Draw a city street
and learn one-point perspective
What you need: Pencil, eraser
| 1. Start your perspective drawing with a lightly-drawn horizon line and place a dot for the vanishing point on the line (see orange). Next, add guidelines for the top and bottom of your houses. On the left, draw a vertical line from the roof line to the bottom-of-the-house line. This is the edge of the first house. Draw a dashed line from the center of that vertical line to the vanishing point. Add the top, bottom and midway point on the right side. | 2. Gently erase the horizon. Next you will place the houses on the street. The yellow highlighted line is the edge of the second house. You know where to place the next vertical line by diagonally bisecting the second vertical line at the midway point (see orange guideline). Continue this process for four houses and then leave space for a cross street. You can estimate the width of the farthest houses but remember that they get skinnier as they recede. |
| 3. Lightly place new guidelines for the windows. Do the same for the stoops, curbs and roof details. The houses in the distance do not need as much detail as the houses closest to the viewer. If you have a small plastic t-square, you will want to use it against the edge of your sketchbook for all of your vertical and horizontal lines. | 4. Now have fun refining your drawing. Add a simple city skyline above the horizon. The window details and random bricks on the foreground houses all tilt toward the vanishing point. Even the clouds follow the rules of perspective by getting smaller as they recede. Experiment with pencil shading to make your shapes appear more solid. Congratulations, you have completed the city street. |