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.