What’s Perspective Drawing?
According to Merriam Webster dictionary, perspective, as a word, is defined in the dictionary as:- Representation in a drawing or painting of parallel lines as converging in order to give the illusion of depth and distance. It allows you to draw the same object from multiple angles, exactly the same way we see it in reality. It’s an important tool to make sure your scenes look realistic & believable.
Perspective is where art & math meets. In many cases, it’s one of the most systematic ways of drawing. A person can be bad at drawing, but can still draw some good scenes using rulers only.
In This Series:-
- 6 important principles for drawing In Perspective Principles (Overlapping, Convergence, Vanishing points, Horizon line, Foreshortening, Diminution)
- 4 Types of perspective drawing, and a comparison between them:- One-Point-Perspective, two-point-perspective, three-point-perspective, atmospheric perspective
- What’s One-Point-Perspective? And how to draw a room with it step-by-step
- Drawing Perspective in Photoshop & Illustrator, A simple how to~
- What’s Two Points Perspective? And how to draw it Step-By-Step?
- What’s Three-Points-Perspective? And to draw it Step By Step? (with a comparison to Two-Points-Perspective)
- What is Aerial Perspective (atmospheric perspective)? How to draw it? And What causes it to happen?
- Perspective principles:- Diminution, and how to draw objects at an equal distance
- What is foreshortening in perspective? And how is it different from diminution?
- How to draw the human figure body in perspective using grids, diminution and foreshortening
- How to easily draw a perfect cube in Two-Points-Perspective step by step
Quickly go to:-
The Importance Of Drawing In Perspective
You may think that perspective is mostly about drawing scenery, cities and backgrounds. While that’s true, Perspective can be also used for drawing objects from multiple angles, like the human body. I have talked in my Proportions Series how proportions and perspective work together to help you draw humans accurately from different angles. At the time, I still needed to introduce you to the different perspective concepts before I could talk about how to do that.
Learning to draw in perspective can be useful no matter what you like to draw. One of the things I quite like about it is how it’s very easy to observe, as it exists all around us. From all the buildings we see when we walk down the street, to the room where you’re sitting right now, to anything else around you.
Perspective can add some depth to your drawing, the following guy is the same height, but because of the distance, he appears smaller the further away from us (Notice the guidelines I used to make him look smaller):-
In the following picture, we can easily see which building is in front and which one is in the back, easily thanks to the concept of overlapping:-
The same way, we can get to know which mountain is in front or the back by noticing difference in color the mountain on the back have (the concept of overlapping is also used here):-
Perspective also makes it very easy to draw complicated objects in perspective. Using simpler objects like cubes as the building blocks for that. Like how I drew a simple home with the help of two cubes here:-
There are many other different concepts like that, which I plan to explain one by one, starting from the next post.

And Finally
Since this is an introductory post, it may not have covered a lot of ground, but it hopefully gave you an idea on what’s going to be in this series.
Despite the advancement of computers & digital art, learning about perspective is still important. As it makes it easy to draw the scene you want, the way you want to. Even if your drawing program has a perspective drawing tool, knowing about the basic perspective concepts can help you take better advantage of such tools.
You can refer to all the lessons of this series on the links at the beginning of this post (I will add them every time a new post is added). Subscribe to my newsletter using the form below for regular updates about them.
I hope that this post, and the series in general, helps you get much better at drawing perspective, and see you in another post. :>
See Also:-
-
- My Drawing And Digital Art Books
- Getting started with Wacom graphics tablet and Digital Painting With Photoshop: Learn Digital Art & Paintings On Good Fundamentals
- Introduction to drawing proportions, and how to get it right (With practical example).
- Getting Started In Digital Art (or digital painting) for beginners, and what you need to know from the start
- How to avoid stiff poses and drawings?
- All About Drawing In Perspective-(Part 1)
- Best Affordable Pen displays and Cintiq Alternatives to buy in 2018 – Including Huion, Ugee, XP-Pen, Monoprice & other brands