Let’s Take A Closer Look At One-Point-Perspective

We have took a quick look at the various perspective types, now we will take a closer look at One-Point-Perspective, including how we draw it.

One-Point-Perspective is the easiest kind of perspective to explain and draw. For that reason, it can be used as the basis to teaching the other types of perspective.

One-Point-Perspective is used in one case, which is when we are directly facing one side of the object or room we are drawing. If we weren’t facing the object, then the same object should be drawn using Two-Points-Perspective, or in some cases, Three-Points-Perspective. That makes this type of perspective very limited when it comes to the number of scenes we can draw with it.

This post is a part of a series about drawing in perspective, you can refer to the first post of the series here if you want to read the whole series.

Examples Of One-Point-Perspective

One of the most common examples of One-Point-Perspective, one I keep using over and over, is the corridor one. Where all the parallel lines of the corridor meet at the same vanishing point.

Another nice example is the following picture of kitchen, since we are facing the sink head on, it only has one vanishing point, which we can see by drawing lines from the sides of it:-

Objects appears different depending where the object is relative to the horizon line. If they are above the line, like the cube in the upper-right, then they look like as if we are looking up to them. If they are below the horizon line, then they look as if we are looking down to them:-

How To Draw One-Point Perspective:- Drawing A Simple Room

Drawing One-Point-Perspective is the easiest among the 3 main kinds of perspective. Not only because it’s simple, but the vanishing point in this kind of perspective is almost always located inside the canvas (in the case of other perspective types, you would sometimes need a very large canvas if you want to actually draw the vanishing points for the scene).

I will draw a room we are facing one of the walls of. You can use the same steps below to draw a corridor or railway if you like~

First, we start by drawing a rectangle. This rectangle represents the outer edge of the room. If you like, you can skip this step and consider the canvass as the rectangle, the size of the rectangle depends on the size of the room you are drawing.

For the sake of simplicity, I will place my vanishing point at the middle of the rectangle, which means our eye level is at the middle of the room. If you want to draw the room from worm-eye view, then you can locate the vanishing point near the bottom of the picture, or you can locate it at above the middle for a scene from above, it totally depends on what you want to draw.

You can easily locate the middle point of the rectangle by drawing two diagonal lines that intersect at the centre of the rectangle. This point is going to be the vanishing point. Here’s what we got:-

Now, Draw a second rectangle inside the first one. This rectangle will represent the back of the room.

Draw a number of diagonal lines from the centre of the outer rectangle, as shown in the picture, the number of the lines you draw depends on how many object you plan to draw in that room.

It’s not uncommon to have many lines or even a star at this point, if you use Photoshop, you can refer to my Drawing Perspective in Photoshop & Illustrator post to know how to create that very easily. I manually drew a lot of lines here:-

To make the tutorial easier to follow, I made the guidelines dimmer:-

Note:- While drawing the table, you may not know which lines from the vanishing point you will really needs. For that purpose, you can create new lines as you need between the steps.

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Let’s zoom-in and use the guidelines to draw a table inside the room, the receding lines represent the sides of the table. All the other lines are perpendicular to each side of the room rectangles:-

Let’s give the tabletop some depth by extending some lines from its corners:-

It’s time to draw the legs of the table. To do that, extend two lines from the lower corner of the table, and connect them to form the first leg:-

To give the leg some depth. Use the receding lines that cross the corner of the leg to draw its depth. You can draw the receding line if you don’t have it already:-

Draw the other three legs the same way you did the original. Just make sure the legs have the same height:-

Erase all the guidelines lines you created, which leaves you with the final drawing with the table drawing with the correct perspective:-

You can add all sorts of stuff to the room the exact same way if you like.

A Final Word On One-Point-Perspective

While One-Point-Perspective may be less useful than the other perspective types, it’s simple enough to serve as a good first step to learn perspective drawing. If you managed to understand the concepts in this lesson, then you will have an easier time understanding the other perspective types I will explain in the rest of the series.

I hope this post helped you learn about One-Point-Perspective, and see you with another post. Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter below for updates about new posts.

Next lesson:- What’s Two Points Perspective? And how to draw it Step-By-Step?

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
  • Getting Started In Digital Art (or digital painting) for beginners, and what you need to know from the start
  • 8 Tips On How To Create Smooth Lines with your graphics tablet (or pen display)
  • How to avoid stiff poses and drawings?
  • Introduction to drawing proportions, and how to get it right (With practical example).
  • Best Affordable Pen displays and Cintiq Alternatives to buy in 2018 – Including Huion, Ugee, XP-Pen, Monoprice & other brands