Essential Guide to Drawing: Perspective & Composition

CONTENTS

Introduction

Materials

Cone of Vision

Simple Perspective

One-point Perspective

Two-point Perspective

Three-point Perspective

Perspective Diagrams

Buildings in Perspective

Constructing a View Along a Street

An Urban Scene

Irregular Perspective

Aerial Perspective

Compositions by Master Artists

Objects in Perspective

Foreshortening the Human Figure

Practice: A Scene in Perspective

Introduction

Using perspective is the technique of making a two-dimensional drawing – with length and breadth – appear to acquire a third dimension – that of depth. Perspective was the great discovery of the Italian Renaissance artists, based upon mathematical principles. The renowned architect and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi was the man generally considered to be the prime tester and discoverer of the laws of perspective. He painted a picture of the Baptistry in Florence according to his own system of horizon lines and vanishing points.

Compare the two pictures shown above, one drawn without much attention to perspective, and the other based on the system of single point perspective.

Note how the trees and gateways are all the same size in the first picture, whether they are close to the viewer or far away. Also, the road stays the same width even as far as the horizon; nor is there much difference between the texture of the nearest trees and hedges and those in the distance. The result is the effect of a rather flat landscape.

The second version shows what happens when you devise a method of interpreting the same landscape seen in terms of space. The nearest objects are both larger and more textured than those further away, and already this gives a sense of depth to the picture. The road appears to narrow as it recedes into the distance, eventually disappearing to a single point far off on the horizon. Although this is a fairly simple drawing the effect is immediate.

Perspective