Single and Two-Point Perspective

Single Point Perspective

"Gather a group of children and with them, examine the selected painting that provides an example of a vanishing point.

This is a painting called Boulevard Heloise, Argenteuil.  It was painted by Alfred Sisley (1839-1899)."

Use a copy of the painting upon which lines converging to the vanishing point have been added with a ruler, and point to different lines saying:

"Look at how the artist has followed these lines as he painted the road, the sidewalk and the houses." 

"I think that we could also draw another line like this along the trees."

"Every line converges to the same point, and the objects that have been painted get smaller and smaller the closer they come to that point until …"

 "…They vanish!"

"Artists call that point the vanishing point.  The vanishing point was a major discovery made by artists during the Renaissance!"

 "A vanishing point is used to show the distance of objects from the artist."

"We can use this idea to draw a long square-based prism that looks much more real!"

"We start by drawing a square, which is the base of the prism closest to us."

 Draw a square on the paper, as illustrated (1.).

Place a dot on the paper, further up and to the right side of the paper ,as illustrated. (2.).

"This will be our vanishing point."

Examine the square-based geometric solid.  Indicate parallel edges of the prism.

"Now we will draw these edges so that they each move towards a vanishing point."

 Draw a line from 3 vertices of the square, straight back to the vanishing point as illustrated.  (3)

Make a mark well along one of the lines, closer to the vanishing point than the front, square face.  (4.)

"This is where we’ll have our prism end."

Indicate geometric solid again.

"Do you see how the square at the back of this prism is parallel to the front face?  That means that we must make the lines for edges of this back square parallel to the lines that we drew for the front square."

Add these lines as illustrated.  (5.)

"So our prism is complete.  Now we can ink in the lines of the prism and erase our vanishing point lines.  We could use shading to make the prism look even more real!  (6.)

Why don’t you try to draw a prism this way?  Or you could draw a house, even a scene, using this technique!

 Children begin their own work.  This technique can now be applied to regular and irregular shapes.

Two-Point Perspective

"Today let’s draw a cube using two vanishing points!"

 Show the children how to begin with a line, rather than a two-dimensional figure. (1.)

Make two vanishing point dots – One to the upper right of the page and one to the upper left, so that both dots fall on the same horizontal line, as illustrated.  (2.)

"Draw vanishing point lines from the bottom of the original line to the left and right vanishing points, as illustrated." (3.)

"Repeat with vanishing point lines from the top of the original line, as illustrated." (3.)

"Now we choose the position at which the faces of our cube should end."

 "Next we place dots at the points where the top face of our “cube” will be created."   (4.)

 "We draw lines parallel to our original  front edge and between the two right and left vanishing point lines."  (5.)

Do so.

"And lastly, we draw a line from the top right intersection of lines across to the left vanishing point."  (6.)

Do so (as illustrated).

"… And another line from the top left intersection of lines across to the right vanishing point."  (6.)

 "Our cube is complete."

"It’s time to ink in the cube, and to erase our construction lines!" 

Do so. (7.)

"Why don’t you try this now?"

Children begin their own work.

NOTE:  There is also a technique for producing three-point perspective - Useful for overhead views of skyscrapers, trees, etc.  Let me know if you want me to add this to my list of future blogs!