Perspective Drawing: Types and Exercises

When you first look at a half-completed perspective drawing with its multiple horizontal and angled lines, vanishing points and overlapping sketch strokes, it might look complicated. However, learning to create a realistic and natural perspective drawing is easier than most might think. By learning just a few key techniques and terms, you’ll be on your way to learning how to draw perspective in no time.

Perspective Drawing: A Definition

Perspective drawing is a technique that helps create depth and a sense of three-dimensionality in a flat, 2-D drawing. There are two main types of perspective drawing: atmospheric and linear. Each of these helps to create a slightly different sense of realism and perspective in an image. By learning to add perspective in your artwork, you can create more proportionate, accurate and interesting works. You’ll also be able to improve your overall drawing skills. 

How Perspective and Perception Align

Perspective drawing is a way to help imitate your perception of the world. Your eyes perceive the world around you in a very specific way. If you look off into the distance, you’ll notice that the objects farther away appear smaller and closer together. By mimicking our world’s natural horizon line and the phenomenon that objects seem to converge towards each other in the distance, perspective drawing helps artists create naturally looking scenes.  

Compare this image to the one you saw above. Here the horizon line is close to the bottom of the canvas while in the first image, the horizon line is close to the center of the canvas. This slight change greatly affects a viewer’s perception of the scene. How do you feel looking at the first image versus the second image? 

Understanding Two Types of Perspective Drawing

If you were trying to draw a realistic recreation of a picture of Lisbon you’d taken during a trip to Portugal, there would be two main ways to do so: atmospheric perspective drawing and linear perspective drawing.

• Atmospheric perspective drawing uses changes in color, clarity, saturation and brightness to imitate our perception of the real world. Objects that are further away would appear smaller, lighter, cooler, darker and less detailed than objects that are closer to the viewer’s perspective. This technique works well for creating realistic landscapes and depicting great distances. 
• Linear perspective drawing uses geometric rules, converging lines and vanishing points to create a sense of depth and dimension in a drawing or painting. By imitating the spatial relationship objects have in the real world, linear perspective drawing creates the illusion of a three-dimensional scene and creates more realistic space in your art. This technique works well for creating scenes with defined structures and edges like cityscapes and architectural renderings. 

The ABCs of Linear Perspective: Understanding Key Terms

If you’ve ever seen someone create a linear perspective drawing step by step, you’ve likely seen their page filled with various lines and dots. Once you learn these key linear perspective drawing terms and techniques, you’ll be on your way to understanding those seemingly confusing perspective lines. These are the key terms you should know:  

• The horizon line represents the height of the viewer’s eye and acts as one of the main reference points for drawing converging lines in perspective. 
• The vantage point is where the viewer is observing the scene from.
• Orthogonal lines, also known as perspective lines, are the straight lines that radiate from the vanishing point. Artists use these lines as a guide for the angle and size of the objects within their images. 
• Vanishing points are the points on the horizon line where the orthogonal lines converge. There can be one, two or three vanishing points depending on the perspective. 
• The ground plane is the area between the bottom of your canvas and your horizon line. 

Mastering Perspective: Diverse Ways to Draw

You’ve learned that there are two types of perspective drawing: linear and atmospheric. But there are also three main types of linear perspective drawing itself: one-point, two-point and three-point. Discover which will work best for your project here: 

• One point

One-point perspective uses one vanishing point to create a strong sense of stability in order. It works great with straight-on views of cities, architectural structures, simple line drawings and hallways. 

• Two point

Drawing in two-point perspective uses two vanishing points to create a more open, dynamic and complex depiction of an object or scene. This works well for recreating scenes with corner views, objects at an angle and panoramic views. 

• Three-point

Three-point perspective uses three vanishing points to create a more dramatic and immersive view like bird’s eye view, worm’s eye view or other more extreme angles. This technique creates a sense of distortion, disorientation and grandeur. 

Practical Exercise: Beginner's Guide to Perspective Drawing

To truly understand perspective drawing, you have to put the terms and techniques you just learned to use. Over the next two weeks, try to carve out a few hours to draw a recreation of a picture you already have. While you draw consider the following: 

• Choose one of the three ways of perspective
• Create a pencil mark on the horizon to indicate the chosen vanishing point
• Sketch lines emanating from your vanishing point
• Create a drawing of a geometric object as an exercise in practicing perspective

Master Perspective Drawing with Top Courses

You’re now ready to create a perspective drawing of your own! To stay committed to learning perspective drawing, take out three to five pieces of blank paper today and give yourself a deadline for when you’ll complete each work. These can serve as reminders to work on your new skill. If you want more guidance, Skillshare offers the best classes for mastering perspective drawing.

Written By

Calli Zarpas

Producer & Writer by occupation. Ceramicist & Newsletter Editor by avocation.

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