When drawing an object that is at an angle, how do you determine the angle of the lines that makeup the object

For example, I'm trying to draw the left wing of a tie fighter http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/716/anglevv5.png but it keeps coming out very bad because the angles of the lines that I draw are not the same as those that make up the wing. I suppose i could print it out and measure the angles, but what if it was a 3d object instead of a 2d picture, I couldn't measure the angles then. Is there any trick to matching the angle of these lines?When drawing an object that is at an angle, how do you determine the angle of the lines that makeup the object
Perspective is like problem solving. The easiest thing to do would be to break the wing up into rectangles. For a hexagon it would have 3 rectangles. Once you find each corner for the rectangles you just connect the lines of the hexagon, and it's much easier to just run lines from top to bottom corners.





It would also, in this instance be easier to find the corners of the far wing, because it's easier to see and then run the lines from your initial vanishing point from those corners to find the near one.





It's also helpful to note that the tilted lines of the hexagon have a vanishing point directly above the vanishing point of the paralell lines.When drawing an object that is at an angle, how do you determine the angle of the lines that makeup the object
There is really no substitute for observation.





For example, you CAN make some pretty good guesses by using the clues already in the image. Since the left and right panels of the craft are, virtually, identical, you know that the top and bottom edges are parallel, so, they will all lead toward the same vanishing point.





However, years of observation have shown me that if I were closer to the vehicle, the angles of these sets of lines would be wider, and, if I were farther away, the lines would be narrower. And, it would not be the SIZE of the image on paper that would indicate the nearness. It would, strictly, be the angles to the vanishing point. (If the craft were seen from a long distance, through a telescope, for instance, the angles would be the same as if viewed from the same distance unaided by any magnifying device) Look at the comparitive vanishing point angles of the more distant fighters.





The thing is, there should be no difference in the way you measure the angles whether it is a 2D image, like the one shown, or a 3D model. A trained artist's eye can ';see'; the angless as they exist and recreate them as well as he can recreate the shape of an object. For example, if you can draw the support beams of the panels and the angles at which they lie, you can just as easily recteate the perspective angles.





This would be a good skill to practice and master: That of estimating and recreating observed angles.