Perspective
This is probably the first aspect of art (illustration especially) that you will learn. Yet, it is one of the singlemost difficult aspects to master. I will attempt to give you a basic understanding of how perspective affects your art, and how you see things in general. As always, I urge you to do some self-study on the subject, and of course, create practice sessions that focus on using and learning perspective.
The first, and most important part of learning perspective is the "horizon line", also sometimes referred to as "eye level". This is an imaginary line that runs horizontally (left to right) at the level where your eye is looking straight forward. In art, we can control this horizon line, placing objects below it, as if the viewer is looking downward onto the object, or above it, for a worms eye view. Or you can place it smack dab in the middle of the page. The key thing to remember about the horizon line is, it's placement on the page, and the placement of other objects on the page relate to how an object will distort, in perspective. The first couple of figures I have prepared don't show the horizon line, but are merely meant to demonstrate the basic property that, "the further things get from you, the smaller they appear. The closer they come to you, the larger they appear." The use of the word "appear" is important, because the objects are not actually changing in size and shape as they move to and from you. They only appear to be doing so.
Figure 1 shows a grid in which the top part is further away from you than the bottom part. The blue arrows indicate the direction of the vanishing point. Vanishing points are points in the distance (horizontal vanishing points ALWAYS exist along the horizon line)that objects move, or distort towards. If you were to print out Figure 1 and with a ruler and pencil, draw a straight line along both edges, extending far beyond the end of the grid, eventually (probably a few inches above the grid) the two lines would cross. That crossing point is where the vanishing point lies.
Figure 2 shows that same grid, but now it's distorting towards the right vanishing point, which resides on the invisible horizon line. Again, if you printed it out, and drew lines along the top and bottom edges of the grid, extending past the grid, they would eventually meet and you would find the right vanishing point.
Perspective applies to everything in a drawing. Even figures. Figure 3 shows a quick sketch I did, with the blue arrows showing the direction of the perspective as the figure gets closer to the viewer.
So far, all the examples I've shown have been in "One Point Perspective". This means that the objects only distort towards a single vanishing point. But Figure 4 utilizes "Two Point Perspective". This means that the object distorts towards two vanishing points (both of which reside on the horizon line, and in two point perspective, they always will). Two point perspective is especially important to learn and master when learning architectural/building drawing. Also, you can figure out where the horizon line is on an image showing two point perspective, by extending the lines past the object, then you will arrive at a left and right vanishing point. Simply draw a straight, horizontal line intersecting those two points, and that is where your horizon line resides.
The cube in Figure 5 resides ABOVE the horizon line. This means the viewer is seeing the object from below it. In order to properly portray the object, the artist must utilize "Three Point Perspective". We know that in two point perspective, there must be a left and right vanishing point, but in three point perspective, we add a third vanishing point either above or below the object (on the opposite side of where the horizon line resides). When drawing buildings, even though you usually won't see the underside of the building, you will still utilize three point perspective.
Look around your neighborhood, even around your house. Perspective is everywhere. Figure 6 is just an image I pulled off the net, you can see where the horizon line is (everything above it you can see the bottom edge, everything below you see the top edge). This image is actually in 3 point perspective, but with the horizon line being fairly low in the image, it's a bit more subtle.
As always, there are exceptions in execution. The basic principles of perspective always apply, but depending on your camera view (the angle of the image), it may be difficult to find your horizon line (ie if you're drawing a building from say, Superman's point of view, he's flying high above it looking down on it, but slightly in front of it. The horizon line is more difficult to find, but if you know where to start (the top of the building) you can find it a little easier).
I encourage you to show me your work, show me what you've done, and let me know if these tutorials are helpful, and what I can do to improve their helpfulness. Thank you.
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1. Materials
2. Perspective
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