Essential Design Tools

Perspective Drawing by Hand - Hand or computer drawing?

(to go straight to computer aided perspectives)

When I first started in this industry I was taught to draw perspectives on a drawing board. We used these to help our client and ourselves visualise the finished interior three dimensionally. It was a reasonably complicated exercise but with practice it soon became quick and the results were enough to do the job.

When computer aided design and drafting first arrived on the market, I tried to use it but found it limited, cumbersome and slow. It was also very complicated to use. Happily for me all that has changed and the programmes that are available now are intuitive and easy to use.

This article shows how to draw a single point perspective and then you can follow on to learn the difference between that and using a computer program to help you develop your design skills.

This exercise will show you how to draw a single point perspective. On the following pages an example of single point perspective is shown. Study this closely and then, if desired, as an exercise draw the perspective by following the steps. The drawing is at a scale of 1:50 (before being transfered into the computer, so is now irrelevant!) but if you don’t have a comprehensive knowledge of drafting don’t be too concerned as this exercise is to help you see how both systems are used. The final drawing will give you a perspective sketch that is able to be to rendered with lines of texture or color.

Draw all lines lightly in pencil initially until you come to the rendering stage of the drawing. Then you may use pencil and ink and "firm up" (darken) the lines and add the texture to render the drawing and give it contrast as well as depth.

Step 1

Draw a plan of a room. Copy the one depicted for your first attempt. It shows a simple kitchen. There are cabinets, the tiled floor, window and a door. This drawing is at 1-50 so you will be able to use your scale ruler to work out the sizes.

Step 2

You now will draw an outline of the front edge of the room that you are going to view. Essentially this is an outline of the elevation of the room. To this add the height of the room, the window and door and cabinets and also mark on the bottom edge where the tiles will be. You can project (projection lines) down from the plan and across from the elevation or section to establish the heights and floor positions or simply measure from the plan and elevation and a mark on the edges of the elevation or outline edges of the room. Use the vertical lines for height and horizontal baseline for widths or positions of objects.

plan of proposed perspective drawing