Compositional Devises

Including Linear and

Aerial Perspectives
There are two main elements in
perspective drawing:

Linear Perspective which deals

with the organisation of shapes in space.
Aerial Perspective which deals with
the atmospheric effects on tones and colours.
Linear perspective
a system of creating
an illusion of depth on a flat surface. All
parallel lines (orthogonals) in a painting
or drawing using this system converge in
a single vanishing point on the
composition’s horizontal line.
Aerial perspective ,

also called atmospheric perspective, method of

creating the illusion of depth, or recession, in a
painting or drawing by modulating colour to
simulate changes effected by the atmosphere
on the colours of things seen at a distance.
PERSPECTIVE DRAWING

is a technique used to represent three-dimensional images on a

two-dimensional picture plane. In our series of lessons on
perspective drawing we explain the various methods of
constructing an image with perspective and show how these are
used by artists and illustrators.
"Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the
horse, the rudder to a ship……………..There are three
aspects to perspective. The first has to do with how
the size of objects seems to diminish according to
distance: the second, the manner in which colors
change the farther away they are from the eye; the
third defines how objects ought to be finished less
carefully the farther away they are."

-Leonardo da Vinci
The Techniques of Linear and Aerial
Perspective
Perspective of the Picture and
Ground Plane
The Horizon and The Eye Level
Composing a scene around the Horizon/Eye
Level
The horizon / eye level is the axis around which a
perspective drawing is constructed.
When we are outdoors we use the horizon as a point of
reference to judge the scale and distance of objects in
relation to us.
In perspective drawing, the horizon also happens to be
the viewer’s eye-level.
In art, we tend to use the term ‘eye level’, rather than
‘horizon’ as in many pictures, the horizon is frequently
hidden by walls, buildings, trees, hills etc.
One Point Perspective
In our one point perspective drawing above, you can see
the lines of construction used to draw the two rectangles
from our illustration of the picture plane.
There are two types of construction lines used in this
perspective drawing:
ORTHOGONAL LINES which we have drawn in RED.
TRANSVERSAL LINES which we have drawn in GREEN.
Orthogonal Lines

-Orthogonal lines are parallel to the ground plane and move back
from the picture plane.
-Orthogonal lines set the varying heights or widths of a rectangular
plane as it recedes from view.
-Orthogonal lines always appear to meet at a vanishing point on the
eye level.
-Transversal lines are always at right angles to the orthogonal lines.
-Transversal lines are parallel to the picture plane and to one another.
-Transversal lines establish a fixed height or width between two
orthogonal lines.
-Transversal lines form the nearest and furthest edges of a rectangle
as it recedes from view.
Transversal Lines
Vanishing Points

VANISHING POINTS, which we have drawn in BLUE,

are dots on the eye-level where parallel lines seem to
converge and disappear. Both illustrations on this
page use a single vanishing point and demonstrate
the simplest form of perspective drawing: One Point
Perspective.
The Perspective Drawing of a Box
ONE POINT PERSPECTIVE
Two Point Perspective
The Technique of Two-Point
Perspective
TWO POINT PERSPECTIVE

is used in this illustration to draw a box which has now

been rotated at an angle to the picture plane.
Two point perspective uses two sets of orthogonal
lines and two vanishing points to draw each object.
Three Point Perspective is the most complex
form of perspective drawing. Three point
perspective uses three sets of orthogonal
lines and three vanishing points to draw each
object.
Three Point Perspective

Three Point Perspective from a Low Eye

Level
Three Point Perspective from a High Eye Level
DIMENSIONS
One Dimension: Once you
connect two points, you get a
one-dimensional object — a
line segment. A line segment
has one dimension: length. Two
Dimensions: A flat plane or
shape is two-dimensional. Its
two dimensions are length and
width. Polygons, such as
squares and rectangles, are
examples of two-dimensional
objects.