Mark Crilley - Mastering Manga, How to Draw Manga Scenes

If youve ever stood on a straight stretch of railroad track and looked way down to where rails almost seem to touch, youve seen this style of perspective in action. Though in a real street these lines would be parallel, in a one-point perspective, they merge together as they reach the horizon. This is the vanishing point.

Follow this brief step-by-step lesson to draw an open cardboard box in perspective. It may not look like a masterpiece, but itll help you understand the basic concept of how it all works. Since all the other perspectives build on the same concept, once youve mastered this, you can conquer those tricky backgrounds.

Draw a horizon line, place a dot on it, and then draw a box alongside it. Try to put your box in the exact same location I did for the best results.

Now use your ruler to draw four light lines, one from each of the four corners of the box, all the way to the vanishing point.

Draw a second, smaller square inside the first box, taking care to make the corners of the square rest upon the perspective lines. Leave part of the square incomplete. That area will become the opaque side of the box.

Ink the lines of the box and visible horizon line. Erase your pencil lines once the ink is dry.

You have an open cardboard box drawn in absolutely perfect one-point perspective.

Two-Point Perspective

Unlike one-point perspective, which merges into a single vanishing point, two-point perspective has two vanishing points set far apart from each other along the horizon line. Youve seen this when youve stood on a street corner. The tops and bottoms of each building point toward their respective vanishing points.

Three-Point Perspective

Three-point perspective is what youd see from above (birds-eye view). The three points need to be very widely spaced for the perspective to look natural and convincing. There is no horizon line.

There is logic to this. Lets say all the north-south streets are heading off toward the upper right-hand point. The east-west streets will all point toward the upper left-hand point. And the sides of the buildings will all point down toward the bottom point.