So today I'm going to talk about whether or not perspective is real.
It's not.
For those of you who do not know, this is Marshall Vandruff, co-host of the
Draftsmen podcast and master perspective instructor.
Very humble.
The question is like, what is perspective?
Is it a science?
Is it just math?
Do we actually see things the way perspective rules tell us we see things?
Why are there so many different methods?
There's two point perspective.
Then you got three point perspective.
You got five point and fisheye and one point perspective.
Like how can all of these be true at the same time?
I think that it is both an
Invention and a discovery because the laws of perspective really do work.
They work out on paper where there is a predictability the way it works with
math.
What is math?
Is it an invention or is it a discovery?
I think it's both.
I think that we find out there are truths about the way things work and then we
have to invent methods to contain it, to use it, to understand it.
What were the different ones you listed?
One point, two point, three point, five point, fisheye.
Fisheye is five point.
Yeah.
And all no, those are inventions.
Absolutely.
Okay.
That somebody made a rule that in one point perspective, you can only have one
point etc.
But here is a better way to look at it.
When we see the world, we are in this bubble of complexity.
There is no flat surface we're looking at.
We move our head, we move our eyes, we see peripherally and just for a moment,
look around you and look at how there is a sphere of perception.
It's hard to see that sphere though.
I see straight lines, it's probably my brain interpreting rounded curves as
straights because I know that they're straight, right?
That is exactly what's happening.
It is an optical illusion and the proof of it is that if you sit down and do what
people call perceptual perspective where you draw what's in front of you and it
will if you're looking directly at it, it will probably be in one point
But you draw that the way you see it.
You put this in the center of your page.
You then look up to your left, up to your right, down to your right, down to your
left and do this to the sides and above and draw things as you see them.
And you will find that if you're pretty true to what you're seeing, there are
going to be curved lines in there.
They're going to have to You're gonna have to curve them in order to connect
them to the other You're going to have to, right.
So, that's where you make the discovery that I'm looking at a curved world.
The problem is that we are trying to draw something on a flat piece of paper which
how are we going to account from that?
Okay, we can do this perceptual perspective thing where we will curve the
lines in the picture or we can even go simpler.
So, let's say you're sitting in a hallway, look straight down the hallway
and notice all of these straight lines going away from you converge at one
point.
That's one point perspective.
The other lines will be horizontal or vertical.
Perfectly horizontal, perfectly vertical.
Also because if you they're not perfectly horizontal or vertical, you have to add
another point where they converge.
That's right.
And it's no longer one point.
That's right.
But you try taking a one point picture with your panorama view on your camera
and see what happens.
Can't do it.
So yes, we simplify and say one point goes away, verticals, horizontals.
But as soon as you look at something on its corner where you're looking at it and
two sets of lines are going away, the way we simplify this, it's an invention.
As we say, the ones going off to the left, the ones going off to the right,
they will each have their point and the ones going straight up and down will not.
They'll just go straight up and down all through the picture.
Yeah.
So, we still have not made those verticals converge yet.
Yes.
And then as soon as we look dramatically down on that thing or dramatically up at
it, then we have to have a third point because those lines are going away and
they are tapering and they are tapering to a vanishing point if we're trying to
understand it on a flat piece of paper.
So, that's where three point comes in.
But then, as soon as we want to spread out the view like you get with your
panorama camera, you're going to end up having a vanishing point in the middle,
vanishing points on either side, you look up, you look down, vanishing points above
and below.
So, there are perspective teachers who don't even like this business of one, two
and three point perspective.
They feel like why teach students that when it's such an artificial construct?
How do they get the students to understand what they're seeing?
Without naming any names.
Okay.
I am still going to interview a teacher who was really against it.
He told me, you know, do you teach at one, two and three point?
I say, I explain one, two and three point but I don't
I don't try to boil all of life down to that except as a way to introduce it.
Look at what Rembert does with his drawings where he's unfolding space,
yeah.
He has got multiple vanishing points in there and he understands the simplicity
of five point, crazy as that sounds.
Five point is relatively simple.
We're not going to five point in this course.
For this basic course, we will stick with one, two and three.
This is all we need to start, like you said, introducing ourselves to the idea
and then once you're comfortable with those, then you can start going to five.
But that'll be for Marshall's course.
Yes.
For my course.
Yeah.
One, two and three point have only to do with parallel lines.
That is two lines that are going away in the same direction, when they are going
away in the same direction, will land at a point somewhere out there far away if
it's level at the horizon.
If it's not level, not at the horizon, above or below.
But here's the big thing, parallel lines will meet somewhere.
If there's two sets, figure there's gonna be two vanishing points.
If there's three sets, three.
If there's tumbling things all over, all sorts of vanishing points.
Get used to this because understanding it helps you to put things into boxes and
then have some control about how you are drawing them in space.
It is an artificial construct, it's an invention the way scales are an invention
in music but they are useful for all sorts of musical performance.
That's the simplest I can get for why you care about blocks with parallel lines
going away.
Which is the closest to reality?
Of those Of all the methods we have?
Oh, five point is closest, yeah.
There's nothing closer.
Well, there may be if you have say 17 point, 21 point, 36 point, yes.
You should do one.
But when you say like 20 point, do you just mean that like, oh, this sketchbook
is no longer perpendicular to the horizons or parallel so now we have to
add another point over there?
And this one and this one.
But yes, five point is enough because we've got things what have we got?
We've got things in front of us, above us.
So if I just have two boxes and I take one of them and I kind of like shift them
in all three axes, now we have six-point perspective suddenly.
Here's a way to look at it.
This business of one, two, three and five point has as much to do with how we are
perceiving the world out of one eye, not two eyes.
As soon as you bring two eyes into it, it's more complicated.
We're seeing the world with two eyes.
Put it on paper and we simplify by saying "just look at it through one eye", like a
camera lens, that simplifies in one way.
The next thing is to say are we looking at something straight on or at the corner
and are we looking at stuff above it where we'd have to lift up our eyes and
look up at lines going away up and look down and the more we spread out the field
of vision, the more we need all five points.
Okay.
That's a good explanation of when you go from one to the other and is the general
rule to keep it towards as simple as possible?
Like if all you need is one point to represent what your view is.
Then you stick with one?
I wouldn't say that.
No?
No.
Because one point perspective has a history that it tends to create symmetry
especially if you put it in the middle.
So, you find it in a lot of classical art where things on the left and things at
the right and things above are all pointing in one picture or to one point
in the middle or somewhere near the middle because as soon as you move it off
to the side, you start to need another point to come in there.
Right.
Everything that's farther away starts to look a little bit
Do you remember what Kim Jung Gi said in one of those demos about he didn't really
learn one, two and three point perspective, he simply learned to draw
the box and tumble the box around and if you can tumble the box around, then you
can say
This thing's in this point, this thing's in this point, this thing's in this point
and you've got control over it.
So, I would not say that we need to ever limit ourselves.
The way I think of it, the way I draw perspective when I'm drawing like the
figure and I have all these boxes all over the place that are all tumbling,
they're not in one like perfectly vertical horizontal space.
The way I think of it is every box has its own three-point perspective.
That's right.
Unless they are actually parallel, I won't even compare them in all those
vanishing points.
But also, I do think about how all of those things fit into one larger box and
how that tapering of the hole might make them smaller as they go down that box.
That's very good.
So, you got a big box for the environment.
This is a basic of perspective.
Environment is one thing, the setting that you are in.
The other thing is the things in the setting.
The things in there, they can tumble around on their own.
Environments don't tend to tumble around, they stay put.
Unless it's like some action scene where the whole thing is like rotated and we're
like flying through the air.
And in most cases like that, it's not the environment spinning around, it's the
camera.
But here's something that can help you with perspective is 3D modeling.
Learn to model environments and then move the camera around in the environment and
you'll notice how it's as if the environment was moving but it isn't.
Environment's staying still so it's locked but the perception of it changes.
Then put things in the environment and spin them around and draw from them.
The 3D program
Where you model environments and objects and you control a camera in there is the
culmination of 600 years of perspective knowledge that now the computer does all
this for us.
But I think that it is valuable.
When I was trying to learn perspective, I didn't have any access to 3D programs.
3D programs can be very useful with You didn't have access or they didn't exist?
Actually, they didn't exist for consumers, yeah.
Old people jokes.
What do you think is the most commonly used method?
It's not one point, maybe two or three point?
The most commonly used method by whom though?
By beginners.
Beginners tend to follow rules of one point is easy.
Write your name in big letters and then put a point back in the back and run
lines back to it and your name becomes three-dimensional.
So, it's common to start with one point.
Two and three point for people who are getting a little more advanced but if
you're asking me what's the most common?
For people who have mastered drawing, the most common is to be thinking less about
one, two and three point and saying is this below me?
If the camera's up here, the head is below me.
If the camera's down here, the head is above me.
If the camera is to one side, I see more of this side.
So, it's like what you were mentioning, it's like what Kim Jung Gi said, he just
draws a box in the position he wants.
I guess let's just say the environment because yeah, we can say everything
within it can be tumbling and it's no longer fitting that perspective and now
we have a 50-point perspective.
But let's just say for the environment, if you had to pick between two, three and
five, what do you think?
I wouldn't.
You wouldn't?
No, no.
In our discussion five, six years ago, you did.
What did I say?
You said two-point perspective is usually used because... Oh, because it's simple
enough.
You said it's easier to explain.
Okay.
It gives the drawing a feeling of being grounded and I don't remember how you
explain that.
I know that, yes.
Can you explain why is the two-point perspective more grounded?
Because you've got one set that is not converging, it's just saying vertical for
example.
It doesn't have to be verticals but it usually is.
Okay, so you got one set that's vertical, got a whole bunch of vertical lines all
the way through this that give a certain unity of standing, staying vertical.
Everything that's standing goes the same direction and it makes the ground plane
easier to grip than when you've got a ground plane that's curving.
Right.
So yes, I can see why I said that.
Smart guy back then.
Yeah, back then.
The verticals are a motif.
The repeating verticals unite.
Who's the director that always puts those perfect verticals?
Is he a classic director?
Wes Anderson does lots of things.
Wes Anderson is the one I'm thinking of.
Yeah.
He gets the camera very far back so there's as little as perspective as
possible.
He uses the metaphor of they're like little dioramas.
But that flattens all the points, not just the vertical.
Yes, it does.
But it makes it so that it's very flat and very accessible and very
storybook-like.
When we talk about using verticals as motifs,
You don't find much three-point perspective in art previous to the 20th
century.
You do find it but it's rare.
And cameras back then, you know those view cameras that have the bellows where
you tilt the back of the camera and all that?
Oh, you look at those you go look up shortbee.com and look at some of those
old photographs that were not on film, they were on big glass plates and they'd
take a picture of a city and every vertical is vertical and they look
It's great for that reason but you take it with your cell phone, it's not going
to look that way because those cameras were specially designed so that they
would keep that vertical motif going on through there.
So, that's why I made the pitch for two.
Earlier today, we recorded Rembert drawing in his sketchbook and I asked if
he was ever dependent on photographs and he said he used to be but I think he said
something like but it bored him, it wasn't creative.
He enjoyed more.
Yeah, you can stick to three point and tumble boxes.
And you're still freeing yourself from what the camera is doing.
Being free means you can do what you choose and it's helpful to have the
tools.
In learning perspective, learn the stuff that teachers tell you to learn but then
watch the masters who draw so freely and ask them how they do it and so often, you
will find out that "I just think of everything with a striped sock on it and
that little
The thing around it, that cross contour lets me know which part's closer and then
I can build it from there.
But that is the great secret of drawing in perspective freely, is just to learn
some simple forms.
Cartoonists have been doing it for a long, long time.
Learn that basic language of how a block and a cylinder and a cone and a sphere
And a few other variations on that.
Wrap lines around them, put them in any position you want and then you've got
control of space.
So, did we do okay?
I think we did great.
That was Marshall Bander, ladies and gentlemen.
If you're new to this, think of drawing as learning a new language.
Once you get the basics, you can start telling your own stories through images.
My drawing basics course has everything you need to start from lines to shading.
You'll learn how to draw interesting shapes for characters and objects and
make them 3D with perspective.
We'll learn just enough theory so that you can sketch in perspective with
intuition.
I'll show you how to add light and shadow to bring your drawings to life.
A lot of my students have said that they've never improved this fast.
The course is filled with projects to practice what you're learning.
Most projects have a level two version for intermediate students who are taking
the course to refine their fundamentals.
So go check out the 30 free lessons available in the basics course at
Thank you for your help.
You're welcome.
I'll take it away from here.
Okay, I'll exit gracefully or not.
Bye guys.
So is perspective wheel?