Folly

I was wondering if you could give people struggling with perspectives some tips maybe? A good place to start, maybe good ways to practice? That would be very appreciated!

Thank youuuu <333

And yeah sure I can help

Imma try breaking it down for you as simple as I can, I’ll start with explaining perspective in of itself, then ways to practice, and what to start with

1-Perspective:

Perspective is actually genuinely a very simple topic, just needs a lot of practice and observation of how it works in real life

The easiest way to think of perspective is to think of it as a camera, and think where that camera is in your canvas? Is it up? Down? Corner? Cause that will affect how to draw the characters from the perspective of the camera

Here’s an example to further illustrate the idea.. literally, this is the exact same pose from different camera angles (perspectives):

Of course, that means that if the camera is up in the canvas, then it’s pointing down, if it’s down, then it’s pointing up, or it might be in the middle and simply pointing to the horizon

Very extremely important to keep in mind, that what is closer to the camera is going to be bigger than what’s far from the camera, even if the far thing from the camera is by nature very big like a mountain!

Of course, the proportion and sizes may change depending on how close or far the focal point of your art is from something big in the background

Again to help you understand it better, here’s a drawn guide :)

This includes every two things, even different body parts for the same character

The closer body parts to the camera is going to look bigger than those away from the camera, see as follows:

Of course, we can never bring up perspective without bringing up foreshortening! Foreshortening is very important, remember, you work on a 2D plane, but your job is to trick people into thinking that this 2D plane is 3D >:)

How to do that? Foreshortening! When drawing characters from a certain angle, some body parts are going to naturally block others, if you focus too hard into showing every single body part then you’re only gonna end up with a flat artwork, foreshortening when it comes to character art will ensure that 3D feel

Here’s an example on foreshortening:

Keep in mind that, depending on where your camera is, that blockage of body parts may be very minor or very extreme, for example, if you go for an overhead shot of a person standing, then most of the legs might become invisible cause the chest and torso will block your view of them

Here’s an example of more extreme perspectives like that:

Also! Don’t feel pressured to keep things realistically proportionate to each other, if anything, exaggerating your lines, the way you draw anatomy, the perspective, is gonna make your art look more lively

That’s not to say there’s anything wrong keeping things realistic and keeping it that way is actually a whole beautiful artstyle of its own, but don’t pressure yourself to be realistic if that’s not what you personally enjoy or want to do with your own artstyle

2- ways to practice:

There’s honestly multiple ways to practice, you can either go for a more traditional approach and practice 1 point, 2 points, and 3 points perspectives, which I definitely recommend, and I absolutely encourage you to practice it

Or! My favorite way personally is redrawing references that has a very exaggerated perspective, and practicing multiple things like references for buildings and perspectives for people since they work in different ways

These references don’t necessarily have to be realistic pictures, you can choose references from your own favorite shows by looking for these more exaggerated perspectives within them

A way I personally like to practice, is by tracing actually! But not just tracing, this is important part, this tracing technique I use actually has three important steps to it:

1- I take an image I like, I trace it

2-I then redraw the same picture without tracing this time but keep the picture on the side as a heavy reference that I return to

3-then I redraw the same thing a third time without tracing and without the reference picture, just my own imagination

This technique also works for other important art aspects like anatomy, lighting and shading, composition, etc

Here’s an example on this tracing technique:

Put in mind that when you reach step three, the result will not necessarily be absolutely golden, but that’s not the point, the point is that it really helps with strengthening your muscle memory, so when you try to draw a dramatic perspective next time, it’ll feel a bit easier

Another way I love to practice, is by drawing cubes and circles and all sorta shapes, but especially cubes! As well as actually try things out of my comfort zone like backgrounds that have challenging perspectives, they don’t have to look perfect or complicated or complete even, the idea is just get get more comfortable with extreme perspectives in general

Like these

3-where to start:

I personally recommend starting with the cubes! They’re a very good warm up in general, and they’re the very fundamentals of perspective as a whole, practicing cubes in different perspectives will get you acquainted with it before going to more complex stuff like characters

Then go for redrawing shots from different shows you like, try to study the ways of the masters if you will, it’ll further improve your skills in perspective as well as other things like composition and anatomy by association

This may seem like a weird way to study, but I highly recommend studying perspective by redrawing shots from the Anime JoJo’s bizarre adventure

It’s very well known for its dramatic and weird angles and perspectives, and I personally learned A LOT from it not just perspective wise but even anatomy wise, I’m not joking when I say that JoJo completely transformed my art all together and improved it significantly :)

There’s also rottmnt, also one of the shows that improved my art significantly, and I definitely recommend trying to redraw some of its shots!

If you’re not up for that, then try to study artists you love, or shows you personally love, it really doesn’t matter what you choose as long as you study shots that have interesting perspectives, whether dramatic ones or minor ones

Lastly, imma share some little tips that make perspectives and perspective studying easier for me in general!

-use simple tile lines to dictate where your perspective is in the vast white of a canvas, they will help you mentally prepare and guide you through what to do, by tile lines I mean these little things :)

-don’t be afraid to completely scrap an artwork if you didn’t like how it looks the first time! You have to be comfortable with actually redrawing something from scratch, second or third time’s the charm usually, here’s an example of something I personally redrew cause I didn’t like how it turned out the first time, the second time was actually wayyy better

-figure art studies!! What’s great about figure art is that you only focus on making cool poses from different angles while completely ignoring whether the characters look good! They will help you with both perspectives and poses, two birds with one stone kinda study right there :D

this was b4 i went to camp DW.