Need help with perspective

hedgie · Jul 2017

Hello everyone! I'm trying to tackle my art problem areas; probably the biggest of which is perspective.
This image is one of my tries; and I would like to continue working on it and color it but the perspective looks off. How can I fix it?

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/gx/yvgngqv53rzz.png

lotet · Jul 2017

mostly its looking really good, the girls is whats popping out for me for sure. her legs look very long for starters.
then its a tricky situation as we see her feet from at an upwards angle, but they should be way more from from a straight side view , but then again, she is wearing heals to make things complicated.

overall I think its looking really good, maybe the fallen chairs back support is a bit tall.

you could probably crop away most of the table on the bottom part of the image for a better illustration/composition as well.

JordanN · Jul 2017

Are you using real world units? I feel like this would make a huge difference.

Admittedly, I use a lot of 3D modeling programs to eliminate a lot of guesswork when drawing, however I still recall some fundamentals.

For example, how you draw objects as they get closer to the vanishing point matters a lot. I look at the shelf and I wonder if it's perhaps too long.

Greg Westphal · Jul 2017

If you take the horizon line which is currently crotch level for the guys standing and most of the scene, and check to where that is flush on the girl you'll notice their crotches are all about the same level. Now if you take the bookshelf behind the girl and notice that the one edge furthest away from her going into camera doesn't go as far back into camera as the guy standing straight up (run a horizontal line right off the point on the floor and notice where the guy's boots land) but if you take the corner of the bookshelf right above her head its a good 2/5ths of her body above her. This means the girl, in order to fit the scene would have to have her crotch the same level, but she would have to be scaled up around 40% to fit the room and because that doesn't quite work, the camera itself is a bit janky.

The hardest thing about perspective is thinking about everthing that lands on the 3 planes stacked vertically. First is the plane of the floor which i you can get away with a floor plane map. The second is what I call "the plane of usability" which is stuff like table tops, door knobs and generally anything that is comfortable for us to interact with. The last is eye line. If, when you draw in 1 point perspective, you first block out these 3 planes loosely by drawing rectangles, you can line up elements in the scene much much faster. If you need a drawn example I can do it tonight.

EricElwell · Jul 2017

All good points here. Solid information from @Greg Westphal and @JordanN for sure.

Some of the scale and positioning is inconsistent as well. For example, the foreground desk/coffee table can easily read as a rug. It's not in line with that "plane of usability" as Greg mentioned. Additionally, it doesn't overlap any other part of the scene. Now, overlap is not necessary and in this case is not the underlying issue, but it is one more tool in the perspective arsenal.

Need help with perspective

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