What is perspective in drawing?

The set of rules by which a three-dimensional scene is drawn on a flat surface as the eye sees it. Its core is one fact: lines that are parallel in the world converge in the picture, towards a vanishing point, unless they are parallel to the picture itself. Objects shrink with distance for the same reason.

What is the difference between one, two and three point perspective?

How many families of parallel lines you see converging, which depends on where you stand. Facing a wall square on, only depth converges: one point. At a corner, both horizontal directions converge: two points on the horizon. Tilt your view up or down and the verticals converge too: a third point above or below.

Where should the vanishing points go?

On the horizon, at your eye level, and for a two-point view usually well outside the paper on both sides: about 10 centimetres beyond each edge of a Letter or A4 sheet gives a moderate view. Points placed on the sheet because the sheet ends there make every corner too sharp.

Is the horizon line always at eye level?

Yes. The horizon in a drawing is the height of the viewer's eye carried across the picture, whether or not the real horizon is visible. In a level view it is a straight line through the horizontal vanishing points; when the view tilts steeply it can fall outside the frame.

Who invented linear perspective?

Filippo Brunelleschi is credited with the first demonstration in Florence, dated by his biographer to around 1420 and by other accounts to about 1415. Leon Battista Alberti wrote the first construction down in his treatise on painting of 1435.

Can I draw perspective from a photograph?

Yes, and the photograph has already done the geometry: its straight edges converge on the real vanishing points. Extend two or three edges of one family and they cross at the point. The perspective grid tool does this from the edges it finds in the picture and shows which edges it used.

Perspective Drawing: One Rule, Four Views, and Where You Stand

Perspective is what happens to parallel lines in a picture: they are not parallel any more. Lines that run away from you converge, and the place where they would meet is a vanishing point. Every construction in perspective drawing, from the corridor in a one-point sketch to the bowed walls of a fisheye view, follows from that one fact. The number in the name, one point, two point, three point, is not a style. It counts how many families of parallel lines you can watch converging from where you are standing.

The One Rule, Live

Below is a two-point construction on a blank sheet with a house built from its points. Drag the left or right point and watch the house follow: the walls swing, the roof ridge tilts, the corner sharpens or flattens. Nothing about the house is drawn by hand. Every edge runs to one of the two points or stands upright, and that is the whole of two-point perspective.

Drag a point (Left, Right) and the house follows. Arrow keys move a selected point one step; shift, ten.

Pull a point closer to the sheet and the near corner turns into a wedge, which is the look of every beginner's two-point drawing, and the reason the points belong far outside the paper. Pull it away and the wall relaxes toward a flat elevation. The distance of the points is the width of your view.

Four Views, Decided by Where You Stand

Take a box. It has three families of parallel edges: left to right, front to back, and up and down. Which of those families you see converging depends only on how you are turned and tilted towards it.

View	Where you stand	What converges	What stays parallel	Points
One-point perspective	Square on to a face of the box, looking level	Depth only: the edges running away from you	Horizontals and verticals	1, on the horizon
Two-point perspective	At a corner, looking level	Both horizontal families, each to its own point	Verticals	2, both on the horizon, usually off the sheet
Three-point perspective	At a corner, looking up or down	All three families, the verticals included	Nothing	3, the third far above or below
Curvilinear perspective	Taking in a very wide angle, or looking through a fisheye lens	Everything, and straight edges image as curves	Only a line through the centre of vision	4 or more, in pairs

The sequence is a sequence of standpoints, not of difficulty. If you find yourself wanting the side wall of a one-point room to lean, you have moved to the corner and are in a two-point view. If the tower in your photograph appears to lean backwards, the camera was tilted and you are in three point, whether you meant to be or not. Each page above takes one view, shows it live, and gives an exercise with measurements you can do today.

The Horizon Is Your Eye Level

Every horizontal vanishing point sits on one line: the horizon, which is nothing more than the height of your eye carried across the picture. Everything above it you are looking up at, everything below it you are looking down at. It is not a line you draw first and build on; it is the consequence of where you stand, and in a photograph it can fall outside the frame altogether when the camera tilts. Its own page, the horizon line, covers where it is in each view, when it images straight, and the two places people put it that ruin a drawing.

Where the Points Really Are

The single most common error in perspective drawing is putting the vanishing points on the paper because that is where the paper ends. In a comfortable view of a building, the two points of a two-point construction lie well outside the sheet on both sides. On the printable grids below they stand about 10 centimetres (4 inches) beyond each side edge of a Letter or A4 sheet, and that is a moderate, not an extreme, angle of view. Bring them onto the paper and the corner of the building sharpens into a wedge, because a point on the sheet means an angle of view wider than any lens you would choose.

On paper the remedy is a larger board: tape the sheet to it and put the points on the board. In the browser the perspective grid tool zooms the view out so the points are visible where they really are, and it can read them out of a photograph's straight edges instead of asking you to guess.

Printable Perspective Grids

Eight sheets, one per view on Letter and A4, drawn from the same geometry the tool and the constructions on these pages use. The horizon runs 89 millimetres (3.5 inches) from the bottom edge on Letter and 85 millimetres on A4, so a standing figure's eye level sits a little below the middle of the sheet. The footer of each sheet says where its points are. Print at 100 percent, not "fit to page", and the guides keep their angles.

One-point perspective grid, Letter landscapeDownload PDF
One-point perspective grid, A4 landscapeDownload PDF
Two-point perspective grid, Letter landscapeDownload PDF
Two-point perspective grid, A4 landscapeDownload PDF
Three-point perspective grid, Letter landscapeDownload PDF
Three-point perspective grid, A4 landscapeDownload PDF
Curvilinear (four-point) perspective grid, Letter landscapeDownload PDF
Curvilinear (four-point) perspective grid, A4 landscapeDownload PDF

Use the one-point sheet under tracing paper for a room or a street; the two-point sheet for any building seen from its corner; the three-point sheet when the view looks up or down; the curvilinear sheet for the wide, bowing space of a fisheye view or a very wide interior. A grid is scaffolding: draw with a hard pencil over it, then take the sheet away.

Where It Comes From

Linear perspective as a construction is a Florentine invention of the early fifteenth century. Filippo Brunelleschi is credited with the first demonstration, a painted panel of the Baptistery viewed through a peephole and compared with the building itself, dated by his biographer Antonio Manetti to around 1420 and by other accounts to about 1415. Brunelleschi wrote nothing down. The first written construction is in Leon Battista Alberti's treatise on painting of 1435, whose first book sets out how to draw a floor of square tiles so that its receding edges meet at a single point at the viewer's eye level, with the rows of tiles foreshortening correctly towards it.

Albrecht Dürer's manual on measurement of 1525 carried the method north and gave it the apparatus everyone pictures: a draughtsman sighting through a squared frame at his subject, drawing what he sees in each square onto a squared sheet. That woodcut is on our grid method page, because the frame is also the ancestor of the drawing grid. The curved construction came much later: Albert Flocon and André Barre set out a system of curvilinear perspective in 1968, in which straight lines image as curves and objects shrink with distance in every direction.

From Knowing It to Using It

Knowing which view you are in is half of a perspective drawing. The other half is placing the points where the scene puts them. Working from a photograph, the perspective grid tool finds the straight edges and the point each family agrees on, and the how-to walks through judging that reading. Working from life or imagination, the article on perspective grid drawing covers the diagonal method for measuring depth without a ruler, and drawing architecture with a grid shows a square grid and a perspective grid doing different jobs on the same building.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is perspective in drawing?: The set of rules by which a three-dimensional scene is drawn on a flat surface as the eye sees it. Its core is one fact: lines that are parallel in the world converge in the picture, towards a vanishing point, unless they are parallel to the picture itself. Objects shrink with distance for the same reason.
What is the difference between one, two and three point perspective?: How many families of parallel lines you see converging, which depends on where you stand. Facing a wall square on, only depth converges: one point. At a corner, both horizontal directions converge: two points on the horizon. Tilt your view up or down and the verticals converge too: a third point above or below.
Where should the vanishing points go?: On the horizon, at your eye level, and for a two-point view usually well outside the paper on both sides: about 10 centimetres beyond each edge of a Letter or A4 sheet gives a moderate view. Points placed on the sheet because the sheet ends there make every corner too sharp.
Is the horizon line always at eye level?: Yes. The horizon in a drawing is the height of the viewer's eye carried across the picture, whether or not the real horizon is visible. In a level view it is a straight line through the horizontal vanishing points; when the view tilts steeply it can fall outside the frame.
Who invented linear perspective?: Filippo Brunelleschi is credited with the first demonstration in Florence, dated by his biographer to around 1420 and by other accounts to about 1415. Leon Battista Alberti wrote the first construction down in his treatise on painting of 1435.
Can I draw perspective from a photograph?: Yes, and the photograph has already done the geometry: its straight edges converge on the real vanishing points. Extend two or three edges of one family and they cross at the point. The perspective grid tool does this from the edges it finds in the picture and shows which edges it used.

Sources

Linear Perspective: Brunelleschi's Experiment, Smarthistory. The demonstration panel of the Baptistery, dated by Manetti to around 1420.
Linear perspective, Encyclopaedia Britannica. Orthogonals, horizon line and vanishing point; the system dated to about 1415 and documented by Alberti in 1435.
On Painting, Book One, Leon Battista Alberti, 1435, translated by John R. Spencer. The centric ray and the construction of the foreshortened floor.
Curvilinear Perspective: From Visual Space to the Constructed Image, Albert Flocon and André Barre, 1968; English edition University of California Press, 1987. The system in which straight lines image as curves and size decreases with distance in every direction.

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