Chapter Four: Planes and Circles
LESSON FIVE
Maintaining Proportions
Creating symmetrical measurements in perspective can be difficult to portray as they disappear into the distance. It is very hard to estimate how much space should be between them, that is, without a technique to guide you. How can you, for example, create a series of windows and assure to maintain proper proportions between them?
Let’s look at how we can duplicate a certain width of a plane in perspective.
Here I am drawing our example head-on, which is just a set of evenly spaced pillars, so you can see what we are trying to accomplish when we do it in perspective.
First establish your vanishing point, and then your plane; the exact size doesn’t matter for this example. In order to copy and transfer the width, start like you always do, and draw in an X. This time all you have to do is add the horizontal center, as we don’t need a vertical to accomplish this.
This is where the technique comes into play. Draw out a diagonal line starting at the bottom left corner of your initial plane, through the point where the horizontal center intersects the right side of the plane, and then straight through to the top receding line. The distance this line travels, between the horizontal center towards the top receding line gives us the width of the second plane. So draw a straight line from the top receding line down to the bottom, and you are done.
Duplicate as many times as necessary, starting at the bottom corner of the new plane, intersecting the horizontal center with a diagonal line, all the way through to the top, and draw in the new vertical line to establish the plane. Now that we have our distances marked, we can draw in the four poles knowing they are evenly spaced in perspective.
