Drawing & Imaging: Perspective

One Point Perspective

To introduce the topic of perspective, we were assigned to watch a short Youtube tutorial and then try to implement what we had learned in the video in a quick Illustrator sketch. Secondly, we had to choose two hallways in school to draw, one of them with a person. To help us get our proportions right, we built viewfinders out of cardboard and see through foil.

Photographic Exploration of Two Point Perspective at the Highline

To explore two point perspective, we were assigned to scout spots on the Highline that have a good view of a two point perspective cityscape and take a picture of them. The locations had to be possible spots from which we could draw the cityscape.

Observation of Cityscape in Two Point Perspective

Unfortunately, it started raining when we were supposed to go to the Highline to draw the previously found locations. Instead, we went to the library in the University Center and found a two point perspective cityscape that we could draw from inside. I chose to draw the building on the North West corner of 14th St and 5th Ave.

Drawing the Cityscape

The 18×24 drawing was at first drawn live and then continued at home from pictures I took. I tried to get the rough proportions of everything right while drawing from observations, and then started focusing on detail and shading at home when working from the photos. Evaluating the final outcome, I am extremely happy and proud of the drawing, especially when considering how many hours I spent working on it.

Digitalizing a Detailed Clipping of the Cityscape

The next step of the project was to crop the cityscape into a more detailed image and digitalize it on Illustrator. For the first Illustrator drawing, we were supposed to use grayscale only, to imitate our pencil drawing. We were then introduced to the concept of color harmony in class, and assigned to create two Dyad versions of our drawing, one at night time and one at day time. I chose to work with the two complementary colors purple and yellow, working with darker, less saturated colors for the night version, while using more saturated colors on the daytime drawing. Lastly, we were asked to create a composition using a triad of color.

Overall, I’m very satisfied with the outcome of all my illustrator drawings, especially when considering how little experience I had with Illustrator before starting the class. I personally think the grayscale, as well as the triad color drawings are the most successful, because they use such a wide variety of value.

Looking back at the process of the project, as well as the whole unit on perspective, I can conclude that it was definitely my favorite topic. I’ve always loved maths and therefore geometry, which really helped me understand the concepts of both one and two-point perspective.