a
collaboration with Marcantonio della
Torre, an anatomist from the University
of Pavia. Their collaboration is
important because it marries art with
science.

The agreement was for Leonardo to provide

immaculate sketches, while Marcantonio
would verify the drawings for accuracy
and completeness of human anatomy.
Marcantonio agreed to have Leonardo’s
drawings published. Ironically, one year
later, Marcantonio would die of the Black
Death. Luckily, Leonardo’s sketches
remained.

Takeaways:

In general, show your work to other

people.
Collaborate with others when you sketch.
Collaborate with someone that will make
your sketches better (more accurate, more
imaginative).
Lesson #4: Engage Your Imagination
Paraschute Sketch

Leonardo drew from sources beyond just

nature and human anatomy. His sketches
include civil engineering projects
(bridges, roads, maps), military objects
(parachute, airplane, tank, machine gun),
and robots (crank-driven knight armor).
In some cases, these imaginative objects
would not be created for almost 500 years
later. The key is to engage your
imagination.

Leonardo used his imagination because he

was curious. Leonardo once wrote: "Why
does the eye see a thing more clearly in
dreams than the imagination when awake?"
Da Vinci was very curious about flying.
In his sketchbook, there’s a page titled,
“Flying machines. The Flight of Genius!”
On this page are sketches for a
parachute, airplane, and glider. Some
scholars have postulated that Leonardo’s
study of birds helped him with the design
of the glider.

Takeways:
Sketch beyond your comfort zone (quantity
helps you here).
Sketch multiple solutions around a
problem area (e.g., flight).
Let ideas percolate, then revisit your
sketches.
Lesson #5: Look for New Combinations

Ladder Sketch

When he wanted novel ideas, Leonardo

engaged his imagination for a
revolutionary idea (e.g., a tank or a
parachute). At other times, he wanted to
build upon existing ideas (e.g., bridges
and ladder) with incremental changes by
force-fitting different concepts
together.

Da Vinci sketched a new kind of ladder

meant for scaling walls by soldiers.
Existing ladders leaned unfixed against
walls, easily pushed over by defenders of
a castle or fortress. Leonardo made a few
incremental changes by using spikes and
metal poles to become “rungs” for an
enhanced new version of the ladder.
More importantly, Da Vinci used a
rudimentary form of the Cornell method of
note-taking. Beyond the annotated notes
for each individual sketch, Leonardo
included keywords for other ideas and
cross-references to other sketches. Da
Vinci scholars believe this approach
would allow Leonardo to organize his
sketches and review existing ones to seek
new combinations for incremental changes.

As a designer, Leonardo offers several

lessons here. First, when you sketch,
provide enough detail for someone to
understand. It is a sketch, which you can
later revise. You need to get your ideas
down. Second, you should group similar
ideas together. When you group them
together, you will see a natural
convergence towards a common vision.
Plus, you may only need a small mash-up
to incrementally innovate. Third, catalog
your ideas so you can seek out other
combinations later. With search
technology these days, you do not need to
use a Cornell method of note-taking. You
can insert keywords into any saved file;
search for a keyword and see what
sketches appear. The important thing is
to develop the habit of cataloging for
the future so you can make new
combinations. Just as Leonardo engaged
his imagination, he also sought out new
combinations—building on existing
concepts to come up with something
different.

Takeaways:

Seek new combinations with your

individual sketches
Catalog your sketches to reuse them in
the future
Seek combinations from your previous
sketches
Conclusions

You can improve your sketching and idea

generation by following these secrets
from Leonardo Da Vinci. Hidden within his
notebooks are a variety of ideas on
painting, sketching, architecture, and
life (in general). These are my takeaways
from reviewing his work. What do you
think?
What technique did Leonardo da Vinci use
to draw?
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Anirban Ghoshal
Anirban Ghoshal, I passed a good part of
my adolescence looking at Da Vinci's art.
Answered Feb 17, 2016
He used a lot of pen and ink, but very
little or no crosshatching. Rather, his
style of shading was almost always using
parallel lines. Since he was left handed,
he would shade from bottom left to top
right.

Chalk was a big favorite with him and he

frequently used red chalk on brown
prepared paper. He would then heighten
his drawings with white paint. He's also
used black, or blue chalks in some
instances.

A few of his sketches are also made using

Silverpoint
Leonardo da Vinci, born on April 15,
1452, is easily recognized as one of the
greatest painters the world has ever
known. Some of his most famous paintings
include The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper
and the Vitruvian Man. Known as the true
Renaissance Man, da Vinci was also an
inventor as noted by his collections of
sketches of mechanics that would take
centuries to come to fruition. For those
interested in learning from the Italian
artist, it is imperative to study the da
Vinci painting technique. An artist of
the Old Style, very few of his paintings
exist today, totaling a dozen or so,
because of his revolutionary (albeit
often destructive) techniques. He was
also known for being a chronic
procrastinator. However, from the da
Vinci paintings we have to study from, we
are able to understand a little more
about how to paint like Leonardo da
Vinci. Learn more about Leonardo da
Vinci.

da Vinci’s Painting Technique

Leonardo da Vinci Throughout his years
(1452-1519), Leonardo da Vinci employed a
variety of techniques from painting on a
dry stone wall to using wet plaster
depending on the work surface he was
commissioned to paint. Leonardo da Vinci
typically painted with oil paint that he
made by hand from ground pigments; later
in his career, he worked with tempera
made from egg whites. His work surface
typically would be a canvas or board, or
sometimes stone when painting a mural. As
da Vinci began a painting, he would start
by covering the canvas with a pale gray
or brown, using the neutral color for
underpainting. Atop of the underpainting,
da Vinci would layer transparent glazes
within a small range of tones. Typically,
the colors used were natural hues; da
Vinci never used intense or bold colors
or tints in contrasting colors. By using
such a small range of colors, he was able
to give his finished works a more
cohesive appearance.

Palette colors
The Leonardo da Vinci painting technique
used natural hues that were muted in
intensity. Most often, his works used
blues, browns and greens in accordance to
the earth itself. He also incorporated
neutral grays, typically for
underpainting.
Glazes
Leonardo incorporated glazes using the da
Vinci painting technique of sfumato.
Meaning “like smoke,” smufato consists of
applying dark glazes in place of blunt
colors to add a depth that could not be
achieved otherwise. Leonardo da Vinci is
quoted wiexplained how he created
compound colors by painting a transparent
colour over th saying that “when a
transparent color lies over another color
differing from it. This technique created
what he described as a , a compound color
that is composed of, but which differs
from, each of the simple colors.”

Techniques Used to Create His Great Works

of Art
One of his most well-known paintings, the
Mona Lisa, displays some of the
techniques used by da Vinci in its
grandeur. For instance, the use of
sfumato gave the painting an illusion of
somberness and mystery, while his choice
of color palette reflects why her lips
and eyes are so pale.

In The Last Supper, da Vinci used tempera

over an underpainting made from ground
pigments called gesso, which caused the
painting to become almost unrecognizable
100 years later. He also painted directly
on the stone wall surface rather than
painting on wet plaster, as was the norm,
which means it is not a true fresco
painting.

About Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci is easily recognized as
one of the greatest painters the world
has ever known. Some of his most famous
paintings include the Mona Lisa, The Last
Supper and the Vitruvian Man. Known as
the true Renaissance Man, da Vinci was
also an inventor as noted by his
collections of sketches of mechanics that
would take centuries to come to fruition.
He was also known for being a chronic
procrastinator. For those interested in
learning from the Italian artist, it is
imperative to study the da Vinci painting
technique. An artist of the Old Style,
very few of his paintings exist today,
totaling a dozen or so, because of his
revolutionary (albeit often destructive)
techniques. However, from the surviving
da Vinci paintings we are able to
understand a little more about how to
paint in his style.
Written by Leon Grey
Leon Grey is the author and webmaster for
the website Leonardo Da Vinci's Life. For
a peek at his site, visit
www.davincilife.com.

Perspective. To add three-dimensional

depth and space to their work,
Renaissance artists rediscovered and
greatly expanded on the ideas of linear
perspective, horizon line, and vanishing
point.
Linear perspective: Rendering a painting
with linear perspective is like looking
through a window and painting exactly
what you see on the window pane. Instead
of every object in the picture being the
same size, objects that were further away
would be smaller, while those closer to
you would be larger.
Horizon line: Horizon line refers to the
point in the distance where objects
become so infinitely small, that they
have shrunken to the size of a line.
Vanishing point: The vanishing point is
the point at which parallel lines appear
to converge far in the distance, often on
the horizon line. This is the effect you
can see when standing on railroad tracks
and looking at the tracks recede into the
distance.
Shadows and light. Artists were
interested in playing with the way light
hits objects and creates shadows. The
shadows and light could be used to draw
the viewer’s eye to a particular point in
the painting.
Emotion. Renaissance artists wanted the
viewer to feel something while looking at
their work, to have an emotional
experience from it. It was a form of
visual rhetoric, where the viewer felt
inspired in their faith or encouraged to
be a better citizen.
Realism and naturalism. In addition to
perspective, artists sought to make
objects, especially people, look more
realistic. They studied human anatomy,
measuring proportions and seeking the
ideal human form. People looked solid and
displayed real emotions, allowing the
viewer to connect with what the depicted
persons were thinking and feeling.
Examples:

Let’s start out by looking at two

different paintings of the Virgin Mary,
one from the Byzantine period, and one
from the Renaissance period, so that you
can get a feel for the profound
transformation art went through during
the Renaissance:

Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne wood

panel painting

Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne,

1200’s. In this wood panel painting from
the Byzantine period, the bodies of Mary
and Jesus are bodiless and hidden in
drapery. The folds of the drapery are
represented by gold leaf striations; even
where you would see knees, you have an
accumulation of gold instead of light and
shadow. The picture lacks the feeling of
depth and space. Also, Jesus is portrayed
as an infant, but looks like a miniature
adult.

Madonna del Cardellino painting by

Raphael, 1506

Madonna del Cardellino, by Raphael, 1506.

Now we’re well into the Renaissance and
the changes in style are readily
apparent. Mary has become much more
realistically human; she has a real form,
real limbs, a real expression on her
face. Not only does she look natural, but
she is placed is a natural setting. Jesus
and John the Baptist look like real
babies, not miniature adults. Raphael
utilized perspective to give the painting
depth. He also captured the Renaissance’s
love of combining beauty and science-
bringing back things like geometry from
the ancient Greeks: Mary, Christ, and
John the Baptist form a pyramid.

Tribute Money painting by Masaccio, 1425

Tribute Money, by Masaccio, 1425.

Masaccio was a pioneer in the technique
of one point perspective; the painting is
an image of what one person looking at
the scene would see. Notice how Peter,
next to the water, and the mountains are
paler and less clear than the objects in
the foreground. The lines in the painting
meet atop Jesus’ head in a vanishing
point. It appears that the figures are
lit by light from the chapel, as their
shadows all fall away in the same
direction. Such a touch seems basic to us
today, but incorporating a light from a
specific source and using it to lend
figures three-dimensionality was
groundbreaking for the time.

The Last Supper painting by Leonardo da

Vinci, 1498

The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci,

1498. An example of the way in which
Renaissance artists wished to draw the
viewer into the painting by depicting a
vibrant scene filled with real psychology
and emotion. All the apostles have
different reactions to Christ revealing
that one will betray him. Like in the
Tribute Money, Jesus’ head is located at
the vanishing point for all the
perspective lines.

The Creation of Adam painting by

Michelangelo, 1511

The Creation of Adam, by Michelangelo,

1511. In this most famous section of the
Sistine Chapel, the personal nature of
faith, the divine potential of man, and
the idea of man being co-creator with God
is vividly depicted. So is the
Renaissance interest in anatomy; God is
resting on the outline of the human
brain. Michelangelo, like Leonardo,
performed numerous dissections of human
corpses in order to gain an in-depth and
realistic look at the parts and structure
of the human body.

David sculpture by Michelangelo, 1504

David, by Michelangelo, 1504. Renaissance

artists created the first free-standing
nude statutes since the days of
antiquity. Michelangelo believed that
sculpture was the highest form of art as
it echoes the process of divine creation.
His David is the perfect example of the
Renaissance’s celebration of the ideal
human form. The statue conveys rich
realism in form, motion, and feeling. The
upper body and hands are not quite
proportional, perhaps owing to the fact
that the work was meant to be put on a
pedestal and viewed by looking upwards.
Michelangelo was a master at portraying
subjects at moments of psychological
transition, as if they had just thought
of something, and this statue is often
believed to be depicting the moment when
David decides to slay Goliath.
School of Athens painting by Raphael,
1510

School of Athens, by Raphael, 1510. This

painting, which depicts all the great
philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome,
serves as an example of the way in which
Renaissance artists were inspired by and
hearkened back to the days of antiquity.
The perspective lines draw the viewer to
the center of the painting and the
vanishing point where history’s two
greatest philosophers, Plato and
Aristotle, stand. In line with their
philosophies, Plato points to the heavens
and the realm of Forms, while Aristotle
points to the earth and the realm of
things.

MATHEMATICS AND ART

by Nikhat Parveen, UGA

The Golden Rectangle is considered to be

one of the most pleasing and beautiful
shapes to look at, which is why many
artists have used it in their work.

The two artists, who are perhaps the most

famous for their use of the golden ratio,
are Leonardo Da Vinci and Piet Mondrian.

It can be found in art and architecture

of ancient Greece and Rome, in works of
the Renaissance period, through to modern
art of the 20th Century. The Golden
Rectangles present in the following
Figures, are quite obvious. However,
various features of the Mona Lisa have
Golden proportions, too.

The Parthenon was perhaps the best

example of a mathematical approach to
art.

Fig.1 Parthenon, Greece

Further classic subdivisions of the

rectangle align perfectly with major
architectural features of the structure.
Fig.2
Art Master Piece: Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa, is one of the most famous

paintings in the world, and is a very
good example of Da Vinci's use of the
golden ratio in art.

If you draw a rectangle around Mona

Lisa's face, that rectangle will turn out
to be golden. The dimensions of the
painting itself also form a golden
rectangle. As well, the proportions of
Mona Lisa's body exhibit several golden
ratios. For example, a golden rectangle
can be drawn from her neck to just above
the hands.

Fig.3 Mona Lisa

According to one art expert, Seurat

"attacked every canvas by the golden
section". His Bathers has obvious golden
subdivisions.

Fig.4
Bathers

Piet Mondarian

Piet Mondrian is a modern Dutch artist,

who lived in 1872 - 1944. Although at the
beginning of his career, Mondrian painted
many landscapes, he later on moved to an
abstract style in his work. Mondrian is
famous for using horizontal and vertical
black lines as the basis for a lot of his
paintings. Like Da Vinci, Mondrian
believed that mathematics and art were
closely connected. He used the simplest
geometrical shapes and primary colours
(blue, red, yellow) to express reality,
nature and logic from a different point
of view. (Mondrian's point of view lies
in the fact that any shape is possible to
create with basic geometric shapes as
well as any colour can be created with
different combinations of red, blue, and
yellow) The Golden Rectangle is one of
the basic shapes, which keeps appearing
in Mondrian's art:

Mondrian painted the following

compositions in Red, Yellow and blue in
1942 and in 1926. There are many golden
rectangles in this work.

Fig.5 Mondarian (1942)

Fig.6 Mondarian (1926)

The more recent search for a grammar of

art inevitably led to the use of the
golden section in abstract art. La
Parade, painted in the characteristic
multi-dotted style of the French neo-
impressionist Seurat (1859-1891),
contains numerous examples of golden
proportions.

Fig.7 Georges Seurat, La Parade

 Leonardo da Vinci (1451-1519). Leonardo
had for a long time displayed an ardent
interest in the mathematics of art and
nature. He had earlier, like Pythagoras,
made a close study of the human figure
and had shown how all its different parts
were related by the golden section.

Perspective
When the artists wanted to add three-
dimensional depth and space to their
works, the rediscovered and greatly
expanded on the ideas of linear
perspective, horizon line and even the
vanishing point.
Linear Perspective
This the idea that converging lines meet
at a single vanishing point and all
shapes get smaller in all directions with
increasing distance from the eye. Or
painting with linear perspective is like
looking through a window and painting
exactly what you see on the window pane.
Instead of each object in the picture
being the same size, the idea is that if
the object is closer in real life then
the object should be painted larger than
an object far away in real life.
Horizon Line
Horizon line refers to the point in the
distance where objects become so
infinitely small, that they have shrunken
to the size of a line. Essentially
disappearing into nowhere. According to
Mark Willenbrink who wrote, Drawing for
the Absolute Beginner, "the placement of
the horizon can influence the mood of the
scene by creating a variety of sensations
in the viewer." The easiest example of a
horizon line would be the ocean. No
matter where you're standing looking out
at the ocean, it always seems to level
out into a straight line when you can
look far enough out.
Vanishing Point
This is the point at which parallel lines
appear to converge far in the distance,
often on the horizon line itself. This is
the same effect you can see when standing
on railroad tracks and looking at the
tracks receding in the distance. It is
also described as the point at which a
thing disappears or ceases to exist.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Shadows and Light
Artists in the Renaissance age were
interested in playing with the way light
hit objects and created shadows. These
particular shadows and lights were used
to draw the viewer's eyes to a particular
point in the painting.
Emotion
A renaissance artist truly wanted you to
feel something when you were looking at
their art, they wanted the viewer to have
an emotional and/or spiritual connection.
It was a form of visual rhetoric, where
the viewer felt inspired in their faith
or encouraged to be a better citizen.
Realism and Naturalism
Picture
In addition to using perspective in art,
artists wanted to make objects,
especially people, more realistic. They
studied human anatomy and measured
proportions, seeking out the ideal human
form. This gave the viewer a solid
understanding of what the artist was
trying to convey in the painting, by the
art displaying real emotions showing what
the people in the art were truly feeling
and thinking.
TIPS TO UNDERSTANDING RENAISSANCE
PAINTINGS
My aim in writing about art has always
been to make it more accessible to
people. I want people who are traveling
to have a resource where they can learn a
bit more about the art they will see and
maybe have a greater appreciation for it.
I hope this contribution to June’s
ArtSmart Roundtable, all on the theme of
paintings, allows you to appreciate that
somewhat intimidating world of
Renaissance art. Next time you visit a
museum or see the art of the Renaissance
in Italy, you might find these tips to
understanding Renaissance paintings
helpful.

1) Look for the use of line

Linear perspective was created during the

early Renaissance in the first part of
the 15th century. It was one way of
making paintings look more realistic–it
allowed artists to depict realistic,
three-dimensional space. After that,
artists like Botticelli showed off their
command of perspective by using lines
that converge in the background.

understanding renaissance paintings

Annunciation by Botticelli, 1489-1490

Another way artists showed perspective

was by depicting architectural details
that recede into space.

Renaissance paintings perspective

Fra Filippo Lippi’s Annunciation in San
Lorenzo, c. 1440

2) Realism was front and center

The main goal of the Renaissance was to

reawaken an appreciation for man.
Humanism took many forms, one of which
was a celebration of the potential of
humans, including the human body.
Realistic representations of the human
form became increasingly important,
easily seen in Michelangelo’s work:

renaissance paintings humanism

The human body is celebrated in this
famous scene in the Sistine Chapel
For many artists, realism also meant
depicting the familiar: clothing,
decorations, and landscape typical of
15th century Florence, not from 1400+
years earlier when these religious scenes
actually took place. This means that you
can get a feeling for what Renaissance
Florence looked like through the little
details in the paintings. The fresco
below provides a glimpse of the
decoration, furniture, and clothing that
were valued by the rich in Florence in
the 15th century even though the painting
depicts a completely different time
period, the birth of the Virgin Mary.

renaissance paintings
The Birth of Mary in the Tornabuoni
fresco cycle in Santa Maria Novella,
Florence, by Ghirlandaio

Another way of introducing realism and

the familiar into the painting was to
include familiar landscapes. This
Biblical scene takes place with a
landscape based on the Dolomite mountains
of Northern Italy.

renaissance painting
Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin with Child
and St. Anne

3) Who’s in the painting?

Pay attention to the faces you see in the

painting. Do they all look the same, or
did the artist depict people
realistically, with unique features? Many
paintings include self-portraits of the
artist (usually the one looking out at
the viewer instead of at the scene). This
one is a self-portrait of the painter
Ghirlandaio included among the many
people in the painting.

renaissance painting self portraits

Adoration of the Magi, 1488

It was also common to include the patrons

in the painting. While the patrons may
not be the most interesting people for
you to think about, they were essential
because they gave the artists work–
commissions usually of religious scenes
in an effort to secure a place in heaven.
This early Renaissance fresco from the
church of Santa Maria Novella shows the
patrons kneeling at the bottom, one on
either side of the scene.

Masaccio Trinity
Masaccio’s Trinity, 1425

A more interesting who’s who is the

artist’s favorite model. In the case of
Filippo Lippi, the young and beautiful
Lucrezia Buti became his favorite model.
Despite the fact that he was a monk and
she was a nun, they had a 30-year love
affair; in fact, their son Filippino
Lippi became an artist of the High
Renaissance.

understanding renaissance paintings

4) Fine details

As the Renaissance progressed, artists

became more adept at painting small
details, such as the jewelry and
headdresses that were fashionable at that
time (see the above example as well).
This gives you an opportunity to see what
was considered beautiful, including
hairstyles, accessories, and clothing,
during the Renaissance.

Botticelli's Simonetta Vespucci as a

nymph, early to mid 1480s
Botticelli’s Simonetta Vespucci as a
nymph, early to mid 1480s

Such attention to fine detail and an

almost ethereal quality led to the
delicate beauty in Da Vinci and Raphael’s
paintings of the High Renaissance.

Detail from Raphael's Madonna of the

Goldfinch, 1505-1506
Detail from Raphael’s Madonna of the
Goldfinch, 1505-1506

5) Allusions to the Roman and Greek past

Humanism meant a strong connection to the

philosophy and arts of ancient Greece and
Rome. The Italian Renaissance aimed to
resurrect these, as we can see not only
in the style of the the architecture but
also in the stories portrayed in
painting. While religious themes were the
most common subjects of the Renaissance,
themes from ancient Greek and Rome,
including mythology, became more popular
with the support of Lorenzo de’ Medici in
the late 15th century.

renaissance painting
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, 1486

renaissance painting raphael

School of Athens by Raphael, 1509-1510

individualism
showed individual people instead of
groups

secularism
fewer church paintings

classicism
classic Roman and Greek influence

Nature
depicted the outdoors
anatomy
focused on defined and precise human
anatomy

linear perspective
the appearance of things relative to one
another as determined by their distance
from the viewer

realism
artistic representation that aims for
visual accuracy

depth
used light and shading to create this

blue background
created depth

symmetry
balanced proportions

Golden ratio
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If a person has one number a and another
smaller number b, he can make the ratio
of the two numbers by dividing them.
Their ratio is a/b. The person can make
another ratio by adding the two numbers
together a+b and dividing this by the
larger number a. The new ratio is
(a+b)/a. If these two ratios are equal to
the same number, then that number is
called the golden ratio. The Greek letter
{\displaystyle \varphi } {\displaystyle
\varphi } (phi) is usually used as the
name for the golden ratio.

For example, if b = 1 and a/b =

{\displaystyle \varphi } {\displaystyle
\varphi }, then a = {\displaystyle
\varphi } {\displaystyle \varphi }. The
second ratio (a+b)/a is then
{\displaystyle (\varphi +1)/\varphi }
{\displaystyle (\varphi +1)/\varphi }.
Because these two ratios are equal, this
is true:

{\displaystyle \varphi ={\frac {\varphi

+1}{\varphi }}} {\displaystyle \varphi
={\frac {\varphi +1}{\varphi }}}
One way to write this number is

{\displaystyle \varphi ={\frac {1+{\sqrt

{5}}}{2}}} {\displaystyle \varphi ={\frac
{1+{\sqrt {5}}}{2}}}

{\displaystyle {\sqrt {5}}}

{\displaystyle {\sqrt {5}}} is like any
number which, when multiplied by itself,
makes 5(or which number is multiplied):
{\displaystyle {\sqrt {5}}\times {\sqrt
{5}}=5} {\displaystyle {\sqrt {5}}\times
{\sqrt {5}}=5}.

The golden ratio is an irrational number.

If a person tries to write it, it will
never stop and never be the same again
and again, but it will start this way:
1.6180339887... An important thing about
this number is that a person can subtract
1 from it or divide 1 by it. Either way,
the number will still keep going and
never stop.

{\displaystyle
{\begin{array}{ccccc}\varphi -
1&=&1.6180339887...-
1&=&0.6180339887...\\1/\varphi &=&{\frac
{1}{1.6180339887...}}&=&0.6180339887...\e
nd{array}}} {\displaystyle
{\begin{array}{ccccc}\varphi -
1&=&1.6180339887...-
1&=&0.6180339887...\\1/\varphi &=&{\frac
{1}{1.6180339887...}}&=&0.6180339887...\e
nd{array}}}
Contents [hide]
1 Golden rectangle
2 Fibonacci numbers
3 Golden ratio in nature
4 Other websites
Golden rectangle[change | change source]

The large rectangle BA is a golden

rectangle; that is, the proportion b:a is
1: {\displaystyle \varphi }
{\displaystyle \varphi }. For any such
rectangle, and only for rectangles of
that specific proportion, if we remove
square B, what is left, A, is another
golden rectangle; that is, with the same
proportions as the original rectangle.
If the length of a rectangle divided by
its width is equal to the golden ratio,
then the rectangle is a "golden
rectangle". If a square is cut off from
one end of a golden rectangle, then the
other end is a new golden rectangle. In
the picture, the big rectangle (blue and
pink together) is a golden rectangle
because {\displaystyle a/b=\varphi }
{\displaystyle a/b=\varphi }. The blue
part (B) is a square. The pink part by
itself (A) is another golden rectangle
because {\displaystyle b/(a-b)=\varphi }
{\displaystyle b/(a-b)=\varphi }. The big
rectangle and the pink rectangle have the
same form, but the pink rectangle is
smaller and is turned.

Fibonacci numbers[change | change source]

The Fibonacci numbers are a list of
numbers. A person can find the next
number in the list by adding the last two
numbers together. If a person divides a
number in the list by the number that
came before it, this ratio comes closer
and closer to the golden ratio.

Fibonacci number divided by the one before

ratio
1
1 1/1 = 1.0000
2 2/1 = 2.0000
3 3/2 = 1.5000
5 5/3 = 1.6667
8 8/5 = 1.6000
13 13/8 = 1.6250
21 21/13 = 1.6154...
34 34/21 = 1.6190...
55 55/34 = 1.6177...
89 89/55 = 1.6182...
... ... ...
{\displaystyle \varphi } {\displaystyle
\varphi } = 1.6180...
Golden ratio in nature[change | change
source]

Using the golden angle will optimally use

the light of the sun. This is a view from
the top.

A leaf of common ivy, showing the golden

ratio
In nature, the golden ratio is often used
for the arrangement of leaves or flowers.
These use the golden angle of
approximately 137.5 degrees. Leaves or
flowers arranged in that angle best use
sunlight.
Other websites[change | change source]
Easy to understand golden ratio article
Category: Irrational numbers