Expanding linear perspective to handle real world situations. The importance of consistency over perfection. Dividing space in perspective.

Two-point perspective

Two-point perspective is a second, common application of linear perspective. Single-point is really a special case – when you are essentially looking straight into some space: a room, street, a tunnel. What if that’s not the case? Enter two-point perspective! In the following video I introduce the idea:

Here’s the way it works:

Two-point perspective is simply following 2 sets of receding parallel lines, typically emanating from a common corner. When you can see a corner, you can by definition see a second edge, wall, or surface. It is truly twice the fun, or more: It gets us out from the street or interior to describe houses, neighborhoods and city-scapes. In the following video, I walk through the approach:

Here’s the house from the video, hardly a masterpiece of architecture, however it looks three dimensional:

Examples

Take a look at this corner view drawing, clearly a 2-point perspective:

Note that the vanishing points are placed on the horizon and only in the corners for the convenience of the draftsperson – few real-world scenes would be so conveniently laid out:

With this second example, I’ve established the vanishing points extrapolating receding, parallel horizontal lines on a photo reference. Note that, again the intersections will be on the horizon and consequently we’ve found the (hidden) horizon:

This third example is not really two-point perspective:

This final example is not 2-point perspective because the receding lines do not look like they are going to vanishing points. They could, or would have, should the artist have been occupied with perspective. It still works however, if a little cartoonish, and that’s because it is drawn with a consistent approach to perspective – one that that does not blatantly break the rules: Those receding lines could conceivably converge!

Exercise

1. Sketch from one of the first two examples using 2-point perspective construction. Feel free to simplify the scene, or develop it further: perhaps a shopping center went in behind the low-rise street front. How would that look?
2. Take the “Desk and Chair” reference above and recreate the desk in full two-point perspective. There’s no need to fully develop the complete drawing, however you could, should you wish!
3. Choose an image from the reference gallery, or one of your own choosing, containing two-point perspective and, starting with finding the vanishing points, develop a drawing or painting. By all means send me a preliminary layout for review prior to developing your artwork more fully.

Dividing Space in Perspective – and some additional comments!

Dividing equal spaces in a receding perspective view is a common problem. How do you make sure that a row of telegraph poles, railway ties or bridge supports look right? In the following video I cover this, taking as my example a row of houses:

Here’s my resulting construction and image:

This website covers the same idea: https://shop.mybluprint.com/art/article/dividing-space-in-perspective-tutorial/

Optional Drafting Exercise

1. Lay out a set of windows in a receding wall, each window the same and spaced one window-width apart.
2. Work out how you would do this with the same windows set at a different pitch,  either set closer or further apart.