10 typical perspective errors

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10 typicalperspective

errorsBY MARTINA CECILIA

MARTINACECILIA.DEVIANTART.COMELECTRICALICE.TUMBLR.COM

Drawing perspective is considered one of the hardest things in art, except the mistakesusually done are pretty much always the same and can be avoided with a little care.

While this is not really an advanced level guide its still not a beginner tutorial wrote forsomeone who have never studied a bit of perspective. If you are looking for great tutorialsabout the basis of perspective you should check this one by Matt Laskowski.

1. Lines not reaching the vanishingpoint

Well this is pretty simple to avoid but its the most common mistake. Its probably due toeither carelessness or really not having understood the basic of perspective. I encourage youto go back and nd some basic tutorial for this.

Anyway, be ALWAYS careful about where to send your lines , they NEED to gotowards the correct vanishing point or it will just look awkward. Double check if necessary.

And always, ALWAYS use a ruler .

If your style requires lines that are a bit less geometrical (as mine do, I have a style of inkingthats sketchy so perfect lines drawn with a ruler usually dont t well in the picture) use a
http://fox-orian.deviantart.com/art/Perspective-Composition-Pt-1-118068853http://electricalice.tumblr.com/http://martinacecilia.deviantart.com/


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10 typical perspective errors

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1a. Planes not reaching the vanishing points.

Same thing as before, but very often people send more than one line to the wrong vanishingpoint.

Try to have your lines being consistent and reaching the right vanishing point. If one side ofthe plane has a different vanishing point from the opposite side the resulting plane will lookawkward.

There are of course cases where you need to use differentvanishing points purposefully, but of course you have to beconsistent with the rest of the shape youre drawing. I do notwant to add to the confusion so I wont talk about thoseinstances, so my advice is: avoid doing this until you arecondent enough to advance your studies of perspectivemore.

More often than not those mistaken planes reach a vanishing point thats outside the horizonline. Lets remember that vanishing points NEED to be on the horizon line .

Heres the correct one


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It looks much more like an actual cube.At the beginning youll tend to make depths MUCH MUCH longer thanthey should be . And this is something you can correct only with exercise and doublechecking everything.

That shutter is gigantic.

Furthermore, the closest you get to Horizon Line the thinner the depth ofthe object should be .Not like this:


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If you walk in front of that building over there youll have a Km long building. That wont do.

Actually like this:

Be always careful with skylines, youll tend to draw monsters longer than 10 Km. If its acentral perspective you can easily draw the skyline with no depth at all like this


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With a 2 point perspective the skyline will need a tiny bit of depth but be careful not tooverdo.

The only thing you can do is exercise and exercise and exercise and youll get the hang of it.

3. Repeating DepthsRepeating distances are often mistaken by beginners. Because its one of the things you thinkyou should do by guessing, the point is that no, it should be done with rulers,otherwise itll look weird .

You have to use rulers. These are the steps:Draw the rst unit by guessing the depth


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Keep drawing diagonals

Now use this as a base to draw the rest

4. Planes tangent to Horizon LineThis is not an error per se, but its just ugly to see. Unless youre doing a geometricalarchitecture drawing where the exact measurements are important (in that case Im afraidthis is not the tutorial for you) you can change things to help the general image.


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Why do this if you can just move the table a bit and or making it a bit taller to make it lookbetter?

When the planes meet in an awkward way either with the Horizon Line or with each otherit look false, it look constructed and honestly it doesnt help composition one bit.


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The drawing is yours, you decide what to do with it, you are not forced to put that tablethere, if you need to then change it.

5. Lines with no width variationsAnother thing that help a lot in giving a sense of depth is variating the width of the inking (orpencil) lines. Closer objects with wider lines and objects far away withthinner lines . Its simple.


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The rst one catches your eyes to the far point where all those lines go and make a mess,the second one gives you a sensation of depth.. The ink help perspective a lot.

6. Patterns and details going ontowards the infinite

This point reconnects to #2, things get smaller when you approach the L.O, why would youkeep drawing those tiles forever?

They tend to distract the eye and it just becomes a big horrible black area while probablyyour focus for the image was elsewhere. This is something I see a lot with bricks on thewalls. At a certain point drawing every single detail hurt the drawing, so you should stop.The best thing to do is to artfully lower the details level. This is difcult most of the timebecause you need to tune the amount of details with the image and its something that will


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Using thinner lines (see previous point) of course help a lot.

7. Objects with no depth andfinishings

Another error that look really bad in illustrations and comic pages is when things have nodepth and nishings.

Ok that one looks like its a sticker on a wall.

I can understand rush and I understand that perspective is long and boring but you cant dothings half-way, it will look weird. Windows and objects are not cardboard cutoutsthey have depths !The way to correct this is using references. Go nd a real life one, or a photo, or google it.


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Have fun with the details, give life to your drawings!

I can understand that different people have different styles but more cartoonish kind ofdrawings still need a base in reality, and a realistic preparation cannot do anything but helpthe artist.

8. Central perspective exaggerated

Well, just dont do it.If you need to draw a widespread panel just use 2 points perspective.Central perspective has limitations, and those limitations are: if you bring objects too far themeasurements gets weird.


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The light blue one is a cube, the other is. Not.

9. Misplaced Vanishing points andexaggerated perspective

While there are some masters that can exasperate perspective to create really dashingimages those are people who have a deep understanding of every rule of perspective andknow when to break them. If youre reading this tutorial chances are that you are not one ofthose (as Im neither, Im good but I cannot do weird things and still make them look good asother people can) so you denitely should avoid doing this.Placing vanishing points too close or inside the panel/illustration will result in awkwardthings.


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Well, no.

Avoid placing vanishing points INSIDE the panel, really. I dont even know whats happening inthat door.


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And anyway youre not required of drawing everything, if you notice that keeping drawingtowards the borders makes the perspective look weird youre allowed to crop the drawingthere and end the panel or the illustration. You dont need to keep going on to the innite,ok?

You are allowed to crop.


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Ive treated how to place vanishing points in another tutorial you can nd here .

10. Characters not in perspective

Well, characters need to t an environment as well. You cant have tiny people next to agigantic door.
http://martinacecilia.deviantart.com/art/How-to-place-vanishing-points-342039139


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Be careful about this. And if you need, help yourself with perspective lines so you canunderstand the size of your characters. But this is another thing that will come easy onlywith exercise and making mistakes again and again and again


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Thats pretty much it!Actually the most common are without a doubt the rst two points, work towardscorrecting those two and you are already halfway there.

If you are interested in the subject of perspective I have a tutorial about placement of thevanishing points hereAnd a video about the perspective tool in Clip studio paint and MangaStudio5

I hope this helped somehow and if more help is needed dont esitate to drop me a note.

MartinaElectricalice.tumblr.comMartinacecilia.deviantart.comEnvielestrange@gmail.com
mailto:[email protected]://martinacecilia.deviantart.com/http://electricalice.tumblr.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNtH5nmwrh8http://martinacecilia.deviantart.com/art/How-to-place-vanishing-points-342039139

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10 typical perspective errors