The Ellipse Bank

Start by eyeballing one ellipse for the tallest tower in your painting. Because an ellipse near the horizon is very flat, it’s best to draw the first ellipse toward the top of the painting. This way, you can work with a relatively wide ellipse.

Using the Ellipse tool will allow you to try several different ellipse sizes. Let’s start with a circle to learn about ellipse percentages. Using the Ellipse tool, hold down the Shift key to constrain your drawing to a circle. If you watch the Info panel while drawing, you’ll see that the circle has identical Width and Height dimensions. Draw a circle the size of the horizontal dimension of the tallest castle tower.

With the ellipse still selected, press Command/Ctrl+T to activate the ...

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