Drawing in Perspective

Have you noticed how a long, straight road seems to shrink to a tiny point far away in the distance? Or how a row of identical lamp-posts looks smaller and smaller the further along the street you look? Artists use this visual trick — called perspective — to make a flat picture on paper look deep and three-dimensional. Understanding perspective was one of the great breakthroughs of the Renaissance, and it transformed how artists painted buildings, streets, and landscapes.

The simplest form is called one-point perspective. You choose a single vanishing point on the horizon line, and all the parallel lines that travel away from you — the edges of a road, the tops and bottoms of windows, the rails of a railway track — all converge (come together) at that single point. Objects close to you are drawn large; objects near the vanishing point are drawn small. This creates a convincing illusion of depth.

Once you are comfortable with one-point perspective, you can try two-point perspective. Instead of one vanishing point, you place two — one on the left of the horizon and one on the right. This is used when you are looking at the corner of a building or object, so the left-facing sides vanish to the left point and the right-facing sides vanish to the right point. Two-point perspective is very useful for drawing buildings, rooms, and cityscapes.

Perspective is not only about straight lines and boxes. Circles and curves follow it too. A circle viewed at an angle becomes an ellipse — a flattened oval. This is important when drawing wheels, cups, plates, or tunnels. The closer the circle is to your eye level (the horizon line), the flatter and more ellipse-like it appears. At eye level, a circle seen side-on becomes simply a straight horizontal line.

There is even a third type called three-point perspective, used to show very tall buildings or dramatic aerial views. In addition to the two points on the horizon, a third vanishing point is placed either high above (for a building seen from below) or deep below (for a bird's-eye view). Comic book artists and architects use three-point perspective to create impressive, dramatic scenes.

With perspective as a tool, you can now draw a street receding into the distance, a room that looks like you could walk into it, or a skyscraper that seems to loom above the viewer. Every piece of concept art, every architectural drawing, every comic panel, and every animated film relies on perspective. You have just learned one of the most important and lasting skills in all of visual art.