Tips To Improve Perspective In Your Art (Intuitive Perspective)

Hey guys!

The reason I don't give a basic explanation of how perspective works is because this is such an old topic that someone has probably already explained it to you. What I am going to write in this post is how I build my compositions using perspective; you will see that in theory it is something very simple, but in practice it is complex.

My Intuition

I do not use guidelines, not because I am gifted with an incredible talent, but because I never studied using this method. I always had little patience, but I am obsessive and stubborn. I didn't use to start my compositions by drawing the horizon line because my goal has never been to paint landscapes or environment design; it has always been characters (guidelines are different for character design). So I never start with the classical composition structure. I start with the face and from there I build based on intuition, basically building the elements and in the process correcting the ones that I see out of place. It is not that you are going to draw a thousand random shapes in the composition and your eye will automatically tell you which are the shapes that do not follow the perspective correctly. At first, it is likely that you will not know what is out of place; this is about learning to observe. Choose a reference point in your composition on which you can guide yourself and all the other elements. Most of the time it will depend on the function of your art piece; in my case, the characters.

The Key at First

The face is the first thing we usually see in other people (the eyes, to be more precise). You are not going to draw faces or eyes either by magic or just from the imagination; to perfect something, you must learn to observe and then reproduce it. In my illustrations, there are almost always two points of view: one where the camera comes from below and another where the camera comes from above. Everything will depend on the objective of the illustration, and based on that I decide one of those two according to where the information is best read, for example.

In a view from above, you can see the expression of the character in the foreground, behind them the body, the floor, and all the elements that are in it. And if I distort the perspective in search of the 'fisheye' effect, I'll be able to add more info from things far away, like the horizon line.

When the view is from below, the wider it is, the less the face will be seen (unless it is a portrait), so the close-up must be justified in an interesting way with some main element that helps to integrate the character. Clearly the options are endless, but in my personal opinion, I think that the farther away the face is, the more difficult it is to capture attention.

I recommend that at this stage you learn to build faces with the two angles (view from above and another from below). These views may vary a bit, but try to choose points of view where both eyes of your character can be appreciated; the objective is to be able to read the expression. A frontal view is not bad, but the pose plays a more complex role when you want to draw the body in relation to a more complex perspective.

Spiral Method

The construction of the composition at the beginning is going to be like a spiral. As I said before, my point of reference is the character (most of the time, not always), and to be more precise the 'expression,' and to be more precise the 'eyes,' and to be more precise the 'pupils', do you understand my point? It does not matter how big my composition is, how many people or objects there are; I will start with where I feel most comfortable, and it is almost always with the eyes, then the expression of the face, then the shape of the skull, then the neck, shoulders, arms, chest, and so on. As I move away from the face, the level of complexity decreases, leading to geometric shapes that will fulfill the function of the surrounding objects.

Avoid 'Frontal View' for a While

A tip is that you make portrait drawings with perspectives that are not frontal, preferably with views like the ones I recommend. It does not have to be exactly like the reference I gave you, but it does have to be clearly seen when the camera is from above or from down (when I say the camera, I mean your view). What is the purpose of these studies? That you store enough visual information in your brain so that when you have to build a face from a certain perspective, you can draw the eyes, nose, mouth, and skull analytically correct. I've done compositions just by building the shape of the head, not necessarily the face, but at the beginning it is always geometric simplification. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yghy8cSkyUs&ab_channel=Ramonn90

Why, if there are so many angles for a face, do I recommend that you use these? It is because it's easier to integrate a body that has different perspectives. Everything is valid in art, but these tricks are to build simple ideas, and over time, when you gain experience and master the fundamentals, you can perhaps choose a more complex point of view and add another type of value to your composition, such as colors, lights, or gestures, etc. At the moment, we are working hypothetically only with lines.

Warping

We have already talked about how to start; now I am going to explain a couple of things that I also like to do.

The more warped the perspective, the more information I can add around my character. The perspective style I use is similar to the one used by Kim Jung Gi, where you can integrate any kind of information from different angles. It is called 'fisheye' and is the view whose angle is extremely large. Fisheye perspective is a special form of wide-angle view, whose (deliberate) distortion resembles an image reflected off a sphere.

Once you understand how to deform perspective in this sphere way, the objects that you are going to add around your focal point are going to be shaped by the nature of the guidelines, guidelines that you can draw as the example that I leave you in the 'Warping Perspective' image or you can try intuitively; the simpler the forms, the better. What objects should be part of your composition? That will depend on where your scene takes place. References are a good way to know what to integrate into the composition; just remember to see the objects as geometric forms at first. After these forms are balanced, then you can define the details.

One last tip

I draw the face in large size. Suppose that my canvas measures 30x30 cm; the face of my character will occupy more than 60% of the canvas at the beginning. Then I duplicate and reduce the size of the face to build the body, then I reduce the size of the body to do the rest, and so on. That is the best way for me to work with the brush 'PENCIL-OH'; if this brush is used with a very small size, the texture can be a problem to define clean lines.

Practice

I will share some images on Pinterest (Now Raindrop) so you can do some studies. You already know the theory, and now it is up to you to build that skill. Meanwhile, here is a study that I did on an image that already has the effect I am talking about; there you will see the form so you can understand my point.

I hope you find this post useful. I might have forgotten a few things, but you can ask me in the comments. I'll share more about this in the future. Thanks for your support and welcome to the new patrons!