One Point Perspective Drawing Tutorial

I'm sure you've heard of one point perspective drawing. That's why you're here right? You can think of this as the starting point in a learning process that will have you drawing things that you never thought possible. I'm a visual learner, and being an artist I'm guessing that you are too. If the explanation is a little long winded, just follow the pictures and you should be fine. Let's get to it.

Grab a pen or pencil, a piece of paper, a ruler and your eraser.

Step 1: Draw the horizon line.

What in the heck is a horizon line? Think of it as the place off in the distance where the sky meets together with the earth; that old familiar line where blue meets brown and green. Just draw a horizontal line across the page. Easy enough.

Step 2: Choose a vanishing point.

Pick a point on the horizon line. For my example I'm going to pick a point near the middle of the horizon line. You can pick a point anywhere on this line, it doesn't much matter. If you pick a point away from the middle the results you get will look different than the drawing I am doing, but the principles of one point perspective will be the same. We've now completed the two basic parts to this tutorial. Let's use our horizon line and vanishing point to make something. For this tutorial I'm going to make a simple house shape. You can make whatever you want.

Step 3: Draw in perspective lines.

I'm going to start by making one line with my ruler from the vanishing point outward. This line will be the bottom of my building.

Next, make the top line. This will form the base of one wall of the house.

Step 4: Connect the lines.

Now I'm going to draw 2 vertical lines that connect the bottom and top lines. Once this is done I'll have finished one wall of my structure. How is your drawing looking? Notice how the lines you just drew are not the same length? The shorter line fools your eye into thinking that the object is moving back into the 'space' of the page. Even though the page is flat, you've created some artificial depth. This is the same kind of effect that you see when you look at buildings outside. The further things are away from you, the smaller they appear.

You may notice that my top perspective line goes past the connecting line that I just drew. I am going to erase that extended line, as it is not needed. When drawing objects in one point perspective or any other kind of perspective, it's common to draw lines that are too long or too short and you will need to adjust them accordingly. I usually draw lightly when I am forming my perspective lines so that if I do need to erase something it's quite easy.

Step 5: Form the front of the perspective object.

The next step is to draw 2 horizontal lines of equal distance from the top and bottom of the closest part of the wall. Connect these 2 new lines with another vertical line.

We have a nice looking box happening now. This is one point perspective drawing at it's most simple.

If you aren't seeing the box, erase the part of the horizon line as is shown in the example image. See it now?

Step 6: Add the roof.

Let's finish off this object by adding a roof. Draw 2 diagonal lines from the opposite sides of the box. Extend the point where the lines meet towards the vanishing point. Draw one more diagonal line that connects the far point of the box with the line you just created going towards the vanishing point. Try to make this diagonal line have the same angle as the line it matches up with at the front. These 2 lines should be parallel.

Step 7: Finishing up.

Finish up the drawing by removing any unwanted perspective lines, like the ones extending towards the vanishing point and horizon line. That's all there is to one point perspective, now all you have to do is apply this knowledge over and over again in the same drawing to come up with something amazing.