What ARE Vanishing Points?

So I feel like a lot of confusion with drawing in perspective is because people are not taught the absolute basics properly? So let’s do that.

Let’s say we have a cube.

Now, a cube we know is made out of 6 squares or rectangles, and every edge is at a 90 degree angle.

so every opposite edge of a cube is exactly parallel, right?

but let’s say we draw a cube using only parallel lines:

this looks a little weird, you know? Like if i try think of this as an object in 3d space and i look at it for too long, the faces start to look really warped - with like the back looking bigger than the front as if its been made out of weird wonky trapeziums

so what’s going on here? if all those edges are exactly parallel, why does it look weird?

lets take a look at this photo of a railway track

Now we know that the rails on a track are always going to be parallel, they have to be the same distance apart so the train can stay on the track yeah?

But we can very clearly see that these tracks are converging to a single point in the photo.

So what does this tell us, exactly? That our view of the world is naturally warped, and that lines that are physically parallel when drawn in perspective will converge to a single point.

Now, I could call this image “one point perspective” - but that’s not really true,

if these lines are also parallel, then they must also converge to a single point in perspective, right? so lets add another point

clip studio paint automatically adjusts the horizon line to fit the new points you add to your perspective…. notice how the horizon line actually fits the photo better now?

our new point is a very very long way away, so we don’t notice a lot of difference in the angle between lines, but the point that i’m trying to make here is:

Drawing with perspective guides is not about choosing one, two, three point perspective etc. those are just quick ways to set up a certain viewing angle

What you are doing when you use these guides is making your parallel lines converge to a point.

So, if you want to draw a big ol’ cube that’s aligned to be parallel with these railroad tracks, then you can do that with the same point as the tracks - because it’s parallel. It’s on the same axis!

but what if you want to draw a cube that’s rotated, and isn’t parallel to the tracks?

well that’s not too difficult to do if you know that every point represents one set of parallel lines.

If these lines aren’t parallel to the ones you already have, then clearly you just need new points.

We’re not planning to tilt this cube up into the air, or rotate it onto its side, so we’re going to leave the vertical axis alone, and just move our horizontal points to a different place on the horizon line

But speaking of the vertical axis - the only points that will be on your horizon line are the ones that are flat on the ground. But you can still have points that are not on the horizon line!

This is important to remember because if you’re trying to draw something like a slope or stairs, something that has an incline, it’s not going to be level with your horizon.

Let’s draw some stairs as an example.

This is actually pretty simple - first draw where your slope starts and ends by drawing a big L shape.

this will give you some parallel corners, which you can then connect to make a new point for your slope

And with this you can then find the centre and divide that up into equal parts to make your stairs (http://lesbianlinkle.tumblr.com/post/176704472820)

So lets go back to our original cube, with the knowledge that our parallel lines should all converge to a point and draw it again

well, doesn’t that look better!

but also, now you know how to make a cube lean against its buddy like this

because we just make new points for the new parallel lines

Anyway I hope that clears some things up, and makes perspective easier to understand!

Also if these tutorials have been helpful and you’d like to support me, I do have a patreon & a ko-fi you can donate to :^)

gif example for the first 3:

another example of applying measuring:

I know poppin’ to be roughly 5 feet tall. I also know that, on average, the height of a room is at least 8 foot tall.

I also know that the pokémon centre has two levels to its base floor room, so I’m thinking it’s a bigger room than average but still a little less than two storeys tall. I decide to make it 12 feet tall, thats one and a half rooms. Considering the average size of pokemon is like, huge, it sounds about right to me.

So I measure that out:

then I add another floor on top, and that gives me the height of the building!

this is the same as measuring out the cubes, I just applied a number this time! the pokémon centre is about four poppin’s tall, or four cubes if you will

there’s all kinds of things you can do by using just a few lines to measure things out. I wanted to make sure hugh was taller so I measured that out too!

so when you’re drawing things like architecture instead of thinking of it as a big complex shape, break it down and think about the size and position of things - especially the edges - relative to each other, and you’ll find it much easier to draw.

It’s very time consuming, but if you’re patient you can draw anything no matter how complex :^)

Trying to draw buildings

yo here’s a useful tip from your fellow art ho cynellis… use google sketchup to create a model of the room/building/town you’re trying to draw… then take a screenshot & use it as a reference! It’s simple & fun!

Sketchup is incredibly helpful. I can’t recommend it enough.

There’s a 3D model warehouse where you can download all kinds of stuff so you don’t have to build everything from scratch.

reblog to save a life

This is an incomplete tutorial, and it drives me crazy every time I see it come around.

We live in a pretty great digital age and we have access to a ton of amazing tools that artists in past generations couldn’t even dream of, but a lot of people look at a cool trick and only learn half of the process of using it.

Here’s the missing part of this tutorial:

How do you populate your backgrounds?

Well, here’s the answer:

If the focus is the environment, you must show a person in relation to that environment.

The examples above are great because they show how to use the software itself, but each one just kind of “plops” the character in front of their finished product with no regard of the person’s relation to their environment.

How do you fix this?

Well, here’s the simplest solution:

This is a popular trick used by professional storyboard and comic artists alike when they’re quickly planning compositions. It’s simple and it requires you to do some planning before you sit down to crank out that polished, final version of your work, but it will be the difference between a background and an environment.

From Blacksad (artist: Juanjo Guarnido)

From Hellboy (Mike Mignola)

Even if your draftsmanship isn’t that great (like mine), people can be more immersed in the story you tell if you just make it feel like there is a world that exists completely separate from the one in which they currently reside – not just making a backdrop the characters stand in front of.

Your creations live in a unique world, and it is as much a character as any other member of the cast. Make it as believable as they are.

Great comments and tutorials!

I’m a 3d artist and have been exploring the possibilities of using 3d as reference for 2d poses. I want to add a couple of tips and things!

Sketchup is very useful for environment references, and I assume it’s reasonably easy to learn. If you’re interested in going above and beyond, I highly recommend learning a proper 3d modeling program to help with art, especially because you can very easily populate a scene or location with characters!

Using 3ds Max I can pretty quickly construct an environment for reference. But going beyond that, I can also pose a pretty simple ‘CAT’ armature (known in 3d as a rig) straight into the scene, which can be totally customized, from various limbs, tails, wings, whatever, to proportions, and also can be modeled onto and expanded upon (for an example, you could 3d sculpt a head reference for your character and then attach it to the CAT rig, so you have a reference for complex face angles!)

The armature can also be posed incredibly easily. I know programs exist for stuff like this - Manga Studio, Design Doll - but posing characters in these programs is always an exercise in frustration and very fiddly imo. A simple 3d rig is impossibly easy to pose.

By creating an environment and dropping my character rig into it, I have an excellent point of reference when it comes to drawing the scene!

Not only that, but I can also view the scene from whatever angle I could ever want or need, including the character and their pose/position relative to the environment.

We can even quickly and easily expand this scene to include more characters!

Proper 3d modeling software is immensely powerful, and if you wanted to, you could model a complex environment that occurs regularly in your comic or illustration work (say, a castle interior, or an outdoor forest environment) and populate the scene with as many perspective-grounded characters as you need!

reblogging to save a life

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look at this amazing addition! This is fantastic!

How to Draw Circles and Ovals in Perspective by Mink

Thing i learned some time ago!  hope you all find it helpful ( perspective grids can be your friend!)

Receding objects in perspective.

Have you ever been trying to draw tiles on a wall or on the floor in perspective, but notice that after you’ve drawn them, they don’t look like they’re all the same shape or size?  Well here’s a tutorial on how to fix that. Your picture probably looks like this, right?

Well, i’m here to tell you how to fix that…Let’s start out with your basics.

The gray line is the horizon line, and the black dot is your horizon line. These are essential for the first steps of perspective. Without these, your perspective may turn out wonky and just not flattering to the eyes. Right now we’ll work in One point perspective.

Now let’s pretend we’ll be drawing a hallway. Draw a vertical line where the edge of the wall is.

Now, from the tips of the bottom and top of your wall, you’re going to need to draw a line extending all the way to the vanishing point. If you’re working in photoshop you could either use the line tool, or shift+click. If traditional, you’ll need to use a ruler.

Now that we have the wall that’s in perspective, it’s time to draw the rest of the lines. here I’ve drawn the wall facing us that’s closest, the ceiling, the floor line, and the end of the hallway. ASSUMING that you are working in one point perspective, all vertical lines are straight and parallel to each other, and all horizontal lines are straight and parallel to each other. 

Now here I have erased the lines that extended beyond the back wall, and found the center point of the edge of the left wall. From there, you draw an extended line just as before towards your vanishing point.

now make a vertical line where your first “tile” is. 

now this may be a little hard to explain. Now you’re going to draw a line coming from the corner of the wall, through the corner where your line meets the tile you just drew, and all the way to the ground line. 

You see where these two lines meet? you’re going to draw a vertical line to the ceiling from here.

Like so! 

Now rinse and repeat! you should have perfectly even spaced tiles now! And if you have tiles on the ceiling

Just draw horizontal lines connecting to the vertical lines!

Now just erase anyhing you don’t need and…viola! Perfect tiles in perspective!! I hope this helps!! :D

Drawing - Remembering Your Perspective

How To Draw One and Two-Point Perspective, with Karl Gude

PERSPECTIVE & WARPED PERSPECTIVE TUTORIALS with Samples

Please consider REBLOG and not just like, cause you’re not only supporting me but help others with getting use to perspective drawing!

I’ve archived series of perspective & warped perspective tutorials that I made in the past with minor revisions and added samples. I believe some people have struggle with perspective probably because of the impression of complexity and the fancy terms that comes with it. I’ve met many artists that just didn’t want to deal with the all fancy terms like “3 point/4 point” perspective and walked away from it and I understand that feeling. Personally these terms are quite useless and that the important part of perspective drawing is really just capturing the dimension and getting use to it. (When I do perspective drawing I put very little consciousness in points & lines but towards how my brain is seeing the depth and dimension.)

When I first learned perspective drawing in elementary school art class, my teacher taught me the conventional method with ruler, lines and dots. While it provide accuracy, it tends to require alot of lines and wide space where your starting points existing way off the page and perhaps this might be the reason why some people find it tedious and hard to deal with. So I’m going to ditch using ruler and the fancy term and demonstrate them in much simpler approach.

I purposely build these tutorials in raw pencil rather than the nice looking digital tutorials because I want to show you that it’s not about the precision and accuracy that makes convincing perspective but a daily scribble and eye-balling. Treat them like any other drawing practice, doing tons of freehand and eye-balling to grasp the dimension in your head. I wont stop you from making a use of a ruler, however perspective drawing is a vital practice to improve your line work as well. (Personally when I use a ruler, my perspective looses the sense of dynamics and objects would look too uniform. Besides clean straight lines has no personality and can look dull at times.)

1 BOX - Method

2 & 3 PLANE - Method (The lower portion of third image)

4 FISH - EYE TUTORIAL

My 2 cent is that rather than using a big space on an empty page/canvas, draw a frame and then start drawing. (You can see me do that on few of my samples.) This tip apply to general drawing as well since “big empty canvas” can be a bit intimidating. By setting a frame or a border, it’s actually you’re first attempt on creating an illusion in a 2D space.

My final note is that even though you’re doing a freehand, a sloppy lines will break the illusion, so pay attention to where the line starts, how it flow and where it ends.

Support me on Patreon so I can create more artworks and tutorials! MY PATREON PAGE –> www.patreon.com/toshinho

Tutorials by  Krenz Cushart

Deluxe Draughtsmanship Exercise CheetSheet(TM donut steel all rights reserved lol no not really)

Draughtsmanship is the skill of making lines go where you want them to go. For that, body, eyes and mind must work together.

Some movements feel awkward and your pen won’t go in the direction you want it to. That’s a body problem. Exercises like the radial and (clockwise/counterclockwise) circular training will help you build muscle memory.

But round arcs and straight lines are of no use if they don’t land on target. For that, practice three-point targeted circle exercises, circle push and ellipse exercises.

Jumping the gap between 2D and 3D is going to be the hardest part. You have to train your eyes. The problem is that the page is flat and your eyes will see that. Eliminate all shadows with a well lit surface. Defocus your eyes, close one eye (or cover it) to defeat your depth perception so you can see INTO and draw INTO the page rather than ON the page. You have to push your lines AWAY from you or TOWARDS you.

Lastly, some of these exercises are meant to be DISRUPTIVE. They break routine and pattern and force you to keep your mind engaged instead of falling into stupid autopilot mode. Good art requires a certain amount of mental fortitude. These exercises are meant to provide you with a level of cognitive difficulty to strain your mind.

Look at your own abilities (or lack of them), pick one to strengthen, and then choose the exercise that targets that weakness. Practice until it becomes second nature and then move on to the next weakness.

The Young Painter’s Maulstick by James Malton and Brook Taylor

(Part 1 of 2)

(via 4 Ways to Draw a Bed - wikiHow)

High Angle Applied to Heads - Quick guide by SirWendigo