How to Do Perspective Drawing with One Vanishing Point

You may have noticed that when something is far away, it looks a lot smaller than when it’s close up. When drawing, you might want to create the effect that something is further away than something else. How can you do this on a flat piece of paper where everything is close to you?

To create this effect, you can use something called perspective drawing. In this entry, you will learn how to draw with one vanishing point.

To make a perspective drawing, you first need a horizon line. The horizon line is always a level line, at eye height, perfectly horizontal from left to right.

Everything you draw under the horizon line is something you’re looking down upon, and we call this a bird’s eye perspective. If you want many things in your drawing to be seen from a bird’s eye perspective, then you need to draw your horizon line higher up on your paper.

If you draw most things above the horizon line, it will be as if you’re looking up at the objects you’ve drawn. A drawing like this is called worm’s eye perspective.

It’s smart to draw the horizon line far down on the paper when you draw from a worm’s eye perspective. When you do, you can fit more things above the horizon line.

If you draw your horizon line through the middle of the paper, it will create the effect of looking right at something. When you do so, it’s called eye height perspective. Since you’ve drawn the horizon line through the middle, you’ll have plenty of room to draw things both below and above the horizon line. With eye height perspective, you’re looking straight at something.