Simple Exercises for Drawing Perspective

Puño shares three useful exercises that will help beginners to get better at drawing perspective

When it comes to drawing, there are some universal rules based on how human beings perceive things and their cultural norms. Whether you choose to respect these rules, break them, or experiment with them, there’s no doubt that they are essential for every illustrator.

One of these rules is perspective, a technique in figurative art to show the volume, location, and position of an object or person depicted in a drawing. It allows the viewer to see the subject in three dimensions and understand its shape.

There are three key elements you need when drawing perspective: the horizon line, on which you will position your vanishing point; the vanishing point, the point at which all of the perspective lines converge–in the image plane, there are as many vanishing points as there are directions; and vanishing lines, the lines at which all the straight lines in the plane converge.

Apart from being a great illustrator, Puño (@puno) has also dedicated recent years to teaching people who never thought they’d be able to draw, to do just that. Here he shares three simple exercises that will help any beginner to understand and practice perspective:

Exercise 1

1. Draw a point in the middle of your sheet of paper (this will be your vanishing point).

2. Draw some different size squares in various positions around the point (he recommends that you don’t use a ruler as a way to practice drawing parallelograms with equal sides).

3. Once finished, take a ruler and draw the vanishing lines from each of the squares’ corners to your vanishing point. Start with the squares that are closest to the point.

4. Don’t draw the lines if it means they’ll cross over each other. This will allow you to get a much cleaner, three-dimensional view.

Exercise 2

1. Draw a point in the middle of your sheet of paper (this will be your vanishing point).

2. Draw geometric shapes that are more complex than a square around the point, for example a star, a triangle, or a rhombus. They can also be more abstract shapes, as long as they have corners and straight edges.

3. Draw lines that go from each of the corners of each shape to the vanishing point. Start with the shapes that are closest to the point so that they don’t overlap.

4. To know which corner to use to generate a line, you can simply use a ruler to see if it creates a path that doesn’t overlap the shape.

Exercise 3

1. Draw geometric cars without using vanishing points, while remembering to work on volume.

2. Start drawing the front part of the car, where the radiator and headlights go.

3. Develop the profile using diagonal perspective.

4. If you follow the rules, the volume should work.

5. Keep working on your piece until the page is full.

Puño is an illustrator who teaches the following Domestika courses: Drawing for Beginners Level -1, which will help you to tackle the blank page in front of you; Original Illustration by Your Hand and Tablet, which focuses on digital illustration and the world of at-home printing using different inks; and From Beginner to Superillustrator, in which you will question perspective, proportions, shading, and color and become a super illustrator.

You may also like:

–Drawing as a Creative Base, a course by Alex Arizmendi
– Graphic Humour for Beginners, a course by Raúl Salazar
– Illustration of Vectorial Caricatures, a course by Jorge Arévalo