Perspective Drawing – An Easy Lesson in 1 Point Perspective

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How to Draw in One Point Perspective – a Simple Step by Step Drawing Lesson

When you look out upon a landscape in nature, you see, close to you, the stones with the moss on them, the blades of grass, the flowers and leaves, with the veins in them, and a man or a horse is the size of life, and you can count the buttons on the man’s coat.

Look away a few hundred feet; you can still see the grass, but it is a flat mass of green; the stones have lost moss, and you no longer see the buttons on the man’s coat, nor the veins in the leaves.

Look away half a mile farther, and you see nothing plainly. A little dot makes a man or a horse; the trees have lost their leaves and twigs; the rocks are spots of gray, and the woods a mass of green.

Look ten miles farther and you can see neither man, nor stone, nor tree, but the mountain is a mass of grey, almost without color, taking on somewhat the blue of the sky.

All this is called perspective. Now when you wish to represent on a flat surface all the parts of the view we have been speaking of, you must do it as it appears in nature; making the objects smaller and dimmer as they are more distant.

Linear perspective is represented by lines. These lines, if drawn from the top and bottom of an object, seem to run to one point, far in the distance. You can see this when you stand in the middle of a railroad track. The lines of the rails seem to run nearer together as they go farther away from you.

If you rub starch very thinly over a pane of glass, and, when it is dry, shut one eye, and keeping the head in one position, trace the lines of the roofs, and windows, and pavements, which you see dimly through the coating of starch, when you are done, you will find that you have a picture in true perspective.

THE VANISHING POINT

You have, no doubt, seen a balloon go up, and noticed, when you were close to it, how large it was, and how as it went higher and farther, it grew smaller and smaller, and you watched it sailing through the sky, till it was a mere speck, and at last it was out of sight. This point, where the balloon goes out of sight, is called the vanishing point. The true horizon line, is where the lines drawn from the top and bottom of a row of houses, men, or other objects, meet and this horizon line is the point where the land and sky meet, and is always on a level with the eye.

The level line through the middle is the horizon and this horizon line and the vanishing point are always on a level with the eye of the person who looks at the view (The Viewer).

The central line of this is the horizontal line, and you see that all the lines run to the dot at the man’s head. This dot is the vanishing point, and if the houses were built right on to this point, it would be a pretty long street, and if you should look down it, the house at this point would be out of sight.

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