Perspective

Just a quick thing I did in paint for just illustrating the concept on how to draw perspective.<br />
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First, you must choose where you want your horizon. This doesn't have to be on the page (it might be a foot or two [maybe even more!] off the page) but you need to know where it is.<br />
Second, you need to pick one or two vanishing points on that horizon. Once again this(these) point(s) doesn't(don't) have to be on the paper or medium.<br />
Now, when you draw the first building only draw the vertical lines. Take a ruler and put one of the ends on a vanishing point. Pivot the ruler so it hits the vertical lines of the building and make sure it is as high/low as you want it. You can draw a line here and this is now the base of the building. All of the other buildings on that street will have the base edge for that side on that same line (Notice that on the pic above).<br />
All vertical lines in this pic will be drawn as normal (just up and down), but all horizontal lines on the viewer’s right side of the items will be drawn with the pivoting ruler on the vanishing points. No matter where an object in the picture is or how big it is matters. If the building is rectangular (Well, whatever the technical term is for a 3D rectangle) then its horizontal lines will be along the red lines in the picture.<br />
If all the buildings were the same height they would all touch the same red line and use that for their tops. If they all had a window 15’ up that, too, would also always be placed on the same line. There is a lot of consistency in perspective drawings if the items drawn are consistent. However, if the items in the drawing aren’t consistent then they need to be adjusted. Not all of the buildings in my picture are the same height so they aren’t on the same line. If I wanted to I could have made them not all so close to the street by moving the base of the building up a little.<br />
If there was only one vanishing point then you would basically be looking down one street and all of the horizontal lines would be coming from that one vanishing point, looking as if they were coming at the viewers. An excellent use of this is displayed here: http://fanart.ctgameinfo.com/pictures.php?op=picture&picture=38548 with the bottom point of the chandelier as the vanishing point. However the two people aren’t on the same plane of ground so you can’t really use that part of the pic.<br />
This also works with things not so perfectly shaped as buildings. If there were a crowd of people you would still use this. If the people were sporadic than you probably would need more than two vanishing points. If you were drawing a party that only allowed people of a certain height to enter then you could pick any two people and draw a line from the top of the head of the closer party animal and extend it to the one further away until it hits the horizon. After you did this you could pick another spot on their body (A belt, shoulders, shoes, knees, whatever) and draw a line from that part of the closer figure to the further away figure and to the horizon. If you drew them correctly then that spot on the horizon would be the same spot as the other one hit. You could draw as many lines as you wanted and as many people of the same height on those lines as you wanted and if you did it correctly each line would constantly hit the same spot on each person and each line would come to one vanishing point on the horizon. However, not everyone likes lines so they probably wouldn’t all be so easy to draw. However it is simple enough to just do the process over again and pick a new vanishing point.<br />
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I suggest anyone not familiar with this to just practice with a few pictures even if they don’t know exactly what I am talking about. If worse comes to worse just try re-drawing this pic with using signs, people, cars or something different so you can get a better idea of how it works.<br />
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Hope it helps ;)<br />
Jyan