2 Point Perspective Village
This project (and this photo) was originally called the Adobe Village and was developed during COVID as a replacement for the castle. However since that time its developed into its own. I now have students do 5 buildings and we attempt to line up the road using the two vanishing points so that everything seems to fit 'right' in the picture plane.
Vocabulary to know:
Horizon Line= Horizon line/eye level refer to a physical/visual boundary where sky separates from land or water. It is the actual height of the viewer's eyes when looking at an object, interior scene, or an exterior scene. Often in the middle of the page, but for this project it was 5.5 inches from the bottom of the page.
Vanishing Point= Lines meet on the horizon line at this point.
Two Point Perspective= A drawing that has two vanishing points. Usually on the far right and far left, but many artists actually use vanishing points that are off the picture plane.
Picture Plane= The entire work area of your artwork. Common picture planes are landscape and portrait. A standard piece of paper is 8.5 inches by 11 inches and that is the picture plane for this project.
Perspective Line= A line drawn to one of the vanishing points. In most drawings they do not go all the way to the vanishing point, but if you have a ruler you could place it on the line and it would eventually connect with one of the vanishing points.
Vertical Line= A line that goes up and down perfectly vertical to the page at a 90 degree angle. These are used in every building, window, doorway and tree to make the drawing appear to be in perspective.
This drawing shows that if you do not draw the roads to the vanishing point that it can lead to building placement spacing issues. This one is not bad, but believe me it can get worse.
This drawing shows how I draw the poles on the side of the adobe village. I draw a rectangle on the side of the building and then place the ends of the poles on one side of that rectangle. I use the vanishing point on the left of the page to draw each of the poles back towards the building and then I use the same curve as the circle I first drew to create the illusion of the pole going into the wall. In other words they are parallel lines.
This drawing shows how you can use the vanishing points to draw roads. Once I have the road drawn I will add curves to make it look more organic.
This drawing shows how I construct the village buildings. I want to be able to see where the entire block sits. That way I am not overlapping buildings onto one another. I can clearly see "all the way around" each building. I do this by drawing the "invisible" corners of the buildings so that you can see the entire floor. Notice I did not do this on the building closest to the horizon line. That is because I reached the maximum number of buildings that I had to draw (5) and I did not need to be able to see through it.
Here are the five buildings that I decided to more forward with for my finished example for the 2024 school year. One of the students asked about a saloon door, which led me to not only draw the door but also follow it through to a finished sketch.
Copyright 2024 Scotty Wilhelm
Students will draw details, add a light source and shade their drawing before turning them in. Here is my finished 2024 school year example.