Perspective 101

Vanishing Intersection Points

Vanishing points actually mark an intersection point where two plane surfaces meet at the vanishing line.  These two planes are adjacent to each other as they travel back towards their relative vanishing line.  Vanishing points do not mark a point on the vanishing line, they mark the intersection point of two planes meeting the vanishing line.

Vanishing points mark the intersection point of 2 parallel planes vanishing.

Vanishing Planes

Pairs of parallel planes will vanish into vanishing lines in the distance.

Parallel planes vanish into vanishing lines.

Here the first of 3 vanishing principles of perspective is shown by using all six of a cube surface with color-coding to help identify the parts and pieces.  Remembering that our cube is 6 equal surfaces or planes notice below, that we will select the 2 red vertical planes of this cube to illustrate plane vanishing.

If the red planes were to reach all the way back into infinity and eventually disappear, this red line is where they would disappear into.  Their edges would decrease in size as they followed angles disappearing into the red vanishing line vertical (VLV) on the left side of the drawing. 

The red vertical planes disappear into the red VLV.

The two vertical orange vertical planes on the other side of the cube disappear into the orange VLV on the right side.

The two horizontal blue planes that make up the top and bottom of the cube disappear into the blue EL-VL.

Vanishing Lines

The planes of the cube have parallel lines bordering their sides.  Pairs of lines are parallel and they will converge onto a single point at the vanishing line where the plane vanishes.

Parallel lines go to a single point on their respective vanishing lines.

Come on… check it out

Trace some perspective.  Go to a window and look out at the view, and try to pick one with same size objects going off into the distance.  Views including objects like buildings and streets, a row of trees, railroad tracks, telephone poles, boats moored on a pier, fence posts, sidewalk sections or a road with parked cars are all great for this.  You can transform that pane of glass into a perfect perspective drawing by using an erasable marker to trace the outlines of your view.  Close one eye as you do this exercise and, be sure to stand still as you create this outline.  We create the station point (StPt) of any picture by deciding where our eyes will be located as we draw it.  We view all objects from where our eyes are located at that specific moment, so don’t move until you are finished with your drawing.  If you change your station point, the picture changes too.  Can you see that items seem smaller as they get further away in your outline?

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After the window exercise, you can use tracing paper and a pencil to outline trace the first pictures in your workbook.  If you have a light table handy, you can take any view you have a picture of, and place it on the light table to trace.  The camera reproduces the human phenomenon of perspective beautifully.  Put your tracing paper on top of it to trace outlines you see.  We need to notice as we trace, how things do tend to look smaller in the distance, they seem to come together and disappear at a level line that goes horizontally across our picture.  Were you able to locate this line?  Can you locate this line on the examples in your workbook?  Some people call this a horizon line, but it is important that we do not use this term because it will actually cause confusion.  The correct term to use for this horizontal line where everything seems to vanish is, the EL-VL (eye level-vanishing line).

In the beginning…

Don’t worry about memorizing all of this right now, repetition will teach you the tools and terms.  In our workbook you will find exercises and step outlines to help.  What is important is, that you understand that all of these choices that we make can drastically change the way a picture turns out.  Please refer to the front of your workbook.  There is a rip-out page with definitions, please rip it out and use it as a bookmark as you continue.  It is designed to ease some of the frustration involved with memorizing endless amounts of abbreviated terms that are involved with our subject.

Learning perspective is actually just a wake up call to pay attention to the creative person you already are.  You probably are already subconsciously performing many of the steps that you will now learn to pay better attention to from this book.  You will find that you will train yourself to pay attention to things never noticed before.

As you did the first exercise, sitting in front of the window tracing the outline of the view, you actually did a lot of steps unconsciously to make your first perspective drawing.  When you walked around looking out at the views, you chose your picture plane (PctPlane) as you picked a specific sheet of glass to do the drawing on.  As you sat down, your EL-VL (eye level-vanishing line) height was selected because your eyes were placedat a specific level.  You could have changed your mind and decided to stand on a chair so you could look at it from up above?  How about looking straight at it’s side?  No, how about lying on the floor and looking up at the sky instead?  Any one of these changes would have changed your EL-VL (eye level-vanishing line) on the PctPlane (picture plane) radically.  Determining our EL-VL (eye level-vanishing line) is extremely important.

You chose a station point (StPt) by placing your chair or feet at a specific location in front of the window.  If your window encompassed too large of a view, you may have narrowed your selection down , by deciding to ignore (not to trace) a portion of it.  When you sat down and started to trace the view you chose your center point of vision (CPofV), which is where you focused your gaze.  At that very moment, you magically drew a line from where you stood StPt (station point) to where you focused your gaze CPofV (center point of vision) called the line of sight (LofS).  Last but-not-least, the type of perspective utilized was probably determined by simply observing the view, and noticing how many vanishing points (VP) were visible to you.  Did you know you accomplished all of this while you did that first exercise?  Now you do.

Perspective drawing, what is it?

As we look off into the distance our minds and eyes systematically bend and distort objects making them appear smaller to us.  Details appear less pronounced and colors are muted the further away they are from us.  In reality, we know that “a line of fence posts”, are the same size with colors and details similar.  But honestly!  They do not appear “the same” to us as they go away from us.  Objects look bigger, clearer and brighter up-close when compared to items in the distance.  Details speak to us up close and only whisper in the distance.  If we fail to follow perspective rules as we translate what we see in our minds onto our flat 2 dimensional drawings, the picture will not seem correct to the next human looking at it.  It will “not look right”.  This is a very important point to understand as an artist or graphic person.  Once you experience the difference between the confused reception given to a poorly presented idea, versus, the correctly presented idea getting the point across precisely and clearly (without any explanations).  You’ll never settle for an ignorance stand again.  People will not have to “figure out” what you show them.  Armed with this knowledge you can choose to ignore specific rules to accomplish a desired effect in a presentation.  Knowing what you are ignoring beats being confronted with a label of “ignorance” about, a subject that a creative person should be understanding.  All of this reading, with the large list of new terms to learn and the many steps to understand may overwhelm, but please be patient with yourself.  Learning this is not an impossible goal.  Practice is the key to accomplishing this!  You can get this human perception thing correct in all your drawings if you come to understand and incorporate into your work basic theories.  If you practice these perspective steps, they will become second nature to you before you even notice it.  When you can look into the distance and put what you see onto a flat surface, the improvement you will see in your work will amaze you.

The learning process has to allow learning concept, then stopping and being able to apply and practice.  It is the only way that learning gets easier, is with practice.  Don’t be discouraged by a previous lack of success with learning this subject, I fell asleep myself many times reading books about perspective drawing.  I experienced minimal success in my attempts to learn perspective.  That was because I was trying to absorb many, many, many facts, before using or practicing any of them.  My brain would absorb, absorb, and absorb the millions of meaningless abbreviations that weren’t even the same from one book to the next.  Information that meant nothing to me, piled-up on top of other information that meant nothing to me.  It just simply became… a useless information overload!  We need to be able to use information and apply it to a problem, before it makes any sense and sticks in our heads.  Practicing perspective theories in systematic “step-by-step and hands-on” exercises will work.  This is why this book has a workbook to accompany it.  Practice is the only way to understand or remember the information.  As with other things in life, you have to use it or lose it!  So, be prepared to use your new knowledge if you want to keep it.

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This book stems from my personal need to improve my own drawing skills. After a totally frustrating unsuccessful search for a thorough reference book on the subject, I started researching and collecting all the information I could find out about the subject. This obsession has occupied more than a decade of my life and now it has become quite an enjoyment… even some kind of an adventure for me. Those are the thoughts behind the creation of this thorough reference book about perspective drawing procedures. Perspective 101.