1 POINT
PERSPECTIVE
MADE EASY
Free Version
Copyright © 2020 Jon Grim USA, All rights reserved
Table of Contents
Terminology..............................................3
Intro..........................................................5
Chapter 1: Foundation.............................6
Chapter 2: Horizon Line............................8
Chapter 3: 1 Point Perspective Basics ..10
Chapter 4: Graffiti 1 Point Perspective ...16
Chapter 5: Ending Note..........................20
Thank You...............................................21
Terminology
Perspective - The act of drawing 3D
objects on a two dimensional surface.
1 Point Perspective - A scene who's
receding lines converge to a singular
point on the horizon line.
Vanishing Point - A point located on the
horizon line where receding lines
converge.
Horizon Line - The imaginary line that
separates the sky from the ground. This
is often called "the eye line" as this line is
in line with the eyes of where we are
viewing.
Line - A point moving accost space
creating a mark with a longer length than
width.
Vertices - The point where two lines
meet.
Apex - Highest point, or top of something.
Volume - The representation of mass in a
work of art.
Form - A shape that looks to have height
width and length.
Isometric 3D ( isometric projection) - The
representing of a 3D form where all of it's
sides are foreshortened equally.
INTRO
Today we're going to learn how to apply 1 point
perspective to our graffiti and this eBook will change
how you see and do graffiti forever! Let me be clear,
most graffiti artists don't know 1 point perspective,
they do vanishing point 3D and this totally excludes
horizon lines. This is a watered down simplified
version of 1 point perspective that will rob you of lots
of information and will only cause you problems as
you advance. Many don't realize that this small
change is why they have issues drawing
backgrounds or characters near graffiti. In this E
Book I'm going to teach you the science of basic 1
point perspective for graffiti and how it's used so that
you don't end up in that same rut and so your pieces
don't look flat the second you want a background or
character in your image. You can expect to learn a
little about forms, how they function in space, as well
as how to apply this to graffiti. Learning this will
change how you see graffiti and how you do graffiti,
as this partially responsible for both 3D graffiti as
well as hybrid styles.
While we will be going over a bunch of information,
remember, this topic goes much more in depth and I
encourage you to do additional research on
perspective. This E Book is meant to teach you the
basics of how this applies to traditional graffiti, so
while you will learn the science of how it's done and
how to do it on your graffiti, we are only scratching
the surface of perspective. If you're interested in
traditional 3D for graffiti be sure to pick out our "How
to draw 3D E-Book" on the topic as that book as lots
of techniques you'll need for the lesson in this book.
FOUNDATION
Once you dedicate to drawing in perspective you
begin to enter a whole new method of drawing. To
start off, we need to get some common terms out of
the way that way as we continue we can keep
everyone on the same page. Two lines that stay of
equal distance to one another are called parallel
lines. These lines will never touch one another no
matter how long these lines go as shown below.
You then have diagonal lines, and these are lines
with a slanted direction to them. They can be used
to connect opposite vertices of polygons.
HORIZON LINE
With these you can begin to build forms instead of
shapes. Forms take up space and contain volume,
but because we're drawing, all of these things are
are 2D so we need to put our forms into perspective
that way they can take up space and appear 3D. We
can do this by putting a Horizon Line (HL for short)
on the page. Doing this, even without a vanishing
point will tell us the forms orientation in space.
Objects under the HL will appear as if we are looking
down at them and objects above will looks as if we
are looking up at the object and as we'll see later in
the book, objects on the HL will appear as if we are
looking at the object from the front and we wont see
its top or bottom and so long as the vanishing point
isn't directly behind the form then we'll see it's side
as well.
Horizon line is really important for perspective and
it's an essential part of perspective. You see, the
horizon line is where the sky and the ground meet
and it's always at eye level of the person/camera
angle we are viewing the scene from. The HL is
often referred too as eye level as this line more
times than not will follow the figurative "eyes" of
which we are viewing from. When starting to learn
this you may do and or see this line done mostly in
the center of the page but it does not by any means
have to be in the center all of the time, this is just the
easiest way for most artists to do it so for this tutorial
we will mostly be putting the HL in the center.
1 POINT
PERSPECTIVE
BASICS
Now that we introduced the HL we can now talk
about the Vanishing Point (VP for short). This is the
point where all converging lines will go to. No matter
if the object is above, below or on the HL, it's
receding lines will always go to the VP.
Unlike the forms we previously showed when using
just the HL without the VP, these forms accurately
recede into space because they go to the VP. This
also gives us the chance to observe more clearly
how objects above the HL are viewed as if we're
looking upwards at it. Objects under the HL are
viewed as if we are looking down at it and objects on
the HL have just the front and the side exposed.
In our last example although we used the HL to
figure out the orientation of the forms, our forms
looked flat because although they had a HL they
didn't have any depth as the receding lines did not
go to the VP. Here our forms do travel away from us
to the VP and that's what gives us depth.The VP can
go anywhere on the HL but it is always on the
horizon line and that's very important to note. Now
you might be curious as to other forms like spheres
or cylinders and don't worry, the formula stays the
same for all forms. Let's have a look at a circle and a
sphere in perspective because they work the same.
If we want to project this into perspective all we have
to do is find our VP and draw a line from the VP to
the apex of the circle in relation to the VP.
These two red lines will tell us where our circle or
sphere will recede back into so we know where to
put them. Those of you with a keen eye may have
realized by now, you just learned how to draw front
facing cylinders in perspective too. When drawing a
front facing cylinder perspective works similar to our
circle but all you have to do is connect the two
circles with a rounded line.
It's important to make sure that your receding lines
go to the circles apex otherwise you'll have a
distorted form.
The same is true for the line that connects the two
receding lines. You want this line to reflect the
roundness of the cylinder accurately otherwise you'll
distort the form once again.
For this portion of the ebook we will stick to forms
that directly apply to what you'll see in Traditional
graffiti. For this reason we wont show how to draw
pyramids, cones, and cylinders that aren't front
facing. Although those are possible in graffiti, the
instances would be more advanced forms of graffiti
such as 3D graffiti or Hybrid style graffiti. In the
interest of staying on track, we will keep it to relevant
topics as to not confuse or detract from our lesson.
These forms will be covered in our how to draw
forms book.
GRAFFITI
1 POINT
PERSPECTIVE
Now that you have a basic idea how perspective and
horizon lines work we can start doing 1 point
perspective on our graffiti. Once you have your
letters all sketched out you'll want to draw a HL
across your page lightly so you can erase it later.
From here you will put your VP on this HL. Other
than contextualizing all of your forms, the HL will
also develop depth and space more efficiently then
simply plopping a dot on a page.
At this point you can begin plotting your 3D by
drawing the receding line from each vertices / apex
of the letter to the VP. If you're confused about what
vertex or what apex to draw a line from for your 3D
then check out my "How to Draw 3D E-Book" for
free.
You can see here that the blue lines go from the
different vertices and apexes to the VP but if we
allow the blue lines to go too far then they begin to
fuse together and it becomes a focal point and it
even flattens the image. We don't want that, so to
avoid this we have to cut the receding line off at
whatever depth we want the 3D to be.
Looking at these two letters here we can see the
receding lines are now cut down to size. Each one of
these is the same size, keeping them relatively the
same size will let you make sure your 3D is
consistent throughout the piece. Now all that's left to
do is to connect the receding lines together the
same as you normally would for traditional isometric
3D in graffiti and you're done.
Over all a pretty easy technique and its a really
diverse, and adaptable technique that allows you to
do tons more than if you had just putting a single dot
randomly on a page with no thought to it. Having
one point perspective in your skill set really makes
your graffiti pop and brings it to life even if you
choose to just use the HL and do more traditional
graffiti's 3D. Typically, graffiti artists will paint or draw
a character and it will have this copy and pasted
look to it and it wont really fit with the piece at all.
Rather it looks placed there resulting in a
shoehorned character that doesn't fit with the rest of
the image. Doing this comes off forced and can
often take away from the graffiti. While yes, this can
be done well, relying on only that method will limit
what you can do with your graffiti. This sort of
learning will also teach you bad habits that will be
more difficult to break the longer you keep the habit
up.
ENDING NOTE
On the basic level, you can have a more convincing
characters that don't look so copied and pasted.
Understanding how horizon lines work and
understanding how important they are to your graffiti
can allow you to really bring your pieces and
characters to life and make them pop! Everything
from realistic characters and graffiti - the least
realistic cartoons and graffiti can all benefit from
understanding this topic and the better you know it
the better your work will be. Thank you for being a
part of this review and supporting the content. The
support allows me to continue making all of these
tutorials. Be sure to check out the other
informational tutorials on a wide range of topics to
make learning graffiti fun and easy!
THANK YOU
Thank you for being a part of this series and
supporting the content. The support allows me to
continue making all of these tutorials. Be sure to
check out the other informational tutorials on a wide
range of topics to make learning graffiti fun and
easy!
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