2 Point Perspective

I've gone over singular point perspective, that's just in my last post - so it's time to level up. On to two point perspective, where the rules change a little:

1. Objects closer to the viewer appear larger.
2. All parallel lines intersect at a vanishing point on the horizon line.
3. There is more than one vanishing point.

Can you handle that one extra rule? No? Well, crank up your techno and let's break it the hell down then, because this is--

Perspective 2: Electric Boogaloo

Have you got your techno? I've got mine. Go on, I can wait. Okay, are you ready? Let's dive right in. 

Here we have an example - a few examples, actually, because as it turns out my last post was really lacking in terms of following the assignment parameters - of two point perspective, with some guidelines drawn for you. Do you want to know why I draw on the guidelines? Because you are my everything.

Image found through Google Images (then drawn on)

Again, this is really... rather boring; you've got your two vanishing points on the horizon line there, and it all comes together neatly and nicely. Let's shake this up, ladies and gents!


Here, we move on to my thumbnail examples and personal notes:

Foreground elements are cool because they can even out the image. Here, I have a building right in the forefront. Notice that it doesn't grab your attention as much as the background, because it serves as visual relief, and takes down the amount of detail/pencil mileage you need to fill up the image. 



...They are great in a time crunch, by the way.

In the same vein as foreground elements, you don't need to have ALL THE THINGS. You can leave it largely to organic shapes, with some architectural accents. How many or how little is up to you, but you don't have to crank the detail up to 11 to get a nice image.

Seriously. This is a lesson. A valuable one.

They can't all be winners. I'm telling you that right now, because this is one thumbnail that would just not do what I wanted. I attempted an extreme angle with really close vanishing points, but that didn't work out. I moved the horizon line way up, that didn't work out for me so well either. So I tried something fairly average, which was turning out rather well until I Bob Rossed¹ all over it.

The lesson? Sometimes, you will draw crap. Don't get discouraged by it. Learn from the crap.

I learned that putting the vanishing points really close together looks really fucking bizarre, no matter how many times I attempted to pull it off (there were several, actually).


And now, for the not-thumbnail-but-still-very-much-a-draft image:

Here's an attempt to apply the first two principles. Applying the third one would have been counterproductive, so I skipped it (haaa). I've got a big tree to the side to balance out the large wall/gate, and a large grassy area I resisted putting fountains and things on. Shabang. Done.

¹ Bob Ross [bɑb rɑs] -verb

To make something nice and then take the artistic equivalent of a shit all over it by doing a big blotch in the middle.