Exercise 5: ONE POINT PERSPECTIVE, Drawing an Interior Space

Below, I have outlined a drawing for an interior space in one point perspective.

Drawing a room involves the same skills as drawing objects in an exterior environment. The major difference is that the vanishing point and horizon line are obscured by walls. You still want to establish the horizon line and a vanishing point treating the room as though it were transparent. Using converging lines, it is possible to align windows, doors, and furniture properly in space.

Four converging lines indicate the walls, ceiling, and floor. Once the sides of the room are established I can locate other objects in space. Below, I have listed each of the features in this room and the techniques used to indicate them.

Create a drawing of a space similar to the example and include the following elements as explained below.

A. The circular skylight can be indicated by drawing a square floating above your eye view and locating the center as we did with the earlier exercises. The box of the window that encloses the circular skylight was created by simply drawing four vertical lines down from each corner of the top square and connecting them to create the lower shape.

B. The picture window on the far wall is simply a transparent box. The inside edges of the box are lined up with the vanishing point to create the corners of the window.

C. The door on the far wall follows the same pattern, except that the left inside edge now disappears since it passes behind the wall.

D. The arched doorway on the right wall follows the same pattern, except that I have indicated the hidden inside edge of the door frame to assist in drawing the circular shape above the door. To indicate the arch I drew a square in perspective using the single vanishing point. Instead of completing the ellipse I joined the bottom ends of the arch to the top of the door frame. The horizontal center line of the ellipse becomes the base of the window frame.

E. The window on the right wall is lined up to the top of the doorway. The depth of the window and door frames is indicated by extending horizontal lines to the right until they intersect with the second line that indicates the thickness of the wall.

F. The coffee table in the center of the room is created from a combination of a flattened cube sitting on a cylinder constructed by drawing two vertical lines up behind the table top. The center axis for the ellipse and the center square are aligned to make the object symmetrical.

G. The side table is simply two vertical rectangular forms with a horizontal rectangular form positioned on top.

H. Indicating a tile floor involves drawing a single horizontal line and plotting a set of evenly spaced points. A convergence line is then drawn through each of these points to the vanishing point. The next step is to draw a diagonal line across a section of the floor. I then drew a series of horizontal lines across the point where this diagonal line crossed each of the convergence lines. Notice that I started this diagonal line in one corner of the room and extended it out toward the middle of the room. If I tilted this line to a more shallow angle, the tiles would appear to be more flattened in space. This technique allows you to establish a tile pattern that recedes in space, causing the tiles to flatten as they approach the horizon line