When to Use 1,2 or 3 Point Perspective How to Know

quite a common problem we can find ourselves in is that we can watch a teaching video and it makes absolute sense while we're watching it and we can understand it but when we go from there to what for us is a real life situation sometimes what seems so obvious in the teaching video is not so easy to apply in real life and perspective is probably the most confusing subject in drawing streetscapes one two and three point perspective videos are all over the place on youtube which shows what an issue they can be for people i've got three videos myself one on each of them hey if you haven't watched them i think they're worth a look but this video is particularly for people who've watched those videos but still you're not really sure when you go to draw something how does that apply to this which one of those videos applies to either the scene in front of me that i'm drawing if at all or the scene i want to create from my imagination if i'm copying a scene either from life or from a reference then in one sense i really have to see what i'm looking at and just draw it accurately i don't really need to understand anything of a theoretical framework if i draw accurately it will look right but in my experience if i understand what i'm meant to be seen it's easier to see what's really there and therefore easier to draw it more accurately and of course if i'm creating a scene from my imagination even a three-dimensional landscape say for a game where the viewpoint changes continuously then i actually have nothing to copy from and it's even more important to understand how these perspective principles work my aim is that this video will help equip you to understand the situations where one two or three point perspective apply g'day i'm stephen travers if you've subscribed to my channel thanks if you haven't and you've watched some of them and you think they're helpful then please subscribe please hit notifications please comment please do all the things that you know help grow a channel i'd really appreciate that so we'll start with one point perspective when we talk about 1.2.3 point perspective the point refers to the vanishing point the number of vanishing points that a certain view of a certain object will create therefore in one point perspective there is one vanishing point the other thing we need to understand is that the vanishing point sits on the eye level and the eye level is the level of our eyes as we're viewing the object all the level of the camera so in this case this is the point where the camera was being held and the reason why it is one point perspective is because when we stand front onto an object or almost front onto an object then we pretty much see the front face of the object without any change and the angles of the lines at right angles all meet at a certain point on eye level this is also a one point perspective where it's this roadway which is the object we're directly in front of but where in effect the fronts of these objects we're still looking at fronton without any distortion all of these objects are in one point perspective even though for one of them we're looking directly square on to it for others we're looking square on but down others square on and up others square on but from the right or others square on and up and from the left because from this viewing point of these objects there is only one point that all of these lines go back to one vanishing point so we need to look out for one point perspective when we're looking straight on at an object here's part of the kelvin grove museum and gallery in glasgow this perspective reflects this in that we're not exactly in front of it we're slightly to the side and we can see there is a very slight perspective view of the side if we were to stand back a bit and see more of the building then at some point we would see none of this and then if we can't move into the right we would start to see something similar to this but on the left hand side of the front facing wall here we have the sort of example which relates back to this perspective model except often with the building this face is a wall and we can't see inside of it in this case because this is an open arcade we can in fact see these lines as our theory tells us they're going to be there so this model is also applicable if we're in an interior space against one wall parallel to the opposite wall our third example is a good example of how simple theory diagrams actually don't always apply in real life basically this is a one point perspective view we're in the center looking up a street and we have buildings on both sides who have perspective lines coming down but this sort of perspective diagram always assumes that the ground is flat and in this scene we can see that the ground does slope up more so on the left side than the right side as well as that it widens around this building which means that these buildings here are not on the same plane they're not on the same straight line as these buildings here this line here is not dead straight further at the end of the street as the street turns around that again distorts this line and this line being straight however with this building here where we're looking almost front onto it it's a bit like this we have the front on face which has minimal distortion and we see something of the perspective of the side and that same principle applies for the whole block on this side of the street after this point the buildings veer around to the right to make room for this road here around the building and we don't see them anymore so one really important thing to realize when we're trying to go from small theory diagrams to real life is that these are based on flat ground and that they're based on rows of buildings in a straight line where the road is the same width the whole way out and so when roads widen or come in to turn a corner or a bend that means that these perspective lines don't apply this perspective line isn't applying to these buildings a bit further along which isn't applying to the buildings it is not just one line that we can trace down through all the windows from here to here it's not just that the windows are at different levels but the angles actually change so if i'm on location drawing this i know that this sort of effect is happening but because i can see the ground is not even and this street frontage is not 180 degrees but weaves in and out i know that it's not going to be as simple as this and i will need to observe these points carefully and if i try to draw this as if it were that i'll get into endless trouble because i'll either have too much or not enough space to put the details into now we'll look at two-point perspective two-point perspective is probably the perspective most people are thinking of when they hear the phrase perspective it's where we have two vanishing points on our eye level and we get two-point perspective when we're not standing front on looking at an object but we're standing looking at it from an angle and so each side has its own vanishing point in its simplest form it's a box so here we have a building and we're looking at it at an angle and we're standing pretty much straight onto this side and because this is a right angle street hidden a little bit by the fact that it goes uphill on the left here we're facing these side walls at pretty much the same angle and because of that the perspective angles are very similar however if my example is more like this diagram where one wall is moving away from us more than the other it will have a greater angle here and here than on the side where we're a little closer to being front on so here's an example of that here we have the corner and we can see actually more easily here than in the diagram that this wall is moving away from us as we go along the wall at a much faster rate than this wall which even though it does still move further away from us as you move along it doesn't move as far and therefore this angle is a steeper angle than that one and the same applies at the lower end this angle is not as steep as this one and this is a really important concept to get because if when we're drawing we make this angle or this angle too steep in effect we push the building further away from us more quickly and is in real life of course buildings don't have to be a box many buildings are in effect a series of boxes attached to each other in various ways but we still have our principle that all the vertical lines at their corners go back to one of two vanishing points on eye level this building is a good example of that off to the right the angles of perspective are quite shallow because we're more front on to this long side off to the left the angles are steeper because this side of the building is sloping away at a steeper angle than this side and of course this wall and this wall and this wall all line up with the vanishing point for this wall one important point to note is that in these three examples eye level is quite low here because this ground is flat eye level is actually the eye level of the people so eye level is relatively very close to the bottom of the building eye level is here in this example that may look too low for the building but what that means is that i was standing on a lower level than the base of this building eye level is where horizontal lines appear straight regardless of which side or part of a building they're on eye level is low down it is disguised a bit inside by the fact that this is a sloping street but i have a video that's particularly to do with perspective on uphill sloping streets so we'll finish two point perspective by looking at this example where eye level is very high in the building in fact eye level is about here and it can be this high because i was in an upper floor of the louvre taking this photo through a window and this is also a good example of how if we're more front on in two-point perspective the angle is shallow if a side of a building slopes away from us more steeply then the perspective angles will be greater in this case almost all the perspective angles are under eye level but the rules still apply again with two-point perspective it's based on the assumption that the streets are straight that the buildings all line up on the same level and that the ground is consistently flat finally we'll look at possibly the trickiest of all and that's three-point perspective and there's a few things to consider with that this is probably the most typical three-point perspective image that we see here we have a spire of a church in three-point perspective we have our normal two-point perspective we have one vanishing point off to the left one vanishing point off to the right but we can see from the shape of the spire that there's another vanishing point above although the center line is straight the side lines angle up and that if you were to continue them they would meet at some point and that's the third vanishing point and while we have an eye level on the horizontal plane which is actually below the level of this photo we also have a vertical eye level and it's on this line that our vertical perspective lines will meet just as horizontal eye level is at the level of my eyes as i stand looking at something vertical eye level is directly in front of my eyes but we do need to be careful with photo references because if they've been cropped then a part of a photo that possibly was on the left hand side may not have any true verticals in it because the part of the scene that had the vertical has been cropped out here is a view of the same tower but from further back and so the vertical perspective isn't really apparent that's the other point about vertical perspective we get it with something very tall when we are very close to it and so it has a sense of looking up or looking down the taller it is the further away we can be and still have a sense of this angling to a point here's a simpler view where we're looking straight onto the building we're not looking at it at an angle as in our spire example the vertical eye level is our one true vertical line and the perspective lines as they move away from it angle more and more in exactly the same way as they do in two-point perspective on one side where we have eye level and as the perspective lines move further away above and below eye level the angle increases the other thing just to notice quickly is that just as we have foreshortening in perspective which is the visual compression of what we're seeing as it moves further away from us exactly the same thing happens on the vertical vertical perspective for shortening means that as we look up a skyscraper windows that are all the same size appear compressed as they get further away vertical perspective happens on buildings as we look up but we also see it on buildings if we're up high looking down as in the case in this sydney skyscraper and remember we see this effect when we're relatively close and low down to a tall structure if we move higher up and further away then our perspective vertical lines become vertical again vertical perspective happens inside a building as well as outside and so if we're drawing this effect we need to make sure we angle our lines increasingly but we also get this effect when we're looking down in an internal space as well exactly the same as with an exterior view in three point perspective and so we have our one point of perspective down here we have one point going off to the left and we have another point coming off to our right sometimes we're very high looking down and so horizontal eye level is actually above everything in our view but it's the same principle we find the vertical eye level and on that line our third point perspective will meet and of course we can see that our first and second point perspective lines will meet on horizontal eye level in this case quite some distance to the right invariably if we use a camera to take a photo the camera exaggerates the vertical perspective angles and so we see this leaning in towards the center in situations where in real life we wouldn't see it and if i want to draw this scene get the choice of actually drawing this lens distortion or i can choose to draw it making all of these lines vertical to reflect what i actually see if i'm looking in the street and that's what i chose to do with this scene i straightened all the lines because i decided i didn't want a distortion in my drawing that i wouldn't have seen at least in some way in real life and so this is three point perspective one and two points off to the left and right and then a third point either going downwards or upwards depending whether we're looking down or whether we're looking up usually happening when the object is very tall or goes down a long way and we're quite close to it i hope this has helped you to understand the differences between one two and three point perspective that it will make it easier to see what's in front of us if we're drawing from life or from a photo or to know what we're trying to create and the best way to get a realistic appearance if we're trying to draw from our imagination hope it's been helpful so keep drawing and have fun bye

Channel: Stephen Travers Art

Views: 276,306

Keywords: stephen travers art, perspective, how to draw perspective, understanding perspective, drawing perspective, perspective for buildings, drawing architecture, how to draw buildings, practical perspective, street drawing

Id: d1B4e2UbQOc

Length: 17min 50sec (1070 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 02 2022