7 Tools for Drawing Perspective Without a Ruler

Written By Stephanie Broder

I’m a huge advocate for learning perspective tools like one-point, two-point, and three-point perspective. These are useful for any type of artist, especially comic book artists and illustrators.

But did you know you can use several perspective tools without needing to grab a ruler? Once you notice these seven perspective tools, I guarantee your perspective drawings will immediately improve— no ruler needed!

Overlapping

Objects closer to the viewer appear in front of objects farther from the viewer. YES! It is that simple. Try adding some basic overlap into your drawing to improve the way the perspective reads immediately.

In my illustration above, we know the character is in front of the spooky Jack-o-Lantern because her hip is overlapping it. YES! Overlap is that easy to apply. 

Colour and Value

The farther away something is from the viewer, the less saturated and lower contrast it appears. This is because there are all sorts of particles and water droplets and dust in the air between you and the object. But who cares about the science - just drop that saturation and contrast in your background layers!

Detail and Pattern

Details and patterns appear less sharp and fuzzier the farther they are from the viewer. So, while you might draw every single leaf on a tree right in front of the viewer, the trees on the side of a distant mountain may all appear as a hazy, green smudge.

Diminuition

Things look smaller the farther they are away from the viewer.

We know this intuitively in daily life, otherwise we’d be reaching out to pick up those skyrises on the horizon in the palm of our hand! But sometimes we forget to apply this in art and it’s very easy to do.

In this dodgeball game, the kids who are "out" aren't miniature - they are just farther from the viewer so appear smaller.

Foreshortening

Surfaces parallel to the viewer’s face are at their maximum size, as they revolve away from the viewer they appear shorter.

What? Put simply, imagine you are looking at a paper towel tube. If you are looking at the edge of it, it appears as tall as it actually is. But as you start to rotate it away from you, it begins to look shorter than it actually is. This is foreshortening.

This character's left thigh (our right) appears shorter because the end of it (the knee) is pointing toward the viewer in space. 

Convergence

Parallel lines appear to converge (come together) as they recede from the viewer. This is that fun trick we probably all learned as kids where you can draw a railroad track in perspective by having the rails meet at a point on the horizon! Seeing the point they appear to meet implies a perfectly flat plain (hello, Saskatchewan) so you may not always get the perfect effect. But even if the landscape isn’t flat, convergence still happens.

Focus Effect

Just like a camera lens, you can choose to have either foreground or background in your image blurry. This implies they are in different range from the viewer’s eye! We can choose to focus on the foreground and it will appear crisp and the background more blurry. Or we can focus on the background and suddenly the foreground appears more crisp. And in art, you can exaggerate this effect as much as you want.

Blurring things in the background or foreground (here, I used Gaussian Blur in procreate) is a great way to imply perspective, and give your illustration a clear focal point. 

 

If you start to actively think about and apply these seven perspective tools, you’ll begin to incorporate accurate perpsective into your illustration intuitively.

But don’t worry - future posts that involve a ruler are still to come! Stay tuned.

Stephanie Broder
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