Art & Art Tutorials
Perspective Drawing Art Tutorial
Intro
Anyone can learn basic perspective drawing and with the few simple rules described in this art tutorial you'll be able to add the power of perspective to your own art. If you've ever read a Spiderman comic (or any other comic with an urban setting) you should be quite familiar with perspective drawings of tall skyscrapers reaching for the clouds above, or Spidey standing on a rooftop looking down at the disappearing streets below. That's the kind of basic perspective stuff we'll be covering so lets get going.
1-Point Perspective Drawing
Lets start with the 1-point perspective illustration below. Imagine you're looking down a street with buildings on each side. Notice how a single perspective drawing can add a great sense of depth. Also notice the black line at the bottom. This line is called the horizon and the dot in the center is the vanishing point where all the depth lines eventually meet. The eye level of this illustration is close to the ground but could easily be placed up higher if we wanted. That's 1-point perspective. Lets move on where we'll be adding one more dimension.
2-Point Perspective Drawing
Again we're placed at ground level (our eye level). This time we're looking at a single building rise above us. As you can see we now have 2 vanishing points. All the vertical lines of the skyscraper eventually meet at the same point located above the building. That's vanishing point 1. The lines giving the drawing a sense of depth all meet at vanish point 2. That's 2-point perspective. Lets move on to the final part where we'll add a third dimension to our building.
3-Point Perspective Drawing
Here we're looking at our building from above. The vertical lines all meet at the same single point below. The lines of the rooftop continue in two different directions where the lines will eventually converge far beyond the boundries of our illustration. That's 3-point perspective.
The last few words
There you go! The basics of perspective drawing. Naturally things will become more complicated and demanding as you add more buildings and details, even more so if you add buildings and objects oriented differently than the others in the same drawing. But I suggest you start out with these basic setups then move on to more complex scenery, adding details and so on, and when you're ready to step up your game the web has plenty of free tutorials on the subject. Good luck!
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Anyone can learn basic perspective drawing and with the few simple rules described in this art tutorial you'll be able to add the power of perspective to your own art. If you've ever read a Spiderman comic (or any other comic with an urban setting) you should be quite familiar with perspective drawings of tall skyscrapers reaching for the clouds above, or Spidey standing on a rooftop looking down at the disappearing streets below. That's the kind of basic perspective stuff we'll be covering so lets get going.
1-Point Perspective Drawing
Lets start with the 1-point perspective illustration below. Imagine you're looking down a street with buildings on each side. Notice how a single perspective drawing can add a great sense of depth. Also notice the black line at the bottom. This line is called the horizon and the dot in the center is the vanishing point where all the depth lines eventually meet. The eye level of this illustration is close to the ground but could easily be placed up higher if we wanted. That's 1-point perspective. Lets move on where we'll be adding one more dimension.
2-Point Perspective Drawing
Again we're placed at ground level (our eye level). This time we're looking at a single building rise above us. As you can see we now have 2 vanishing points. All the vertical lines of the skyscraper eventually meet at the same point located above the building. That's vanishing point 1. The lines giving the drawing a sense of depth all meet at vanish point 2. That's 2-point perspective. Lets move on to the final part where we'll add a third dimension to our building.
3-Point Perspective Drawing
Here we're looking at our building from above. The vertical lines all meet at the same single point below. The lines of the rooftop continue in two different directions where the lines will eventually converge far beyond the boundries of our illustration. That's 3-point perspective.
The last few words
There you go! The basics of perspective drawing. Naturally things will become more complicated and demanding as you add more buildings and details, even more so if you add buildings and objects oriented differently than the others in the same drawing. But I suggest you start out with these basic setups then move on to more complex scenery, adding details and so on, and when you're ready to step up your game the web has plenty of free tutorials on the subject. Good luck!
Wait, there's more!
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