Project: Perspective

Exercise: Parallel perspective

Initially I was unsure where exactly my eyeline was, which took a moment or two to figure out. I was amazed how difficult it was to get these parallel lines accurate. When I drew over the initial drawing with pen, it became clear just how wrong I had been in some areas. Some of my receding lines were pretty much spot on on the observational drawing in pencil, yet some of them were WAY out! (Particularly on the left side of the drawing, the radiator especially and rail.) One thing I was aware of while drawing is that this house is Victorian so though not incredibly old, it is old enough to have warped slightly over the years, or perhaps was ever so slightly wonky in the first place. This made it a little bit more difficult - I was unsure as to whether to ignore the slight wonkiness or to embrace it - deciding eventually on ignoring it otherwise I was in danger of  my drawing looking horribly inaccurate (the pipe behind the open door is in fact not straight at all). I felt that a ruler would have been really helpful at the start of the drawing, but once I'd got into it I forgot about that feeling altogether and managed without it, fairly well. Needless to say trying to draw lines ruler-less is bound to be good training. I used a ruler to draw the receding lines from the vanishing point, then continued using it to draw over where things should be, if I'd observed them correctly.

Exercise: Angular perspective

I found this drawing particularly hard in terms of establishing where my eye level was (just to clarify, is the eye level the level at which my eyes physically are on my face if I were to walk across the road in this drawing and stand with my face against the wall? Or is it where my sight lies if I look comfortably straight ahead? Sorry, this may seem like a really dumb question!) - I drew receding lines from the rooftops but they seemed to fall far below where I thought my eye level was... and all the vanishing points seem to be off the page, which didn't help. I don't think I chose a very good view but I can't figure out why... Too much blank wall space in the foreground and not enough of a receding view I presume.