Drawing a Glass Perfume Bottle

A glass perfume bottle

Glass is an everyday material that reflects light in a complicated way, and it can be very confusing to look at it and try to imitate it on paper with just a graphite pencil. As an amateur drawer, it is still hard for me to get the glass effect on paper with accuracy, however, I still wanted to share my experience in drawing a glass object.

I tried to draw the perfume bottle by looking at it while it was in front of me

First of all, one of the things that I have been learning in an art workshop is that, in order to study material or just an object, you need to understand its form and structure. One of the best ways to do it is to actually look at the 3D object that you are trying to draw. I attempted to draw the perfume bottle that I showed you in the 1st picture. The lid of the bottle had a strange form, and I did not have enough confidence that I could draw it in the first go. I started drawing the structure of the lid and the bottle on the bottom of the page to understand the form. This served as a guideline for me on understanding the object. Then I put a perspective that I liked and tried to draw the form accordingly. After drawing the form, I had to give the glass and liquid effects.

Because glass has infinitely detailed reflections and refractions, I knew I was not going to be able to imitate all of it, and that it would be pointless for me to try so. When doing this, by a little bit of observation, I realized that the darker or lighter values were actually following the form, but that it gained a more complicated look as the glass thickened (as it did at the bottom of the bottle), or as I was looking at the edges. What gave it the complicated look was the fact that those values were very striped, and that they were mostly bending suddenly to create different shapes that imitated the form in another way. To give an example, if we were to draw an elliptic glass form as I did with the perfume bottle, the glassy values can be obtained by the combination of ellipses or curves that follow the form wholly or partly. By partly, I mean the ellipses or curves we draw to imitate the glass look should not always be the exact curve of the form. Some ellipses or curves should be disproportionate to the actual form line or bend suddenly to create zig zag-like curves. I believe the combination of these and the repetition of it with lighter and darker values can make the object “glassy”, at least, this is my way of trying to imitate glass.

Here is a quick glass perfume bottle that I designed trying to use this method:

A perfume bottle that I designed in my head

While my ability to apply my plan is not where I want it to be, I still think that the object gained somewhat of a glassy look. As I will keep practicing glass, I can understand the object more, and my way of practice can get better, or change entirely. As with all skills, practicing regularly with different forms and materials is crucial to learn drawing. Keep practicing regularly, we can all do it!