Many students accurately describe Perspective as 'from ones own point of view'. And this is true both in describing an event and in drawing. Perspective is from the Latin perspicere - 'to see through' and when drawing refers to the approximate representation of a scene onto a flat surface.
Since the angle that we perceive an object gets smaller as the object gets farther away, it appears to recede towards a Vanishing Point. As an example: when we look down at our feet we observe them from a 90* angle and they appear the correct size and with lots of detail; when we look at ship way out on the ocean we observe it at an angle approaching 0* and it looks like a dot with no detail. Similarly a strait road out in the country appears to disappear into a point. The students observed this effect just by looking at tables across the room! Try closing one eye and lining up your hands along the edges of a table. You will find when you open both eyes that your hands are not parallel - the table edges appear to converge somewhere in the distance. Even though this is an artificial illusion, a drawing that doesn't take into account Perspective and Vanishing Point looks strange.
We started our lesson with some exercises in 1 point perspective with squares and rectangles. Note that in 1 point perspective, all lines of depth 'going into the page' appear to vanish however, all vertical and horizontal lines remain horizontal and vertical.
Those who wanted additional challenges drew the inside edges of the boxes as if they were clear. We also tried perspective drawing with complex shapes. The following slide show demonstrates the technique - ask your child to show you how to do it at home!
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Next we worked with 2 point perspective. Note that with 2 point perspective, all vertical lines remain vertical however all horizontal lines and lines of depth into the page appear to vanish.
First off, we defined our horizon line and placed 2 vanishing points on that line. Then we drew boxes as seen from the front edge. You may follow along with the slide show and ask your child to demonstrate at home.
