#crispy-gypsy

PARTITIONING: CHEATING ON PERSPECTIVE THE CRISPY WAY

Sometimes when you're doing an illustrated scene, you end up having to draw something where either the horizon line isn't visible in the frame of the picture, or the vanishing points aren't. Maybe the vanishing points are too far off to the side, or the camera is high and looking down, etc etc. 

Anyway, some artists deal with this by using a VERY LONG RULER or taping on another sheet of paper to extend the horizon line. Some people even do something like use a thumbtack with a piece of string attached to it to mark the vanishing points.

What I do is something called PARTITIONING. (actually I don't know if it's actually called Partitioning, I just call it that. I'm not sure what it's actual name is). This doesn't require me to do anything like extend the drawing space--I just use the paper I'm drawing with, and the ruler, and a whole lot of gridding.

THE IDEA BEHIND PARTITIONING

Before I jump into actually telling you what to do, I'm going to explain how I figured this out myself.

I learned it through learning how to draw a tile floor.

Start with the horizon line, and a line for the front of the first line of tiles.

You can see that I already started partitioning out that first line. Since tiles are all the same width, I divided the line up into pieces that are all roughly the same size.

TRUST THE DIAGRAM, IT SPEAKS THE TRUTH.

AND HERE I SKIPPED SOME BORING STEPS AND MADE A TILE FLOOR. Basically, I drew lines from those (evenly spaced) points I had made to the horizon line. I divided it horizontally in very inaccurate ways, but you get the gist.

Now, to show the idea behind partitioning, let's take a slice out of this tile floor so that you can't see the horizon line/vanishing point.

What I'm trying to show you in this badly drawn diagram is that the face of the tiles closest to you are roughly the same width as one another. In addition, the face of the tiles furthest from you are shorter, but they are still roughly the same width as one another. (in terms of 3D space, the furthest faces are actually IN REAL LIFE the same width as the nearest faces, just...well, further away. But thinking of it in 2D terms, the widths are shorter.)

You can't see the horizon line, but since all of these line are parallel, you know that they are heading towards the same point.

OKAY I AM SURE THAT ENDED UP CONFUSING YOU. MAYBE YOU'LL GET IT LATER. HERE'S THE ACTUAL PROCESS OF PARTITIONING.

When you partition, you are basically making A WHOLE BUNCH OF TILE FLOOR SLICES ACROSS YOUR PAPER.

Let's do a 2 point perspective scene where you can't see your vanishing points.

Here's the quick sketch without perspective.

YOU MAY OR MAY NOT BE ABLE TO TELL, but its a crappily drawn Thumbnail of a CLASSROOM SCENE. The perspective here is terribly rough (if it exists at all), but what we can tell is that it will be 2 point perspective, and that you have no idea where the vanishing points are except that they are off the page.

HERE'S WHAT I DO.

STEP 1) ESTABLISH THE HORIZON LINE

Looking at your quick thumbnail, estimate about where the horizon line would be. You can guess by looking at about where the lines start becoming more horizontal.

STEP 2) CHOOSE THE STRONGEST MOST ACCURATE LINE

Looking at your piece, look at which line you think is the strongest, or most accurate (you'll be choosing one line for each vanishing point, and the perspective you end up with will be based on this line).

Imma just work with the right vanishing point for now.

LOOKIT THAT STRONG VANISHING POINT.

4) PARTITIONING

What I mean by partitioning is that you are going to start dividing the page up. Remember how when we started drawing the tile floor, we drew evenly spaced points? We're going to do that here.

You're using the distance between the horizon line and the strong line. You're using both of these lines because they would both intersect at the right vanishing point.

Look at those evenly spaced points. Now, we'll want to do it to the other side.

For the same reasons as above.

Connect the points to each other.

Now you have your "grid" for the right vanishing point. All of these lines, like the ones we saw when we drew the tiles, will be converging towards the same vanishing point.

If you feel you need more guidelines, all you have to do is split these partitions in half. Just halve the 'tiles' on each side.

And connect the dots!

NOW DO THE SAME FOR THE LEFT HORIZON POINT. (And yes you'll still be using the horizon line in the measurement. Vanishing points are always on the horizon line (unless they're vertical vanishing points).

STRONG

Divide and Partition.

Just as another little thing, there's a little bit in the lower left corner that I wish had a guide line that doesn't have one because the matching point on the right would be too far off the page.

This is simple to deal with, because no matter where you slice the page (as long as it's vertically), the same rules apply.

So you can draw a vertical line closer to the left side of the page:

And use where the guidelines intersect with this new line.

AND THERE YOU GO. Now you have your perspective grids.

And now you can draw your scene to these guidelines! (Fixing the crappy crappy initial quick sketch)

Redrawn following new guidelines.

Without Guidelines.

You can also apply this method for a scene where the horizon line isn't visible. It's easy to just wing it or keep everything generally parallel when you don't have a horizon line in the scene, but if you want to add a little bit of perspective, partitioning also works.

This will be a lot more like the tiles we did in the beginning, so hopefully that'll be easier on you.

Quick Sketch

Now you pick up the Strongest Line and the Horizon Line. Since we don't have the actual horizon line here, we're going to be using the "vertical"  horizon line. I don't know the actual name. It's the line that vertical intersects the horizon line through the vanishing point. You can estimate it much the same way  you estimated the horizon line in the first, except instead of looking for when the lines become most horizontal, you like for where the lines become most vertical.

(NOTE: If there are times where there are neither the horizon line or the vertical (Verizon???) line to be found on the paper, what I usually do is find THE TWO STRONGEST LINES, and work my distances/partitioning off of the measurements those two create. If there are multiple vanishing points in this situation, it won't be completely accurate, but it'll look alright enough to fool most people).

Measure, Partition, Divide (This time Horizontally instead of vertically). As you can see, I did the halving and had to make a line closer to the top of the page to measure from.

There's also a certain amount of vertical distortion/perspective going on in this picture, and I'll do some guidelines for that too. It'll be using the same "verizon"  as the initial guidelines.

AND THEN YOU DRAW BASED ON THESE GUIDELINES...

OKAY SO ADMITTEDLY THESE QUICK DOODLES DON'T DO THE PROCES JUSTICE, SO HERE ARE A COUPLE OF THINGS I'VE DRAWN USING THIS METHOD: