Perspective

A horizon line is a line drawn or painted across the canvas at the viewer’s eye level. It represents the the line in nature where the sky and ground meet. A vanishing point, usually placed at the viewer’s eye level, is the single point in a picture where all parallel lines that run from the viewer to the horizon line appear to come together. Orthogonal lines are lines straight diagonal lines drawn to connect points around the edges of a picture to the vanishing point. These lines help draw the viewer’s attention to the vanishing point. Transversal lines are lines that always form right angles with orthogonal lines. They are also parallel to the picture plane and to one another.

One point perspective is the simplest form of perspective drawing and it uses a single vanishing point to draw attention to an object.

Two point perspective uses two sets of orthogonal lines and two vanishing points to to draw each object.

A circle in perspective is called an ellipse. The drawing is controlled by rectangular perspective.

Depth perspective can be shown by making things that are farther away or closer to the vanishing point smaller than objects that are close to the viewer. As objects approach the vanishing point, they get a blue tint and become more hazy.

Atmospheric/aerial perspective is the act of painting objects that are far away less distinctly and with a bluish tint. Leonardo speculated that this could be caused by the increased atmosphere in between the viewer and the object which reflected light and gave a blue tint, or warm water vapor in the air illuminated by sunlight in front of a dark background.