Soizic Mouton - How to Draw an Object: The Foolproof Method

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To my mom,
who taught me to watch,
and to take note

Whatever you want to draw, you need to get acquaintedjust a bitwith perspective. For many of us, perspective is a scary word that calls to mind plastic rulers, vanishing points, erasers, and a big headache. But dont stress out! Learning just a few basic rules will be enough for you to give realistic shape to pretty much anything. And the most important rule is that rules are there to be broken. Sometimes its better to totally ignore perspective just to make your drawing even more obvious. The aim here is to give you the keys to a drawing style that is quick to do, and engaging to look at. So get inspired by the examples, take a deep breath, and get out there and draw it!

Get ready to say good-bye to those unidentified drawing objects!

Soizic Mouton

Everything in the world is subject to the laws of perspective. Even if that sounds both tedious and slightly scary, we have to go with it if we are going to try to draw objects. But we will also discover how perspective can help us understand how objects look. And that we can actually cheat with perspective, tooso were not getting superfrustrated instead of having fun. And lets start with some good news: Its the same technique for both rectangles and for circles .

First, lets think about this mathematical rule:
Perspective = location within a space + viewpoint + vanishing point + horizon line.

The vanishing point is an imaginary point representing the infinite distance, which we place on the horizon line of the drawing. The horizon line marks the separation between the ground and the sky. And we need a vanishing point because all the parallel lines in a drawing will converge toward this exact point.

To start a drawing, we first need to decide where to place the horizon line and the vanishing point. Just by doing this, we are already making some big decisions about the drawing. There are an infinite number of vanishing points along the horizon line, and by taking just one step to one side or the other will already change the viewpoint, which will in turn change the vanishing point, and the perspective. The key is to figure out how to choose a good vanishing point, and a good horizon line.

With the horizon line midway down the sheet of paper, and the vanishing point midway along the horizon line, you get a head-on viewpoint. This is one to avoid. The perspective wont be any easier to construct, and the drawing will risk looking a bit dull.

Putting the horizon line higher up on the paper can give the impression that we, the viewer, are either nearer to the ground, or small in relation to the overall scene, or even that the background is quite close to our viewpoint (like the wall of a room).

On the other hand, if the horizon line is lower down, it could show that we are very high up, or relatively tall, or that the backdrop is a long way off.

Here is the horizon line with a red dot showing the vanishing point (chosen at random), and a rectangle.

To draw a rectangular solid shape, start by tracing lines from each corner and back to the vanishing point. These lines are called vanishing lines, or construction lines.

The vanishing lines create a sort of corridor in which you could draw an infinite number of rectangles. So next, just select one point on one of the vanishing lines, and then simply draw in the horizontals and verticals. We now have a rectangle that has changed dimensions (becoming smaller) while keeping the exact proportions of the original rectangle. This allows our brain to pick up an effect of depth in the drawing: the illusion of three dimensions.

No need to draw any more lines. I can use the vanishing lines as the edges of my shapeand so here is the finished rectangle in perspective.

One thing to watch: in the previous example, we placed our rectangle completely below the horizon line. But we can just as easily place it across this line, or completely above itand still be able to draw in the construction lines to the vanishing point.

In the first example, we were looking down onto the object from above, and could see the top of it. This time, we are slightly below it, with the object placed on the ground and extending up into the sky section of the drawing. So we can no longer see the top of it.

Yes but what happens if the first rectangle that we draw is not seen head-on? In this case, things are a little more complicated because we now need TWO vanishing points.