Check Out NMA    About our Partnership    Collapse this Ad
View Full Submission View Parent Comment
2 users agree
3:46 PM, Saturday January 7th 2023

The short answer is no. But this is a good question though because it relates to an idea of "the proper order" of skill acquisition. That somehow you must master one area to move on to the next. Like any skill you try to acquire, learning a sport or new language, etc, you move from one area of the skill to the next. When learning a language, you don't tell yourself: "Cool, I have finally mastered verbs. Now I can do nouns". Perspective is just one skill on a list of skills that you will keep learning and relearning as you explore art. Think of the learning path like a spiral moving out. you practice skills like perspective, then figure drawing, then color theory, etc but eventually you will come back to perspective, but at a higher level. You spiral through the skills over and over again, constantly learning more or at a higher level of understanding. Is perspective helpful for figure drawing, yes. Is it required to understand perspective at a higher level, no. Hope this helps.

7:05 PM, Saturday January 7th 2023
edited at 7:09 PM, Jan 7th 2023

The problem that I have with this idea is that art professionals always put perspective as the holy grail of fundamentals of art, that you cannot move from it unless you get good at it , always saying things like:

"Perspective opens a world of possibilities”

“If you know perspective, you can draw anything”

And if you go to a lot of YouTube art tutorials about figure drawing, chances are you're going to find someone telling you that you need to know perspective, which goes back to how important this fundamental is and how much you need it to draw the figure.

I feel like the problem with perspective is that is kind of like basic math, you need to know basic math before moving to more advanced stuff, its not impossible to learn difficult subjects without the knowledge of basic math, but you are definitely going to struggle, I feel this way with perspective. I feel like perspective is the only fundamental in which you are required to be good at before moving to any other subject.

edited at 7:09 PM, Jan 7th 2023
9:29 PM, Saturday January 7th 2023

I hear what you are saying but I would say art is full of "fundamentals". Even only up to lesson 2 of DAB is enough to understand other art concepts. Uncomfortable cautions against grinding on one area trying to achieve perfection before moving on. I would say the same applies to perspective as a whole. He encourages (nay, demands) that people draw for fun 50% of the time. Many people try drawing people during that 50%, even when DAB doesn't have lessons on figure drawing. Art skills are interconnected and doing one thing can often help another. While doing DAB, I have also been learning figure drawing. The cylinder challenge was incredibly helpful when trying to draw a manniquinized figure or foreshortening a limb. But I am not done with DAB yet. I have much more to learn. I also am not done with figure drawing (maybe never done learning that). Perspective is really helpful but I don't think mastery is necessary before moving on.

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
The Art of Blizzard Entertainment

The Art of Blizzard Entertainment

While I have a massive library of non-instructional art books I've collected over the years, there's only a handful that are actually important to me. This is one of them - so much so that I jammed my copy into my overstuffed backpack when flying back from my parents' house just so I could have it at my apartment. My back's been sore for a week.

The reason I hold this book in such high esteem is because of how it puts the relatively new field of game art into perspective, showing how concept art really just started off as crude sketches intended to communicate ideas to storytellers, designers and 3D modelers. How all of this focus on beautiful illustrations is really secondary to the core of a concept artist's job. A real eye-opener.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.