Draw a Hallway with Perspective

This is our first lesson on drawing with perspective. Perspective is like science in the art, and it will be important whenever we draw things that have many parallel lines in groups.

The basic perspective is the one-point perspective. We are going to use this hallway to study the one-point perspective and how the one-point perspective will help us in the drawing process. Let’s first take a look. Which lines in this hallway are parallel to the line at the top of the wall? There is the line at the foot of this wall, the other side of the ceiling, every line between the bricks… All of these lines are parallel to each other. Let’s stand here and look towards the very end of this hallway, and you will notice that all these parallel lines converge toward a single point. If we extend each of these lines, the point at the wall of the end of this hallway will be connected to them. Now we have the first discovery: all parallel lines in the same group share a vanishing point.

Let’s do another experiment. Looking at these lines while adjusting your height, you will see that the angles of these lines change accordingly, and you will see the vanishing point that all of these lines are connected to is also changing. If I lower my eye level, the vanishing point moves down, and if I raise my eye level, the vanishing point moves up. That is because the vanishing point is always relative to the level of your eyes.

With this new knowledge, drawing this hallway will become much easier. We are going to find the angles of two of these lines. Extend them so that they cross each other to find the vanishing point for these lines. Next, we will draw from this vanishing point in the angles of the other lines, and we can easily complete of all the parallel lines.

Once you know how to use one-point perspective in the drawing process, it is a useful tool to enhance your experience.