Perspective Drawing Grid

The bookkeeping, done for you

Perspective is not conceptually hard. What is hard is keeping every single receding edge pointing at exactly the same spot across a whole drawing, without a ruler and a great many faint construction lines that then have to be erased.

This prints those construction lines. A horizon at eye level, the vanishing points marked on it with a small ring, and a fan of pale guides running from each point out to the edges of the sheet. Lay a ruler along any one of them and the edge you draw converges correctly by construction rather than by judgement.

Underneath sits a light measuring grid. Windows along a wall, tiles across a floor, floorboards receding.

One point or two

One-point has a single vanishing point, usually near the centre. Everything running away from the viewer converges on it while horizontals stay horizontal and verticals stay vertical. This is the view straight down a corridor, a road, a pair of railway tracks, and it is the right place to start because only one thing is happening.

Two-point puts a vanishing point near each side. Verticals still stay vertical, but the two sets of receding edges each head for their own point. That is the corner of a building, a box seen from an angle, a street turning away. It looks far more three-dimensional and it is what the sheet gives you by default, because it is what most people are actually trying to draw.

Working over the guides

1. Pick the mode that matches the subject.
2. Block in the main masses first by ruling along whichever printed guides pass through them. Do the big shapes before any detail.
3. Use the underlay to keep heights and spacings consistent. This is the step people skip, and it is why their windows get further apart as the wall recedes.
4. Add the detail and the shading freehand, off the guides.

The guides print in a pale tint deliberately. Your own pencil sits clearly on top of them, and when the finished drawing is scanned or photographed at normal contrast the underlay drops out almost entirely.

Who it helps

An art teacher can hand a class identical guides, so thirty children learn the same construction and the discussion afterwards is about the same drawing rather than thirty different setups.

For a beginner it is training wheels, and unapologetically so. Convincing depth on the first attempt is worth a great deal more to somebody learning than a wobbly attempt built from scratch, because they can see what correct looks like before they have to produce it.

Illustrators and storyboard artists use them to rough a scene fast before committing to a clean drawing. Same reason, arrived at from the other end.