In the last video we covered the basics of human proportion and learned to construct the human stick figure completely from scratch. Now it's time to take it one step further and learn about perspective. Perspective is basically the art of making two directional art look three deminsional. It's extremely important in figure drawing, because as soon as you once draw a figure in any other position than the standard front view, you need to understand how perspective will change the way that figure will look, otherwise your drawing will never look realistic. For example, here's a drawing of a brick without the use of perspective, it looks flat and very uninteresting. Now,here's the same brick drawn with the use of perspective, it looks much more realistic and fun to look at. That's how much of a difference a little bit of perspective can make. Now, perspective can be a very complex subject so we wont be able to cover everything in this short video. But, I will try to do my best and give a crash course and teach you the most important elements that will make the biggest difference to your drawing. Then we'll go through a step-by-step practical exercise and show you how to draw your first three dimensional figure. OK, so let's begin.... Ok so let's begin by covering some of the basic elements of a perspective drawing. The first element you need to be familiar with is called the horizon line. And the horizon line is this horizontal line here that stretches across this drawing. It's defined as the eye level of the observer in the drawing. So basically, every perspective drawing is drawn from the point of the observer. So in this drawing the observer is standing somewhere around here on the train track and looking in this direction and we're seeing the drawing as if from his eyes. And, so the horizon line is basically the eye level where that observer is looking. If that observer was sitting down then the horizon line would be slightly lower. If that observer was up in the air flying, lets say, then the horison line would be higher up in the sky. And the reason the horizon line is importnat is becasue it determines the point of view of the drawing and how everything else is going to look. Another reason why it's important is becasue it's the place where you will find the vanishing point, and that's the second element of perspective drawing. The vanishing point would be this point right here, this tiny dot, and it's called the vanishing point because it's the point where everything in the seems to disappear to. Now thats due to a imporntant rule of perspective and that is as something moves further away from your eyes it will appear smaller. For example, if you take a look at this pencil, it's of a certain size, but, as I move it away from the camera it gets smaller and smaller. And if I were able to keep moving it from the camera that way it would eventually get so small it would disappear into a dot. And that's what the vanishing point is, everything in this picture yield to this vanishing point and disappear into it. So, this plank of wood right here on the rail, each on these planks of wood are the same size but becasue as they move further away from the observer they get smaller and smaller until they disappear into a dot at the vanishing point. Same applies to these telephone poles, they get smaller and shorter as they move towards the vanishing point. And same applies for the house, the house happened to be cut off right here but if it was to be extended in this direction you would see it disappering into the vanishing point as well. Thats why you'll notice that everything in this drawing can be connected to the vanishing point by a straight line. The railroad connects to it, the house is sloped in a way that makes it converge towards the vanishing point and same goes for the telephone pole. So in this regard, the vanishing point is probably the most imporant element in a perspective drawing because everthing in the drawing is measured against it, everything yields towards it and it's the center point of the entire drawing. Ok, so that's pretty much the two most importnat elements of the drawing. Now, let's talk about different types of perspective drawing. So, with regards to perspective drawing, there's actually three types: first, we have 1-point perspective and that would be illustrated by this right here. It's called 1-point perspective becasue it only has one vanishing point. So, there's the sole vanishing point in the drawing and all the lines that are going in this direction converge towards the vanishing point, and the vertical and hosrizontal line is uneffected. The second type is called 2-point perspective, that's where you have two vanishing points. In this case, all the lines that are going in this direction and this direction have to converge towards the vanishing point, but, the vertical lines are uneffected. And there's another type of perspective drawing called 3-point perspective. That's basically when you have, in addition to these two vanishing points, a third vanishing point somehwere down in this direction in the vertical direction.

And in that case, even the vertical lines will converge towards that vanishing point. You don't see a lot of 3-point perspective usually, and when you do see it, it's more of a fisheye distorted look. So, we wont be covering 3-point perspective in this video, mainly we will be more concerned with 2-point perspective. Now, with regard to 2-point perspective, there's something you should know about the distance between the vanishing point. So, if you look at this drawing right here, you have two vanishing points at the far end of the paper right on the horizon line and we have a very normal looking 3-dimensional square. It looks fine and adheres to all the rules of perspective and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. But, if you were to move the two vanishing points closer together, like in this picture, the drawing suddenly looks very distorted. Even though it technically is correct and following all the rules of perspective, becasue the two vsanishing pointsare so close together it causes it to look very distorted as if you're looking at it through a fisheye lens. So, if you ever find yourself drawing perspective and you're wondering why your drawing looks weird and you cant figure out what you're doing wrong. It's most likely becasue you're setting the two vanishing points too close together. That's a very common mistake that has a very easy fix. So, when I'm drawing perspective I always like to set my vanishing points as far away on the paper as possible. So, if I'm normally working with a paper like this I put it on the two far ends. And if possible I like to work with bigger pieces of paper so I can set the vanishing points even further if I need to and sometimes the situation my call for you to put the vanishing point off the paper. You need it to be so far away you cant even put the vanishing point on the paper. In that case you just have to imagine where it is and try to keep all the lines accurate to that point. Ok so that's pretty much all there is to perspective that you need to know now. Of coarse, there is a lot more to it but that should give you a quick crash coarse so you can get started drawing perspective. So, now that you know the basics, let's go through a basic exercise to help you apply all this knowledge. Ok, so, before we apply all the things we know about perspective to drawing a human figure we need to first get used to working with perspective by drawing simpler objects. So, in this exercise I'm going to show you how to take this 2 dimensional flat looking object of three spheres stacked on top of each other and show you how to apply perspective to it to make it look three dimensional, like this.