[TCA-T2] AVI3M, Visu ...

Students will learn the basics of one-point perspective to create depth and realism in a drawing. By understanding how to place a horizon line, vanishing point, and perspective lines, they will develop skills to accurately portray space and distance in their artwork.

In art, different eye levels mean seeing a scene or subject from various heights or angles. Changing the eye level can change how the artwork feels and looks.

1. Eye-Level View (Normal Perspective): This is like looking straight ahead at the subject as if you’re standing right in front of it (street view). It feels natural and provides a straightforward view.

2. High Eye Level (Bird’s Eye View): This is like looking down from above as if you’re a bird flying over the scene. It makes everything below look smaller and gives a full view of the layout.

3. Low Eye Level (Worm’s Eye View): This is the opposite, where you’re looking up at the subject as if you’re lying on the ground. This makes things look bigger and more powerful.

Linear perspective

Linear perspective uses lines to create the illusion of depth and space. Lines, which are parallel in reality, meet at a vanishing point when drawn in perspective. To the human eye, although they are parallel, they seem to meet at a great distance.

You need 2 things to draw in perspective: a vanishing point and a horizon line.

Vanishing Point (VP):

The place where something moves so far away from your view that it just vanishes. If it is a road with parallel lines, it is finally where they disappear, creating the illusion of intersecting.

Horizon Line (H.L):

This represents the viewer’s eye level or where the sky meets the water or land. When inside, it could be where the wall meets the floor.

In general:

• When the horizon line is at the center of a painting, it translates as eye level when looking forward.
• A low horizon line looks as if the viewer is looking above the horizon line, looking up.
• High horizon line translates as looking at an angle below the horizon line, looking down.

In other words, you can see the bottom of objects that are above the horizon line, and vice versa, the top part of objects that are below the horizon line.

Tip:

When an obstacle blocks the horizon (like a wall, buildings, mountains, trees, etc.), hold your drawing tool (pencil, pen, paintbrush, etc.) at eye level, to find the horizon line.

Perspective Drawing Characteristics

There are two important rules to pay attention to when drawing in perspective.

1. Objects Look Smaller with Distance

The farther an object is from the observer, the smaller it looks!

In other words:

Objects in front of the observer look smaller with distance, but they keep the ratio between height and width, meaning there is no distortion.

2. Foreshortening

All objects are subject to foreshortening!

When objects are along your line of sight, they look shorter.

In other words:

Objects that are in the direction of your vision (meaning continuous), look shorter in that direction as they are farther away, therefore they are distorted. The reason is the change in the angle of sight.

The closer an object is to the horizon (or to a vanishing point), the more it is foreshortened.

One point perspective: 

definition:  ...a mathematical system for representing three-dimensional objects and space on a two-dimensional surface by means of intersecting lines that are drawn vertically and horizontally and that radiate from one point on a horizon line…

One-point perspective is used for drawing objects that are in front of the observer, and in reality their width lines are parallel to the horizon (and to each other), and their height lines are perpendicular to the horizon (and parallel to each other).

Lines that in reality are parallel (to each other) and represent DEPTH are NOT parallel when drawing in perspective; they meet at the same vanishing point on the horizon.