TessaW TessaW
16 Aug 2018, 21:12

@tianlian Oh man, it's hard remembering exactly how I navigated through all that information. First, I don't claim to be an expert on perspective, it's still a challenging at times, but it's easier to sort through now.

I also think it's important to put things into context. It's common to see someone who you feel is somewhat proficient in a certain area in art, and not fully understand how they got to that point. What helped me a ton was to learn what other people did, and what they went through to get to where they are. So apologies ahead of time. I don't want to sound like I know it all or that I'm narcissistic, but I want to share a little of my experience, as it's helped me when others have done it.

I had previously went to art school about 2003-2007, where I picked up some handy observational skills. I could make pretty good paintings from life, I could make ok paintings if I copied directly from a photo, and I picked up some color and painting skills, but ask me to make my own illustration, even of a very simple scene without perfect reference? I couldn't really do that and didn't know how to get there. I stopped doing art at all until the end of 2013 because of it, until I found some online sketchbooks of people who developed their imaginative skills. I started perspective and constructive drawing in Jan 2014. At this point I was very afraid that I wouldn't be able to understand perspective at all. I didn't think I was smart enough, but I took the leap just started plugging away. Since then, I've been learning when I can. I've done a lot of study, some good, some bad, and I've gone through periods where I don't do art at all. I don't think I did any art for a year's time when I was pregnant with my second kid! And I just recently had a months long break after moving. It wasn't until I started working through the subscription courses here in 2017 that I feel I was able to get more comfortable with applying perspective to my own work. The classes here really give you a good working method and a way to organize your image creation process in a way that helped me harness my perspective knowledge.

In retrospect I think I did some good things and some bad things, during this whole time period starting in 2014.
So with that being said, here is my personal experience with perspective. I'm repeating some of what I said in an earlier post on this thread, but oh well.

  1. You might think about studying constructive drawing at the same time. Constructive drawing goes hand in hand with perspective and I think they enhance each other. In my opinion, constructive drawing can feel a bit more intuitive. I studied both at the same time and I don't regret it.

  2. Use more than one source to learn from. I think I used 3 books, one main online source, and countless youtube videos that I can't remember. I didn't just skim the books, or casually watch my online source, I really dug into those resources. I recommend more than one source, because they tend to explain things a little differently and it covers all your bases, and repeats some of the same information without it feeling too repetitive. You get different types of exercise ideas as well.

  3. If you are a self-studier, think of it like you're taking a class in high school. In a high school course you might first take notes from your teacher's lecture and your textbook. Then you might have a homework assignment. After several lessons and homework assignments, you might have an exam that applies all the knowledge you've learned through lectures and homework assignments. Then you'll continue on with more lessons and homework assignments until another exam. So with studying perspective, start out with notes and copying the examples from your learning resource. Then give yourself a homework assignment(or more than one) that is fairly simple. After doing this for a while and completing several homework assignments, give yourself an exam where you do an image that combines a few different principles you've learned. Rinse and repeat. I wish I would have done this a bit more when I studied it. While I was good at the lesson and homework part, I wish I had given myself more "exams". I didn't really do much of my own work back when I first started, and I wish I did.

  4. For your homework assignments, do studies from your imagination, do studies from life, and do studies from photographic or art reference. You'll ideally be using imagination, real life, and reference as you make more finished work, so it makes sense that you'd use all three to study as well.

  • Doing exercises based on imagination is obviously good for developing your imagination skills and getting the theory down without worrying too much about other factors. This would be like drawing simple shapes, objects, or scenes in perspective with out using any reference, and later moving on to more complex things.
  • Drawing from life helps you take the theories you're learning and observe them in action. You can see how proportion, placement and overlap works. The theories will also help you organize the things you see in real life, making them easier and faster to draw (eventually). It can also make the theories make more sense and you can get a better sense of an object's 3d forms, because you can easily change your point of view and see an object or a scene from different angles. As a side note, I remember learning all these perspective theories and then I'd draw something from real life, and my art buddies would bust me because I wasn't applying those theories. I'd learn about vanishing points and then for some reason, I wouldn't make my lines recede to a vanishing point in my real life drawing studies.
  • Drawing from photographic and art reference really helps with filling in details. It also helps with how placement, proportion, and overlapping works in perspective on scenes that aren't easily accessible in real life. It can also help you figure out how to translate scenes withing a 2d format and play with different point of views and exaggeration of perspective that's different from what we see with our eyes.

  1. You can take a break after you've gotten the hang of a few principles. For me personally I studied perspective and constructive form for the first time over a 3 month period and in retrospect I did a lot of pointless master studies in that time period as well that wasn't related to any theory I was learning. After those 3 months I couldn't stomach it anymore. I moved on to light and shadow- which actually was the perfect transition from perspective. It utilized and enhanced perspective knowledge and it made more sense because of the perspective knowledge I gained. Then after about 10 months or so, I went back and did another round of perspective and constructive form studies. I probably shouldn't have waited so long, but I didn't have much art time as it was, and I didn't know exactly what I should be doing anyway and was doing some other random helpful and not so helpful studies in that time.

  2. It won't feel intuitive or easy when you start applying it to your finished illustrations. I remember learning so much theory and it was so painstaking to apply it to my own pieces. There was a lot of confusion and going back to review perspective principles and searching for reference of what I was trying to achieve. It's still hard and confusing sometimes, but it's getting easier and easier the more I plan out pieces with many thumbnails and then execute my own illustrations. A lot if it is more intuitive now, and even when I still have to plot things out and use perspective grids, it feels more like part of a natural process, instead of being very tedious.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. Knowing what to study and how to study is so confusing! I don't know if those are the kinds of tips you were looking for, but I hoped I offered something that might help you.