Perspective

New Perspectives

Have you ever wondered how you could draw city streets and buildings that appear to have depth and look believable? There is a trick behind it, and that's called the perspective. In this lesson, you will learn how to use Krita's assistant-tool objects to draw in the right perspective.

You may have previously seen old paintings that have a quite odd perspective. The above painting, The Mérode Altarpiece, for example, has a very steep perspective that gives an impression that they are looking down on the room while the characters are on the same line as the viewer and also seem to hover in the air. At this time artists didn't know how receding lines should be drawn.

In 1413, the Italian architect Flippo Brunelleschi figured out the linear perspective by painting outlines of the buildings and noticed that extended outlines would meet in a single point on the horizon line. Finally, Brunelleschi developed a method on drawing linear perspective and is used widely among today's artists.

Linear Perspective

To imitate the real world's depth, the artist uses either linear or atmospheric perspective or oftentimes combines both. Linear style is beginner-friendly and relies on lines and the scale and placement of forms.

When talking about linear perspective, it's a technique how to create the illusion of depth and space, to make the image appear more life-like, and to have three-dimensionality. Linear perspective has three essential components:

orthogonal lines (aka parallel lines)
vanishing point
horizon line.

These three components make it possible to create a composition that is a realistic set of buildings, for example. One of the best artists from the Renaissance is no doubt Leonardo da Vinci, who drew the image below. Da Vinci was a perfectionist, who strove to paint the real world as closely as possible.

Study the below examples to learn more about perspectives.

Different Perspectives Different Perspectives The one-point perspective has only one vanishing point along the horizon line. In the above image of the streets of New York City, the vanishing point is far in the distance and the horizon line is set where the road meets the sky. The blue orthogonal lines go from the building's rooftops and ledges towards the vanishing point.

The two-point perspective has two vanishing points on the horizon line. A 2-point perspective is used to show, for example, the corners of a building. The vanishing points are often placed far left and far-right, the closer they are to each other, the more squished-looking the object will be.

Depending on the height of the horizon line, the viewer's vantage point changes. When the horizon line is high, the viewer watches down at the object and up when the line is lower.

The three-point perspective, like the name suggests, has three vanishing points. However, when the two of those vanishing points are on the horizon line, the third is either above or below the horizon line. This depends on the area the artist wants to focus on in their drawing.

The image above has the third vanishing point down, so the cube's topside is more visible. Notice that the cube's corners aren't straight anymore but instead askew because the vanishing point is below the horizon line.

Atmospheric Perspective

Also known as aerial perspective, the atmospheric perspective works very differently from the linear perspective. The atmospheric perspective communicates depth through different values, colors, and clarity of elements. The objects closer to the viewer are much darker than objects far from the viewer.

Atmospheric perspective is often used in landscape and seascape paintings when architectural elements are few.

The image here shows how, the farther the mountains are, the more faded their color is. This is how atmospheric perspective uses values to imitate depth. The clarity of the objects disappears the farther they are, so there is no need to draw details of rocks when they are far away.

Krita Assistant

This section is dedicated to Krita's Assistant – a tool that is great for different perspective drawings. Many other digital drawing programs have some sort of perspective-tool for the artists, but this course will focus on Krita's tools. The video tutorial shows how to use the Assistant-tool to make one-point and two-point perspective grids. If you are interested to learn more about the tool, check out Krita's documentation page here.

Tähän tulee video, joka on haettava Risestä.

The tutorial was made using Krita’s version 4.4.2. Start with new file. If you want, you can set the rulers for the canvas by going to the window-menu and clicking the "show rulers", this helps to determine the center of the canvas. As the canvas is 1600px x 1200px, the center is at 800px and 600px.

To set the one-point perspective grid, click the Assistant tool on the left sidebar and then go to Tool options-tab on the right side. From the drop-down menu, choose the vanishing point and click the center of the canvas. Now you have set up the one-point perspective, but we need still to set some drawing guides, so go back to the Tool options and choose the parallel ruler from the drop menu this time. With the shift key pressed, draw one line that is vertical and one that is horizontal on the side of the canvas. Change to brush tool to draw and click the "Snap to Assistants" box from the brush's Tool options, so the brush snaps to grid lines. Now you can draw objects that follow the one-point perspective.

Setting up the two-point perspective grid work the same way, except this time click the vanishing points far left and far right. Of course, set the parallel ruler again. Remember if the brush strokes don't follow the grid, check that you have the "Snap to Assistant" box on.

Adding more density to the vanishing point from the tool options-menu adds more guidelines to the vanishing point. And if sometimes the brush won't stick to the correct line, zoom in and the brush will find the correct direction.

Let’s Try!

It's time for the final exercise. We will practice one-point and two-point perspectives with the help of Krita's Assistant-tool. You can look up reference images for both exercises to give you inspiration on what to add to drawings. The video below is divided into two parts, the first being a demonstration of drawing a simple minimalistic room in a one-point perspective and the second using a two-point perspective to make a city street.

Tähän tulee video, joka on haettava Risestä.

To make the image more interesting, play with the different objects with various heights and widths. The reference images are only there to inspire you about what to add to the image, but you can also simply copy the image as long as you learn how the perspective works.

The canvas was set to 2000px on height and width. At the start set up the one-point perspective grid, you can watch the tutorial above on how to do that. The room is quite simple, but it still has depth to it. When the perspective is done, the excess lines are erased to clean up the image a bit. This could be continued even further to add some books, a chair, plants, anything that you can think of. The two-point perspective practice focuses more on the buildings and the streets.

One-point perspective of a room.

Two-point point perspective of a street and buildings

Practice is Key

Practice perspective with setting up the horizon line on different heights and see what happens when the vanishing points are closer or farther from each other. Study photos and other images, if you are planning to draw more complex images, such as a city with skyscrapers or a busy street, to get an idea of how actual buildings have multiple details with all the windows and ledges that make the image more appealing and life-like.

When making landscapes, use values, colors, and clarity to create a sense of depth for the scene. The farther objects are, the lighter the values. If your scene has objects like trees or rocks, they are much darker and have more clarity and detail to them.

Exercise: Perspectives Exercise: Perspectives

Did you get new perspectives? To create believable backgrounds and landscapes, you need to know how perspective works and what things should be considered when making images like city streets.

Also, to save time and work as efficiently as possible, modern drawing software has some great tools to ease that workload. Composition skills will also come in handy, and that’s our next focus.