perspective and how do VP work
3yr
Jonas Gezels
I'm currently digging in perspective again as I feel like I don't appy these things really in my work, what I find the most hard to get is how vanishing points work and the horizon line and eye line, are the horizon line the same as the eye? the drawabox says that they most of the time line up.
also can objects in the same drawing have a different horizon line or do they all follow the same one? is it possible for object to have different vanishing points then others or do they all follow the same one?
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3yr
Hey @Jonas Gezels! Looks like all your questions orbit the core of perspective basics - Vanishing points and horizon line/eye level are the most crucial concepts to undserstand perspective. I think it's great that you're having these doubts, it means you're in the middle of the learning process. I'll try to answer your questions as objectively as possible, although what I think will really help you is that you spend some more time studying these subjects until you feel them making more sense in your mind and in your drawings.
. Yes, "horizon" and "eye level" roughly refer to the same thing - it's the height from where the viewer views the scene. An image in perspective (be it a drawing, a painting, a photo etc.) is always an image that represents a specific point of view - it's like where seeing the scene through someone's eyes. If this someone is a person standing up on the ground and staring straight ahead, we'll get a perspective that is close to the ordinary human experience of sight in daily life; but if the person goes up or down (ducks on the ground, flies on a hang-glider... or whatever), their eye level (a.k.a. the horizon of their perspective) will change accordingly.
. Can objects in the same drawing have different horizon lines? No! For each scene in perspective, there's always only 1 horizon. I like to think of the horizon not as something "out there", but as a property of the viewer's eye. Also, rather than a line, I prefer imagining the horizon as an imaginary plane that crosses the viewer's eye level and divides what he sees into upward and downward, as illustrated by Phil Metzger in this first image I attached. (The words in Spanish read: nível de vision = "eye level"; "this part of the tree is above eye level"; "this part of the tree is below eye level").
. And is it possible for objects to have different vanishing points than others? Yes, totally! In a scene in perspective, the horizon is just one, but the vanishing points can be multiple! Actually, it's more common that each object will have their own set of vanishing points (rather than all objects in the scene follow the same points all the time). A simple way to think of it is like this: if two different objects are aligned in the scene, they will have the same vanishing points; but whenever they're unaligned, each one will have their own set of different vanishing points (see second image attached). Now imagine a scene with several unaligned objects and you'll see that the amount of vanishing points in a scene is pretty much unlimited!
Finally, I have to recommend two of the best perspective resources I know of today:
- CtrlPaint's Perspective sketching series: https://ctrlpaint.myshopify.com/collections/foundation-skills/products/perspective-sketching-1-the-basics
- Marshall Vandruff's 1994 perspective series: http://marshallart.com/SHOP/all-products/all-videos/1994-perspective-drawing-series/
Hope this helps!
Let me know in case you have other questions.
Best regards o/
Let's distinguish between the geographical horizon line and geometrical horizon line. The geographical horizon is there because earth is a sphere, it is where sky and land meet. The geometrical horizon line exists because our eyes and cameras are projection devices, and it is where all vanishing points are located for our viewing direction. If we are looking horizontally (no pun intended), this geographical horizon is at eye level.
Each direction has its own vanishing point, so a complex object with many directions, like an isokaeder, has many vanishing points.