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250 Box's VPs

6:38 AM, Saturday March 27th 2021

Please, do any of you good people have any wisdom on how to actually choose the implied vanishing points? I've just been putting them slightly off the page and following Comfy's advice about doing a majority boxes with shallow, human-scale foreshortening. I'm trying to understand the forms better, as I notice my boxes haven't really improved at all in the last few dozen, and I realize that the position of those VPs actually determines a lot about the actual form. Am I right that by picking just one vanishing point (if the Y already establishes the length of three lines going toward each VP, and if the box actually were constructed of 90° angles) that the other two VPs would thus be determined too (notwithstanding the other two VPs one chooses may actually not even be close)? And by choosing just one VP in this scenario, doesn't that also establish a ratio of size to distance to the observer as well? This kind of thinking is probably well beyond my current capabilities, but this suddenly just got far more esoteric to me and I can't think about it as jejunely anymore.

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10:55 PM, Saturday March 27th 2021
edited at 11:12 PM, Mar 27th 2021

Hi!

I'll try to help you at the best of my current knowledge.

The angles in your initial Y should always be wider than 90 degrees. This one seems a minor thing but I have noticed that it's very important in order to draw a box in three point perspective.

The initial Y alone doesn't determine any Vp. You need at least two parallel lines to establish a Vp in space.

About choosing a Vp: if you opt for a shallow perspective, you'll find that the VP is almost always outside the boundaries of the paper. I might suggest to not stress too much about "finding it". Once you have a set of parallel lines, try to imagine where those lines converge and follow with the remaining ones of the same set.

Even though there is no standard, from all the posts I've read I would say that It's perfectly common that one doesn't notice any major improvement after a few dozen of boxes.

ScyllaStew made this sept by step video guide that you might find useful.

Good luck with the challenge and if you have any question feel free to ask.

edited at 11:12 PM, Mar 27th 2021
4:50 AM, Monday March 29th 2021
edited at 5:22 AM, Mar 29th 2021

Hi, Liska.

Thanks so much for replying, and your encouragement really means a lot! I felt like a few dozen boxes was a lot, and I was bummed I wasn't getting better, but I guess that's why you have to draw 250...and do the whole rest of the course after. I've been using the Y generator for my first 100, and all the Ys appear to have obtuse angles. I never mastered perspective before getting into Drawabox, but I was just blissfully going along picking rather arbitrary VPs (and obviously attempting to make all the parallel lines go to their respective ones); then I started thinking--the first VP may have some variance in where it could be because that could do with the distance or size of the box, but after one VP is established (and the length of one line from each set) doesn't that actually lock in where the other two should be if the form is made of perpendicular and parallel lines? I don't know if this theory pans out.

Thanks again, and I wish you well with your own art!

Daniel

edited at 5:22 AM, Mar 29th 2021
6:28 AM, Monday March 29th 2021
edited at 6:35 AM, Mar 29th 2021

Hi Daniel!

Let's see if I understand your question correctly.

You have your Y and you have drawn a line from one of the three sets, and in doing so you have established a Vp in space. The Vp is implied because we can't physically see it.

Let's say you decided to go for a very dramatic convergence, as if we are seeing the walls of a skyscraper from the street below converging up to the roof.

You question is: does this first Vp, with its specific convergence, establish somehow the other two Vps in a way that could help me draw the remaining lines of the other two sets?

If that was your question, my answer is that it all depends on the size of the object and its distance from the observer. Since neither of these elements are already set in the page by the context of the image, you are free to decide the convergences of the other two sets without worrying about the first Vp.

The only concern is to avoid placing the two Vps on the same axis too close to each other to avoid distortion.

Keep in mind that while perspective arises many difficult questions and doubts, to complete the challenge and learn from it you don't need any additional knowledge or reasoning. With perspective is very easy to dig a hole of questions and get lost in it. It happens to me all the time :)

Good luck!

Edit: there is this note that could clarify some of your doubts.

edited at 6:35 AM, Mar 29th 2021
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