Part 3 Project 4 Exercise 2 Two-point or angular perspective

Johnston, Craig (2006) Spanish Cathedral

[photograph].

What I find the most challenging about two-point perspective is establishing where the two points are. Invariably they are so far off of your drawing page that it is hard to line up your orthogonals to such a remote point. Once I had drawn my initial sketch of the tower of this little Catholic cathedral in Spain, which we visited some years ago, I tried to match up my orthogonals. In order to do so, I had to extend my vanishing points right off the page as can be seen by this photograph. The photograph alone was hard to take as I had to stand on my work table and extend my arms way above my head, almost reaching the ceiling, in order to get the full sweep of the orthogonals reaching towards the two exterior vanishing points. Fun!

Extended work surface to aid in the analysis of orthogonals.

What I am forgetting is that this is actually three-point angular perspective as I am looking up at the tower. This throws in new perspective lines. I then went and tried extending my vanishing orthogonals to the vanishing point above the tower only to discover that the vanishing point was not above the pinnacle of the tower as I had faultily presumed, but to the right of it, by quite a margin. This was really enlightening. I eventually found that this was rather unsatisfactory on my own drawing, so I made a print out of the original photograph.

I studied the lines of the orthogonals reaching above the tower. This lead me to realize that there was not a single vanishing point as I had anticipated. This seems rather strange, but there were at least four different spots where lines of orthogonals met. Maybe this is because some of the walls deliberately were designed to lean slightly inwards, providing a natural buttress against collapse. The pinnacle of the tower was also hard to analyze as it is slanted to a pyramidal point in the middle, so follows its own alignment completely.

I then extended the lines to the left and to the right of the angular perspective. What I discovered was that the steeper the angle and the closer the vanishing point is to the actual side of the building, the more accurate the lines of the orthogonals are to all pointing to the same vanishing point.However, the further away the vanishing point is to the side of the building, the more inaccurate the lines of the orthogonals. The slightest variation in angle means that by the time the lines reaches anywhere near the vanishing point, they are off by quite a bit.

Analysis of cathedral using three-point perspective

It is also interesting that I had assumed that the vanishing points on either side of the building would both culminate at a horizon line that was parallel to the picture plane. What I discovered was that this was not so. Obviously, my husband when taking the photograph angled the camera to make a more interesting shot, hence the vanishing points on the left were higher than the vanishing points to the right. I also found that the tower and the main nave of the church both had their own vanishing points to the right of the building. I had assumed that their vanishing points would concur, but this was not so when I analyzed it in the photocopy.

This whole exercise was very interesting. It goes to show that portraying a building as simple as this Medieval cathedral is not as easy as it appears. No wonder Van Gogh chose to rather focus on the emotive feelings that the building conveyed, deliberately distorting its lines. I wonder if true three-point perspective only exist in the constructs of architectural drawings and computer imaging. But, it does help to make one more aware of the general patterns and alignment of orthogonals.

Just for inspiration I watched a video by Mark Crilley, How to draw background (two-point perspective). I was interested to see that he drew some of the Graphic novels that my students enjoy reading. I also looked at some of the drawings by Ralph McQuarrie that were used in designing Star Wars sets. These drawings were truly remarkable. I remember watching with awe the sketching of images used for the sets of The Lord of the Rings and how amazing the perspective was in most of these extremely remarkable sketches by Alan Lee.

At this point I embarked on trying to draw an A3-size drawing of the cathedral. I had no idea that it was going to be incredibly complex. Not only does it have three-point perspective, but the photograph was taken with a wide-angle lens which causes the lines towards the peripheries to become angled even further than usual. I must admit that half way through my drawing, I started to wonder if I would ever be able to get the perspective to look convincing.

Sketch midway through drawing

I found the chapel really difficult to get the angles right as the vanishing points are different from the bell tower and the lines are slightly exaggerated by the camera angle. I found that working with ruler to help align the brick work really helped me to keep the masonry straight. Periodically, I would have to erase whole sections as my angle had slightly altered in the process of drawing the masonry.

The stone masonry details around the door were the most challenging as I find drawing curves at oblique angles rather difficult. The cornices around the cathedral portal and the bell tower were also difficult to make convincing.

Once I was finished with my main groundwork, I had to determine what I wanted to emphasize and figure out how to make it the focus. On completion of the initial drawing, The circular window of the cathedral apse was drawing all of the attention. This was because it was in the foreground and the area around it was lightest.

My husband and I tried to determine what I could do to make the bell tower my desired focal point, and get it the attention I wanted. We decided that I needed to darken the side of the apse quite considerably and then darken the details in the bell tower. At this stage in the drawing, there was also not enough of a contrast between the dark and light areas, meaning that it lost impact. To add some atmospheric drama, my husband suggested that I tried to include some clouds to improve the background, which until this point was stark white paper. I did this using three different pictures of sky taken around the same period of time. 

Final Drawing of Spanish Cathedral

It was really interesting to see how by darkening the bell tower and the wall of the apse, and including cloud effects, I was able to draw attention away from the apse, and direct the viewers eye towards the bell tower. I was able to change the focus from the foreground to the middle ground, and then by adding clouds, effectively added a background. I really feel that tweaking this drawing has helped me to see how effective shifting shading and lighting can be in altering the focal point. I also feel that I have helped to take this drawing from a technical exercise to a more brooding, pensive drawing.