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Three point perspective

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Three point perspective

Three point perspective is a tricky technique to teach high school students. One and two point are pretty smooth, but adding the third point as the vertical completely throws them off. When they start, many students cannot visualize that the work will actually look correct once they are finished. Usually I spend most of my time trying to get my students to understand the concept of using the third point, but this year things went a bit smoother. I got the opportunity to demonstrate in an actual image how to do it along with shading, composition, lighting, and accurate drawing.
The piece posted is not finished, but it is far enough along you can see what will happen.
The image is of a Native American tipi juxtaposed with a home from the early 1900's in Russia. The assignment requires students to do research on how the environment and natural resources effect how housing is developed around the world. In my example piece, I explore the notion of "what if history had gone differently"? I figured if people are still utilizing a yurt, why not the portable tipi? I used the Russian home to represent a standard European style house. The image is place in the Colorado Rocky Mountains with aspen trees. If you look at the tipi, the supports are emphasized to draw attention to how the aspen trees could have been used as supports.
Part of the instruction process was to expand the vanishing points beyond the edges of the paper in order to create angles that were not harsh. I wanted the piece to demonstrate pleasing perspective usage, This helped the students who were reluctant to understand that three point can be useful in the depiction of space.
If you would like to follow along on more adventure in art, please follow my facebook page at facebook.com/amybrownmastiffstudios