✏️ The Sketch
Perspective is a way to represent a three-dimensional object on a flat, two-dimensional drawing.
There are different perspectives depending on the point of view, but basically, they are divided into two big groups: orthogonal perspectives and linear perspectives. We will focus on orthogonal representations in this quick exercise:
Step 1, draw a square, a triangle, and a circle, scattering them apart so they don’t touch.
Step 2, pay close attention to this. Draw a small clock on the top right corner of your drawing. This is going to be your perspective cheat sheet. Choose three different hours (one for each shape) and draw them on the clock. These are your vectors.
Step 3. Apply one of the vectors to each shape on its vertexes. The vectors draw parallel lines in the same direction in each shape. Tip: redraw the clock with the hour on each vertex to get the exact direction.
Step 4. Now pick a point along one of the vectors for each shape and re-draw the shape there. (Imagine your shape is moved parallel to the original one to that cutting point).
Step 5. Hatch or colour the faces of the volumes to emphasise their three-dimensionality.
Step 6. Go and destroy your own perspective drawing! Manipulate the direction of the perspective or colour in other overlaid perspectives.
💡 Some Ideas
Don’t take perspective too seriously in your sketches.
In fact, I would encourage you to play around with it. Some artists do make manipulating perspective their own style. Saul Steinberg, Frida Kahlo, Louis Kahn… to name a few.
We are sketching (not drawing replicas), and sometimes a single perspective won’t do to tell the story we are aiming to convey. Have a look at the examples above and practice this sketch exercise with different types of perspectives, manipulating them to compose different pictures.
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Cheers and happy sketching! 💫✏️
Ana