Assignment - How to Draw Above and Below Eye Level
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I Teach Creatives
LESSON NOTES
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Eye Level and the Horizon Line
When drawing in perspective, choose your viewer's eye level, which is the same as the horizon line. This line sets your viewpoint height, and it affects all other lines in your drawing.
Receding Lines: Up Views and Down Views
Use three sets of lines for the spatial axes. When receding lines aim up, you're looking down at the object, and when they aim down, you're looking up.
Remember:
- Looking down, lines go up
- Looking up, lines go down
Vanishing Points and Perspective Types
- One-Point Perspective: One set of lines recedes to a single point.
- Two-Point Perspective: Two sets of lines recede to two points.
- Three-Point Perspective: Vertical lines tilt and recede to a third point.
Vertical lines parallel to the picture plane don't need a vanishing point. In three-point perspective, artists often adjust the third point for effect.
Focus on Spatial Axes
Understanding the three spatial axes, width, height, and depth, is more important than labeling perspectives. Know how lines recede and converge, and accurately depict forms.
Foreshortening and Angles
As objects approach eye level, their top and bottom planes foreshorten, and angles change:
- Angles on Paper: Corners shift from acute to obtuse angles.
- Position Changes: Objects compress into lines when aligned with your eye level.
Practice Drawing
- Draw rooms with the eye level centered.
- Start with 5-minute sketches, then reduce to 3 minutes, then 1 minute.
- Observe how lines converge toward vanishing points on the horizon.
The Picture Plane
Understanding the picture plane explains foreshortening. As objects align with your eye, they compress. This concept solves many perspective problems.
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ASSIGNMENTS![]()
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![Angelica]()
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![Ron Kempke]()
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![Michael Longhurst]()
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Skill-Building Project
- Sketch examples repeatedly, this helps to internalize concepts. 30 times and you'll get it, 50 times and you'll never forget.
- Redraw scenes with higher or lower eye levels. Observe how the lines aiming toward the horizon change angles.
- Maintain proportions. Forms don't change, only the angles of the lines do.
Remember:
- Looking down, lines go up
- Looking up, lines go down
For the first five rooms, five minutes felt like too little. Once I got into it, ten minutes and sometimes even five produced overworked images. I never liked doing small drawings and this exercise really tested my patience. I decided to go to our newly-built library in town and that challenged me. It has a very big spiral stair in the middle which tricks the eye somehow. When I ran out of good places to draw in the library (all seats were taken that day), I used some images of resorts and hotels from Unsplash, which was easier in the sense that I didn't have to choosing a part of the room (is this hard for some of you, too? Why?). And then I also tried very extreme views with vanishing points close together to see what would happen with the room.
Really getting the hang of it now. Truly seeing how everything works. 😁 thank you Marshall.
Image one:
The first two rows were drawn from life with a 5 minute timer set, and I found them to be the most difficult. I could see more of the room than I was putting down and it gave me trouble deciding how much to include. Maybe the size of the frame was too small. The bottom rows were from reference and with a 3 minute timer.
Image two:
All from reference and alternating between a 3 and 1 minute timer.
In total, 56! What I did realize is how simple it can be to draw blocky shapes with parts that stick out at different levels and at different lengths if you start with a big box and think in terms of “keeping Y, sliding along on Z”, or “moving in on X”, etc.
I liked that for once it clicked in my mind in that way.
Defining the eye level was difficult, I found I that it may certainly be lower that I think .
hard not to tilt my head up or down and change the eye level .
i did outside like urban sketch and inside a room
*content warning you may need eye bleach after viewing these*
I've posted and deleted these a few times because I'm ashamed of them... but screw it! I'm up at ridiculous hours being tortured by these so you can all suffer along with me!
I didn’t make it to 50... or even 30... just 15 for now.
But I had fun, and I hope I can draw more in the next few days.
I still can’t do this by eye. On a separate sheet, I made a little “window” where I placed the horizon lines and vanishing points.
In the first drawing, I just imagined a space without thinking too much.
For the second one, I observed my house. Then, while trying to draw something on top of a box, a character appeared—and suddenly I started wondering what could happen in the next scenes.
That shifted my focus: in the first five drawings I just sketched what I saw, but starting from number six, I first decided where I wanted the viewer to be.
That helped me place the horizon line, and I realized it could even be way above the frame!
Conclusion: I learned a lot.
Here are backgrounds 1-9. I focused on using different types of grids and tools for each. I also took note of how the eye level changes. I found it's much easier when you are looking at vast amounts of space.
Next, I want to focus on one room at multiple angles.
Here are a few more larger ones that I did for projects. I am feeling way better now about finding eye level.
It’s cool to see how I can actually draw the scenes in different angles. Also being able to do the 2 point perspective ones. Around a year ago I started with 2 point in the basic course and I tried to do rooms but it was so much harder than 1 point so I could not do it. Every line was a struggle. A nice reminder that I am improving.
Anyway i did struggle a bit with the time. I did keep track at first but then i just kinda forgot about it, So i probably did spend longer on some of this. Then i took advice from the comments here and drew out small squares first and then just filled them. Those are around 1-3 minutes. A bit messy but i guess the time limit is there to make us focus on the perspective and not worry too much about other stuff.
Good work! From the volume of work I can see you're serious about understanding this material. It's a good idea to get used to including the eye level line on all of these for when we learn how to scale perspectives.
I have only done 10 or so of these so far. I love looking through the student work here but I see some of you using 1 point perspective lines for this. How? The drawings look great but when I look around me I just can't 'see' that.
Any pointers? Do I just choose a point and wing it??
I’d say a lot depends on what you’re looking at in the room and how the room is set up. The easiest clue though is if you’re looking straight at a wall, one point is going to work well. If you’re looking at a corner, you’re probably using 2 or 3 point. Back to one point, looking at the wall, the lines formed by the side walls and the ceiling or floor run parallel, so in perspective will converge to one point. Anything with a boxy shape that’s aligned with the back wall will have similar converging/parallel lines running towards the vp. However if you have something turned diagonally from the wall, it won’t converge with the one point grid. It’ll have its own perspective. So maybe those types of objects are throwing you off?
Is it back to my eye line in the horizon line?
I guess it's because I'm not seeing all the boxes in one point?? Or am I? I'm in a muddle
Great exploration in this assignment, vanishing point placement is something that I wanted to learn in this course. Explored different placements via reference, which gave me some conceptual idea about the effect of it. Definitely a fun one to draw some environment.
