Perspective explained

I was interested to read Karren Whalen’s letter ‘My perspective’ in the March 2021 issue. Sadly perspective is not taught at art colleges any more. In my art school days (at Medway College of Art in the 1950s), perspective was considered to be an important aspect of our initial foundation drawing course.

I taught art for 43 years and made sure my students understood the basic principles of fundamental perspective – but not until year eight or above so as not to suppress natural expressiveness or creative enthusiasm. I discovered that many students would grasp perspective theory just by looking carefully at what they were sketching. Recently, a graduate BA from UCA in Rochester asked me to give him some basic tips on perspective, which I was more than happy to do.

Basically, if you are unsure, it’s helpful to establish your eye level with a faint pencil line at the start; look very carefully at what you are about to sketch, and compare the eye line in your view to the line in your sketchbook. Note that lines receding into the distance above your eye line go DOWN, those below it go UP.

The simple drawing (below) illustrates the theory of perspective and encourages the student to add windows and doors in perspective using the imaginary vanishing point (VP). Using this theory with the eye level (EL) covers most perspective aspects.

John Austin, by email

This month’s star letter writer will receive a Sennelier portable watercolour palette, worth £29.95.