DRAWING IN PERSPECTIVE WITHOUT ANY OF THE RULES OR TECHNIQUES : A Lesson and a Guide

A METHOD OF DRAWING IN PERSPECTIVE WITHOUT A KNOWLEDGE OF THE RULES.

Many persons would like to sketch from nature if they could be free from the trouble of acquiring the principles of perspective drawing. To such, and to others, we present the following description of a method in which little study is required, and yet the proportions and distances of objects will be exactly preserved. Get a large piece of fine, clear glass, fitted in a wooden frame. This frame is to slide between two cheeks or pieces of wood one and a half inches thick, which are raised at the two extremes of a board the breadth of the frame : the cheeks are grooved to receive the frame. In the middle of this board square holes must be made to receive the movable eye-hole piece, so as to be raised or lowered at pleasure. At the top of this is a circular piece of tin, three or four
inches in diameter, with a hole in the center about the size of a pea. The following drawing will give a pretty accurate idea of it, and any cabinet maker can work from it.

Place this instrument before the object you would draw, look through the little hole, and if you see all the proposed objects on the glass, the instrument is rightly fixed ; otherwise, fix the sight nearer the glass in one of the other square holes, adapt the eye-piece the height you wish, and fasten it with the pin. The eyepiece being adjusted, keep one eye at the hole, closing the other, and, with a firm and steady hand, trace in on the glass all the objects you see.

You can draw on the glass with pen and ink, then lay a moist sheet of paper on the glass, (the side that has the design,) rub or press the paper gently thereon with the hand, and the whole draught will be impressed or transferred from the glass upon the paper.

Some use a fine brush with oil color, pressing the paper on gently while the oil is wet ; but we leave you to your own discretion, having given you a knowledge of the method. The sketch of a palace is as easily taken as a landscape, and a church as a house or chamber ; all required in any subject being a situation where the whole object intended to be represented may be seen, and to bring the sight to a proper nearness to the glass. These drawings cannot fail to be according to the strict rules of perspective : the eye-hole has the same effect as the point of sight in the other methods.

Another method of using the same apparatus is to divide the glass into squares with threads, thus saving the marking the glass with ink or color ; in this way you have your drawing marked off in the same number of squares as much larger as you wish, and proceed sketching on your paper what you see in the corresponding squares in the natural object.