Fantasy Art School

Using and Drawing Perspective

The first and most important thing about perspective is understanding the vanishing point of a drawing. The vanishing point is the point on the horizon (eye-level) where everything disappears into. Here is an example of a vanishing point. The cubes, one on the horizon, one below the horizon and one above the horizon all point toward and fall in line with the vanishing point.

This usage of the vanishing point sets the object firmly in place and makes them three dimensional in a way that looks correct to the eye. You, as an artist will use this technique all the time. You should always look at your drawings and decide where the vanishing point is and draw light lines to it in order to guide you into drawing the objects with a correct looking perspective.

Multiple Vanishing Points - Not all drawings have one vanishing point. They can have two or even many more vanishing points. It depends on what you are drawing, how complex it is and where you are looking at things from. Here is an example of a simple drawing with two vanishing points.

This usage of two vanishing points sets this rectangle firmly on the ground. It looks very solid and it looks correct to the eye. Let's take a look at an actual drawing that uses two vanishing points. This is a sketch of a block in a medieval renaissance type of town.

See how everything fades off directly to the two vanishing points? This gives a proper sense of depth. You almost feel like you could walk along the buildings off into the distance.

EXERCISE: Time for you to do some drawing - Now spend at least an hour doing some perspective drawings with one, two or more vanishing points. Do some common objects in all shapes and sizes. Try small objects like a computer or a stapler then do some larger objects like cars and a refrigerator. Then finally draw some large objects and some scenes like the buildings in the medieval picture shown here.

Let's Move on to fantasy drawing lesson 4: Foreshortening in perspective

This is a Storm The Castle Website

Fantasy Art School HOME PAGE

Fantasy Art Lessons

1. lesson 1 - Holding the pencil and getting a feel for it and warming up with lines
2. lesson1c how to draw a straight line
3. lesson 2 - Drawing some simple geometric shapes
4. lesson 3 - Understanding and using Perspective
5. lesson 4- foreshortening in perspective
6. lesson 5- Drawing depth and distance
7. lesson 6-Using lines of varying thickness
8. lesson 7- drawing form and shape with a medieval mace
9. lesson 8- Drawing metal - We draw a medieval helmet
10. lesson 9- drawing our first human form
11. lesson 10- Distorting the human form to create fantasy creatures
12. lesson 11 - doodling and creativity break
13. lesson 12 - a Morning star mace - drawing textures
14. lesson 13 - how to draw chainmail
15. lesson 14 - How to convey action in your fantasy drawings
16. lesson 15 - How to draw sword shapes
17. lesson16 -draw an armored knight
18. lesson 17 - Draw a fantasy dagger using the Five-S method
19. lesson 18 - Creating space in your drawings - A Dragons Lair
20. lesson 19 - Practice by drawing dragons
21. Lesson 20 - Drawing from Memory
22. Lesson 21 -Draw a Catapult
23. Lesson 22: A Guest artist discusses pencils, his technique and building a library of images

Fantasy Art Lessons from Guest Artists

1. How to draw a magical genie using Corel and Photoshop

Art Books & Supplies

1. Art Kits
2. Art Books
3. Fantasy Art Books

Stormthecastle.com
Castlefiction.com
The Telescope Nerd
Epic Fantasy.com
The Medieval Armory
THe Fantasy Guide
The Heroic Dreams Blog Knight-Medieval.com willkalif.com
make-video-games.com

---------
All Materials, unless otherwise stated are Copyright©
Kalif Publishing and StormtheCastle.com check out my copyright page for information about how to use any work on this site

If you have questions
or would like to
contribute you can contact me as customer support

---------