Perspective Drawing: A Designer's Method

Perspective Drawing balances the need for detail with the need for spontaneity by establishing a connection between constructed perspective and freehand sketching. The techniques illustrated and discussed in this text enable students to design a space as they are drawing it. One of the author's students described the effectiveness of this approach as making it "1,000,000 times easier to draw freehand after learning these perspective techniques." After studying the methods for constructing linear perspective, students produce a number of freehand sketches. They test each one with an overlay grid to verify the location of horizon lines, vanishing points and other key elements. With practice, they develop the ability to find these key points intuitively while sketching, so that they can draw freely and confidently.

Perspective Drawing balances the need for detail with the need for spontaneity by establishing a connection between constructed perspective and freehand sketching. The techniques illustrated and discussed in this text enable students to design a space as they are drawing it. One of the author's students described the effectiveness of this approach as making it "1,000,000 times easier to draw freehand after learning these perspective techniques." After studying the methods for constructing linear perspective, students produce a number of freehand sketches. They test each one with an overlay grid to verify the location of horizon lines, vanishing points and other key elements. With practice, they develop the ability to find these key points intuitively while sketching, so that they can draw freely and confidently.

Robert Philip Gordon is an architect, planner and designer with an international reputation in multiple design disciplines and as an educator. He currently teaches Architectural Rendering and Design at Columbia College Chicago in the graduate and undergraduate program of Architectural Studies and Interior Architecture. Gordon has previously taught at Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois, Chicago, the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, and the Paris/American Academy of Beaux Arts in Paris. His work has been exhibited in galleries and expositions in Chicago, Paris and San Francisco, as well as on the electronic scoreboard at Old Comiskey Park. Gordon has also written numerous articles on architecture and design for newspapers and magazines.