One Point Aerial Perspective

One Point Aerial Perspective by: Olivia Nguyen

Let me take you to the rooftop loggia of the Basilica San Marco in Venice, Italy. It is described by many as a simple space to sketch. All you do is start with a box and build you vanishing point and you have got the perfect basis for Venice, Italy. But there are many arches when looking upon the loggia. How do we achieve a realistic look of arches and beautiful doors? On site drawing is great because taking a picture can be done in two seconds, but a drawing you really take time to take in all the little details. Once your done and can look back upon it you can remember all the smells, weird sights, weather, noises, and maybe even the taste of the air that day. I don't recall a phone camera doing all that. With a camera you miss so many of those little details. As I am much better at drawing sketches of people rather than buildings helping me guide through my perspective drawing I will use the book Understand Perspective by Stephanie Bower. The great thing about this book many of the artists featured are right here from Seattle. 

Bower uses a term called foreshortening to achieve the flattening out affect something has as it gets closer to your vanishing point. Bower explains that the closer at eye level something is the flatter it should seem (Bower 34). When I did the first rough sketches I made sure the building, arches, and windows farther away had more dimension verse the ones that were closer to the vanishing point. This added to the sketches realism. 

During the detailing process of my sketch I got stuck on patterns and which way they went. How would I make sure I kept the realistic characteristics of the buildings when I drew them? In the book Bower explains the difference of horizontal shortening and vertical shortening "The angled lines of the molding on the side walls flatten to a horizontal line at your eye level. When sketching, look for architectural elements like course of stone or brick to flatten at the eye level too" (Bower 35). This helped a lot during my watercolor period of my drawing I made sure to add texture at angled lines and none to some others. This gave my artwork a nice flattening at my horizon line. My horizon line is at eye level. Before my sketch I sketched many lines, dots, and a persons head for eye level. All of them had meaning to ensure my keeping of perspective. If you look the sketch before water color you maybe able to see some of them. This kept my windows in order and everything else nice and neat. 

This perspective drawing took me about an hour to do. I am definitely making progress from my last drawing. I used a Pang watercolor set 8, Bic mechanical pencil, pen, notebook paper, and a pentel waterbrush. Don't forget to watch out for more posts from me with more artwork. I want to leave you with a question, what is your favorite building? Taj Mahal? Seattle Space Needle?