By Show Me Step by StepPublished
Based on a video by Circle Line Art School.
Perspective is the trick that makes a flat drawing look deep. Once you see how it works, rooms, streets and boxes stop looking flat and start looking real. In this lesson Tom McPherson of Circle Line Art School draws a whole room in one point perspective: walls, a door, a table, floorboards, two windows and a hanging light. Everything comes from one horizon line and one dot. You need a pencil, a ruler and an eraser.
Lines that run away from you all meet at a single point on the horizon. That point is the vanishing point. Lines that face you straight on stay flat: horizontals stay horizontal and verticals stay vertical. Every step below uses that rule. If a line in your room looks wrong, check whether it should point at the dot or stay flat.
The horizon line is your eye level. Put it a little above the middle of the page, as Tom does, and you see more floor than ceiling, as if you were standing in the doorway. Drop it low and the room feels tall, like a child's view. Move the vanishing point left or right and you see more of one side wall. Try a few small thumbnail sketches before you commit.
A ruler keeps the long lines to the vanishing point straight, and straight lines are what sell the illusion. Use an HB or 2H pencil for guide lines and press lightly, because you will erase many of them. Go over the finished edges with a softer 2B. A kneaded eraser lifts guide lines without smudging the dark ones.
The room, door and table take about twenty minutes. Floorboards, windows, the light and the shading take another forty. Pause the video after each step and catch up.
Draw the same room again with the vanishing point off center. Then try a hallway or a road running to the horizon. When the boxes feel easy, use the same lines on a house or a car. Brush up on pencil shading to give your walls depth, and see our beginner drawing guide for more practice ideas.
10 steps · about 10 minutes.Check off each step as you go and your progress saves automatically.
Draw a long, light horizontal line across your page, a little above the middle. This is the horizon line, and it sits at your eye level. Now make a small cross in the center of that line. The cross is your vanishing point. In one point perspective every line that runs away from you will head straight for this one spot, so keep it sharp and easy to find.
Tip
Draw the horizon with a ruler and very light pressure. You will erase most of it later.
Draw a rectangle in the middle of the page for the back wall of the room. The horizon line should pass through it and the vanishing point should sit near its center. The back wall faces you straight on, so its edges are plain horizontal and vertical lines. Nothing about it is in perspective yet. That comes next.
Tip
A wider rectangle makes a shallow room. A smaller one makes the room feel deeper.
Put your ruler on the vanishing point and line it up with one corner of the rectangle. Draw a line from the corner out to the edge of the paper. Repeat for all four corners. These four lines are where the side walls meet the floor and the ceiling. Your drawing now looks like you are peering into an open box.
Tip
Start each line at the corner, not the dot, so the back wall stays clean.
Draw one more line from the vanishing point out to the left side of the paper, above the floor line. This sets the height of the door. Then drop two vertical lines from it down to the floor line. The door's top edge runs toward the dot, but its sides stay straight up and down. You now have a door in one point perspective.
Tip
The far edge of the door is closer to the back wall, so it looks shorter than the near edge.
Draw two lines from the vanishing point coming down toward you. These set the sides of the table. Then draw two horizontal lines between them, one for the back edge of the table top and one for the front edge. The sides angle in and the front and back stay flat. That shape is the table top seen from above.
Tip
The closer the front edge is to you, the bigger the table will look.
Drop two vertical lines of equal length from the front corners for the front legs, then two shorter ones from the back corners. Add a second line under the front edge to give the top some thickness. Double the front legs so they look solid. The bottom of each leg runs on a line toward the vanishing point. Erase guide lines you no longer need.
Tip
Back legs are shorter than front legs because they are farther away.
Make evenly spaced marks along the bottom edge of the back wall. Then put the ruler on the vanishing point and draw a line through each mark, down and toward you to the edge of the page. These are your floorboards. Because they all point at the same dot, they fan out as they get closer, which adds a lot of depth to the room.
Tip
Stop each board line where it meets a table leg so the table sits on the floor.
Draw two lines from the vanishing point out across the right wall. One marks the top of the window and the other marks the bottom. Add two vertical lines between them for the sides. Then add short horizontal lines for the thickness of the wall. They stay flat because they face you, the same way the back wall does.
Tip
Only lines going away from you are distorted. Everything facing you stays square.
Draw a rectangle on the back wall for a large window. To show the depth of the wall, draw faint diagonal lines from each corner of the window toward the vanishing point. Then draw a smaller rectangle inside, touching those lines. The gap between the two rectangles is the thickness of the wall. It is the same method you used for the room itself.
Tip
Add a narrow window sill along the bottom edge for an extra touch of depth.
Draw a short vertical line down from the ceiling and add a lamp shade. Its base is a small, squashed circle. Add a door handle, a light switch, a vase and a few books on the table. Then shade. Darken the right wall, the inside edges of the windows and the floor under the table. Shading makes the room look solid and lit from one side.
Tip
Shade one wall darker than the others so the corners read clearly.
Keep going
How to Make a Cyanotype Sun Print on Fabric
How to Draw in Perspective: A Room in One Point Perspective
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