Next up, we're tackling intuitive perspective! If you're looking to get into that premium perspective content, use code BASICS15 to get 15% off the course until March 31st - proko.com/drawing
i studied from an animator called miyamoto takuji for a time and he really did not like points so what he had us do is use trail and error combined with draw overs to learn to feel it out. his main focus and most important thing he taught is the exaggeration of lenses where if something is close it will be super exaggerated and as it move away it gradually become almost isometric.
@@coreygraham860you don’t 😅, there’s no feedback loop regarding that, it’s a bit of a flawed method because of that I feel ( if used in isolation, which the students were made to do, from I’m aware )
For those who have not yet bought Marshall's perspective lessons, I am telling you as someone who struggled with perspective so much and regard it as a top 3 most difficult things I have to learn in art, Marshall is your guy His course is so easy to understand and is so, so good
I’m guessing you’re talking about the lessons on his website on perspective, the 1994 ones for $12 and not the new course he’s working on as of now cause I was searching on proko’s website couldn’t find anything
100% correct. We see a curved world but we know it's actually straight lines, but we don't actually percieve it that way. Drawing what you percieve vs drawing what you know reality should be. Learning the construct of perspective as a foundation helps you go beyond that to a less rigid and more natural perspective where the lines don't line up perfectly to a grid, but they 'feel' right. Eric Canete's art is a great example of this.
When I was a senior in high school I worked for Realtors, drawing architectural renderings of homes, and buildings. I taught myself how to use one, two, and three point perspective. I would work in pen and ink, then using water soluble colored pencils to color my work to look like watercolor. It was an integration of art and mathematics that gave me incredible pleasure, and money in my pocket. This was in the '50s, and I styled my work after a famous architectural renderer named Jacobe.
I realised this when I studied perspective through the camera lens. Once I understood that perspective is defined by where I placed my intention, drawing backgrounds and characters in complex perspectives became a lot easier to express. I started using my senses than calculation, thus making the drawing more natural, even though it may not align perfectly with perspective lines.
This is something I figured out by myself after years of not conforming with perspective point techniques being so limited. Loads of objects will break 1, 2, 3 or even 5 point perspective if you shift them by even a little. So i canned all of these techs and just follow perceptual, scene based perspective and after a few years I can do it in my sleep. Glad to finally see a video of experienced artists confirming this is in fact true. Just choose an FOV and draw everything based on the POV of a lens, and it will open your mind to infinite compositions compared the hard grid, box-based models.
I sometimes can't believe how over complicated, while also over simplified, my art teachers in public school and university, made it seem. Always using the same examples, 1 point = a room, 2 point = train tracks, 3 point = a skyscraper. And no, there will be no more examples, only boxes. For the rest of the class. Direct quote "you probably wont be using 3 point unless you're drawing skyscrapers, and you wont be using 2 point unless you're showing off some kind of design, like a car" They NEVER explain that perspective points are just a tool, and not actually real, and that EVERY object drawn on a picture plane is gonna be in a version of these perspectives, not that there are types of pictures that have only one 😂 I'm pretty sure they don'tbring this up becausethey literally don't know it.. I mentioned to one teacher "you know a quick way to discover if you're looking at a 2 point or a 1 point is that 1 points will have true horizontal and vertical lines, and 2 points will only have true verticals" I pointed this out by instinct. I had never been taught this. And he looked at me like I was saying something either untrue, or just totally useless to the lesson, and brushed me off! I was so confused! But all I can assume is he had no idea what I was tlaking about, and really wasnt open to talking about it. 😬 Then a little while ago, yEARS after I was done with that college course, I was trying to explain perspective to a beginner drawing friend of mine, (whos taking THE SAME CLASS I TOOK) I realized out loud "The horizon line is a lie! It's all lies!" And essentially had a total breakdown. I've never had trouble drawing what I needed to draw in perspective because I just drew from life intuitively. Whenever I wasn't sure about something I just fudged it! But when I tried to explain it to someone with 0 experience, I realized the teachers I learned from never actually taught me how it worked either! And we're all just relying on intuition to make up for really crappy lessons!
This video is actually so great. Learning the way others "THINK" is, sometimes SOOOO MUCH more important than simply learning the way others "DO". I've learnt so SO much from this
Been study art for a few years now and in the last 2 months I’m just starting to realize how important boxes truly are. I regret not doing it sooner but it’s better late thn never
Great! I was *blissfully* unaware of all the straight lines appearing curved. Now I can't unsee it. In under 3 min you have completely changed my perspective Sir!
Very well explained Marshall, you are a perfect teacher. I always explain that our eyes are spherical inside and outside, but a camera-sensor and a piece of paper are flat. That's why there is no "true" perspective on paper.
I'm glad Marshall mentioned that it gets more complicated when we look with two eyes. Just try closing one eye at the time and see things jump around. Neither of those views are what we see with two eyes. It's a combination that's bigger than its parts. But human vision is even more complicated. One aspect is just how tiny the area where we actually have sharp vision is. Try taking a regular playing card at arm's length and moving it in from the periphery of your vision towards the center while staring straight ahead and see where you can see what card it is. You'll be surprised at how close to dead center you need to bring it to tell. So it's just a tiny part of our field of vision that has any sharpness at all. The rest is just more limited cues plus our memory filling things in. And if you move your eyes, you've switched to a new view. It's not the same one. (Fun thing: We're basically blind while the eye moves. The eye knows that it'll just get unfocused nonsense during the eye movement and ignores it.) And then there's the big aspect of how our vision actually is interpretative. We don't see a bitmap of pixels. Shapes and distance and motions is hardwired into perception and there's no neutral view without that information baked in for us to see.
Looking with two eyes is just another mechanism to understand distance beyond linear perspective. Brain compares images if each eye. The bigger difference the closer the object.
Game programmer here! Marshal described 3d programs mastery of perspective. ...All we do is divide the x and y coordinates by the depth z. boom linear perspective :P
Currently studying math and I just admire Marshall's take on why math is both and invention and a discovery. I am actually leaning more and more to it being a discovery.. Unravelling a hidden truth.
Something that always helps me is imagining where I am (the camera) and the direction my eyes (the tilt of camera). Put yourself in the scene mentally.
This is so enjoyable to listen to and you guys make me love perspective even more than I already do 😭👍 Also I definitely agree with artists who are true masters of perspective are really masters of thinking in 3D and knowing how to manipulate their "stage" or subject matter's form in any angle because again they're thinking in 3D. For sure one of the greatest skills any artist can learn. Anyway, keep on doing good work team Proko!! 👏👏👏
2:32 😂 This is how I teach perspective in my class. I said "Imagine your driving a car. One point is the straight road, two points are the houses on the block, three is the package on the passenger seat." I draw 3 panels in an "L" layout and draw the inside of the car integrating a point from each panel.
Thank you! This was fascinating to watch. I come to perspective from a divergent place. When I was in elementary school, the itinerant art teacher did a unit on perspective. I understood it from the beginning. She drew a cabin as demo. we copied it. I asked her, "how do you draw a room inside the cabin?" She said, "Reverse the vanishing pointgs." And away I went. In high school art, my art teacher called the horizon line the "eye level" line. It made sense since we lived in an environment of hills and valleys, no where near a desert or sea. In art school, I took an art history course and came across the frescoes in Pompeii which showed still lifes of fruits and glassware painted in perspective. Iin asking one of my professors about this he said, "The Renaissnce didn't invent how we see, but they did systematize how to create the illusion of depth on a flat surface. This same professor, now my friend, and I one day made a list of all the historical perspectives. Before he died we had hit about 19. Here's the thing which was mentioned in passing in the video. The illusion is dependent upon one eye - a single point of view. We require two eyes to make the scene work (perceiving depth) but we have to manufacture the illusion from a single point. Move a bit and the scene falls apart like all those painted scenes on the streets. Thanks again. apologies for the biography. best wishes
This fascinating and enlightening conversation (as well every other video on this channel) is absolutely invaluable to me in my journey towards understanding what I don’t understand about perspective! Thank you so much!
The philosophical draftsmen are back! How lovely! Speaking of which: I love the perspective course by Marshall from 1994 (you can spot him at 0:12). It's funny how he uses the chalkboard until everything is messy. The first lectures are quite easy to understand. The further into the course it's really challenging, to follow along and even more to create your own versions. Still today I am coming back to it regularly to refresh my knowledge. I am intrigued and very curious to see the new one! Thank you lads for sharing. It is a pleasure and interesting - as always. 😘
So good it deserves all the algorithm love. Comment 3 ❤ Proko, it’s great to see you clearly being an amazing student. Most hosts have a pompous air of, pre-filming, always knowing all things. That’s ridiculous! People have guests in to teach EVERYONE. Anyway, thanks for not being pompous and thanks for these lessons!!! ❤❤❤
I bought Marshall's Perspective Course, and it goes far beyond what they taught me in college. Marshall is also a great teacher and has a way of explaining things to make it easier too. I wished had known about him in the 90s.
Glad you liked it! His older lessons were fantastic. This year, his new and lengthy perspective course will finally be coming out with us. We'll share some of those lessons here and hope you find that they live up to those old lessons!
@@ProkoTV I just started the Drawing Basics Course and I have no doubt I will learn a lot. I remember when I discovered your first Proko videos which then led me to the Draftsman Podcast. I can't tell you how much I have already learned from you guys not just in skill but mindset too. Also, I love the humor. You guys are great and I am so glad you both teach the world!!!!
I was recently struggling with this since ive decided to seriously understand perspective and there were so many gaps i didnt understand. Like i knew the fundamentals but not like basic intuitive stuff which was explained in this video. Loved this video tysm all the time ❤
Your environment and objects section was golden. It was thought provoking and a good way to look at perspective. I think it'll help me out as I practice perspective more.
I really enjoyed this format of video. Really demystifies the concept of perspective to hear two seasoned artists discuss it and even disagree on aspects of it.
Hey Marshall, hey Stan! Great video guys, I also think there is too much confusing stuff about perspective rules around. My personal way of explaining it is that all perspectives are basically 5point perspectives, just sometimes so far zoomed into the grid-sphere that the lines almost seem straight. Like you can always imagine the 5point sphere and pic a rectangle(frame of drawing) inside it that defines whether you are more looking up, down, left or right. The smaller your rectangle is the less curved your perspective lines are going to be. Always great to see your videos guys!
This is an AWESOME video. So many mindblowing concepts. Now I understand vanishing points more as a consequence of decisions about parallel lines converging than a hard decision made before starting to draw. I even feel cheated to not have that explained to me earlier 😅 You two go ahead and make it fun too - such good friendship vibes. Thanks so much for making this content so acessible. Love and cheers from Brazil 🇧🇷
perceptual perspective is a natural evolution of a "wait a minute ...." moment. i noticed that lines curved and then later on saw an artist doing that which I thought I singularly discovered and would have been revolutionary. then found out digging further, many many others have come up with the same conclusion ages ago.
This is inspiring, the more I listened and the more I understood the concept of what you guys were saying the more inspired I became. It's sounds so simple when you break it down like this.
The branch of math that studies and extends perspective is called projective geometry, and it's one of my favorites. It tells you really precisely what it means for shapes to be "in perspective". Recommend NJ Wildberger's series on it if you are interested.
how useful this video was to me, during the last two days I was in conflict with myself for not being able to express the fact that looking at the road seemed different from when I drew on paper, it seemed like something was missing, but I couldn't explain what it was , the best analogy I thought of was that, when I draw on paper it's as if I did everything inside a cube using straight lines, while what I saw seemed deeper without straight lines, almost like a "fish eye".
I'm taking a 3 years course in comics, the second year is nearing to its end. We have a teacher who tought us all the basics of drawing (anatomy, perspective, storytelling, etc.), we put a lot of effort into perspective since we were all doing it wrong. We spent a month (maybe more) redrawing scenes and pages, everytime from scratch, we spent two whole lectures doing one mountain range in the most accurate way possible. By the end of the month we were somewhat capable of putting things into perspective, that is when out teacher sits down in front of us, looks at us dead in the eyes and states: "Perspective doesn't exist anyway, and comic artists don't actually do what you are doing" And then we learned intuitive perspective. I swear the confusion on our faces was a sight to behold
One of my favorite games to play is to trace over a "flat" image like a front-facing figure and "perspective it" by adding a horizon and a vanishing point...to arbitrary parts of the figure, making it warp and distort. Perspective grids are just grids, and when you distort the grid, you can create many kinds of effect.
As someone with vision problems, perspective drawing has always been a problematic issue for me. Something I eventually learnt was you could actually tell if an artist had eye problems from looking at how they paint & draw, especially with older artists we show case in galleries and you can tell where they 'faked it' to compensate. Learning this made me feel less panicky about my struggles with my eye conditions.
I was totally lost at the start but as the video went on I started to understand the idea that each element of the artwork has its own perspective and mini perspectives within itself. The only thing I need to know is how you draw the larger bounding boxes relative to the universal perspective of the piece... very tricky for someone at my level to understand how im meant to think and see the 3D space on the paper to be able to orient the objects correctly. Great video
Fascinating video. Especially interesting the question of are these concepts discovered or invented (math, perspective, music scales, etc) I'm of the view that these are discovered realities rather than invented concepts but I can see arguments for both. Great video!
I daresay that there is a very simple way to explain what perspective is. Cameras work according to the law of perspective. It is a real phenomena because optics is physics. It is likely that Brunelleschi used some optical device to develop the law of perspective. One, two, three points perspective are useful simplifications that can also be beautiful. Thanks Marshall and Stan.
It's always a pleasure seeing Marshall in videos. I loved listening to his views on perspective and it made me think about my own beliefs when it comes to art, in general. Also, I wonder if the interview that he's doing will be available anywhere?
Good explanations to something that is very complex. I learned conic perspective with strict rules and projections on a screen. It’s an instant in time at a specific angle and “printed on a screen”. With this system I can draw one, two,three or whatever points.I can understand what are isometric drawings and others. I can project shades and shadows from given angles. It’s a good way to understand what I am drawing. When I go do plain air the concept of printing on a screen helps me a lot.
this is dope, i initially got hooked on Proko because of the podcast xD the point of view ;) on art that you guys have is something i agree with all my heart
The strangeness of perspective vs real vision has fascinated me for decades. Now that I finally have a real job AND a launching art career, I’m excited to finally try your courses.
Great video!! Thanks for turning me onto Fechin! Sat in a a doctor’s office looking up his paintings. Then started looking at sketches. Those blew my mind!
This was such an awesome video to watch. It is so nice to see the perspective of experts. And both these guys I see is being experts. I have spent 20 years teaching myself how to draw basically by looking at things and trying to draw them whether it was a cartoon character or a person or building or whatever and I was just doing it on my own watching UA-cam videos and reading books and then drawing. I was slow at it I didn't practice every day during at least 20 years I would go months at a time without drawing. But then one day in the last year or so everything came together and now I can draw whatever I want and I can't even explain how or why. But one thing I do is I don't Focus too much on the rules of perspective as much as I just look at a drawing and I can tell it doesn't look right now and I'll figure out what I need to do to make it look right and I'm almost never measuring perspective or putting Horizon Lines and Vanishing points I'm just trying to figure out what looks right and I'm getting pretty good at it lol.
I once had a panic attack in art class because my neurodivergent brain decided that It's All Vanishing Point which represented a Truth About the Universe
I miss so much you to doing the draftsmen podcast, there is so many cool ideas and some many cool concepts that come along when you start talking, really nice lecture on perspective this is, Thank you!
Don't look at the sphere! I can't unsee it anymore 😂. Sometimes at least. It's so fun though how we are able to percieve or not percieve things depending on our brain and thinking. Same thing with the nose thing, we technically see it all the time but our brains just say "Nah".
A note on the last notion: while I think mastering the forms of 3D space is important, at some point learning how to put objects into perspective relative to each other is also valuable, just to have a rule to fall back on when thinking about depth. It does come back to boxes quite a lot... though I find breaking the boxes into cones/triangles adds more appeal/beauty. Anyway, perspective taught me the usefulness of knowing where to define the bounds/container of some object I am placing in the environment/world. Playing with the position/rotation/scale of containers is how I imagine 3D space, because most 3D programs have these as components to describe objects. I think we are on the same page here, when they are talking about tumbling objects in space. Perspective gives me shortcuts to avoid the need to model everything to get a reference, and saves a lot of time.
Discovered this when I made a panaroma 360 art 😂. Things only remain straight if the camera is looking directly at it, at that point the only way to make things spacially sensible was to relate the objects with one other in space using a connected line , basically a perspective grid. It's a fun experience that I would recommend all to try.
In college art history classe "one point" was used to illustrate how we went from simplified to more complex portrayals of how we understand a universe we're trying to recreate.
Ok so I just wanted to say, the talked about all I tried to understand in my mind , because expepet the promo videos, like a year or more before I clicked on 1,2,3 point perspective that was only roles bla bla bla without how it effects in real life so I figured myself and tried to visual in my mind , there is a toad one point prepective line , and I thought to myself what will it be if I put a box that is 3 point perspective on the road, I knew it made sense because its possible in real life and I thought as long the boxes(or the object u visual in a box) cover to 1/2/3 prospective line it’s ok , like he talked about the human body, and I m so glad that they talked about it because a lot of videos don’t talk about it and I had to figure out it for myself, I just want to say thank u for the channel and videos and speak of things that a lot of artists need to figure in there own
Without being a pro, just from listening amd thinking, one thing I want to add is: These perspective drawing methods make most sense and mainly fascilitate drawing our industrialized constructed invironmemts with all their right angles and parallel lines. If you establish vanishing points and create a radial grid, it becomes mich easier to fit allthe lines from architechture, technology and city planning inside this grid. You dont have to gues anymore as far as how to orientate the angle of a line. Just follow the grid. There is a reason why mamy drawing that illustrate or demonstrate perspective use checker-board planned cities or architechture as their motives amd I believe that these object of our self-made environment in reverse are the reason for perspective drawing methods with vanishing points to emerge.
one thing that would be really interesting to cover is how to draw reflective metal, as this is essentially the study of perspective (as metal simply reflects things back in strange meshes) combined with the physics of light. I started trying to learn how to paint reflective metal and it took me back to perspective
what is especially complicated is that the 'perspective grids' or meshes on reflective surfaces, are often 'in perspective' themselves, if you view them from the side or above
Perspective is the thing i struggle with most as a casual artist trying to improve slowly over time. I just don't see the world in a similar way to most people and i get frustrated trying to.
« You’re so far away from the line that you can’t see the line. The line is a dot to you. » That was a line (pun unintended) said by Joey in the sitcom Friends and I feel there’s some truth to it. The paradox is that the way we try to emulate 3D is fundamentally 2D. When you think of it, the idea that separated points when looked from far away join into a single point is obviously incoherent with reality. The points never ever join, they stay separated. It’s the human ability of perceiving those separations that diminishes the further away you go. Without going too philosophical, there’s a parallel (other pun unintended) between this and perspective in the other sense of the dictionary : if you exclusively think about things two dimensionally from one point perspective, you will only have a somewhat accurate perception of reality if those things are right in front of you.
11:40 I'd like to note that in a 3d program, you can actually prove that rotating an object relative to the camera, and doing the inverse rotation on the camera relative to the object, places everything exactly the same; in some sense these are just the same operation. (They are not strictly the same operation because the lighting will fall differently if you rotate the object rather than the camera; if you want to control for that, then you would rotate the object AND the lightsource relative to the camera.) Another interesting experiment is scaling an object relative to the camera; you can do that while in a 3d view and see that every contour and placement detail of the object stays the same -- same size, same location on the picture plane, even though, if you look at the other views, it's obvious you are making the geometry wildly distorted. This was interesting for me because it illustrates that there are is actually a range of 3d geometries that map to any given 'lineart' you could make; it's only once you start looking at shading -- non-binary values -- that you can tell them apart.
Next up, we're tackling intuitive perspective! If you're looking to get into that premium perspective content, use code BASICS15 to get 15% off the course until March 31st - proko.com/drawing
Proko poop draw tutorial😊
Hey Marshall, how's the full perspective course coming along?
@@DennisCNolasco It's great! We're not sharing any specific dates until it's fully locked in but it's... approaching 😉
march 31st is my bday :D
@@French-Star Happy early birthday!
Well, that's just like, your perspective, man
Best comment
Proko and Proko's Comment section always have the best puns
The damnrapunzel abides.
8 point grids, Dude.
He kinda sounds like him
It's great to see these dudes together again 🎉
It made my day! 🥺
theyre kobe and shaq fr lol
I miss the irl podcast their chemistry was great pre the virus that shall not be named
Yessss I love Marshall ❤❤
i studied from an animator called miyamoto takuji for a time and he really did not like points so what he had us do is use trail and error combined with draw overs to learn to feel it out. his main focus and most important thing he taught is the exaggeration of lenses where if something is close it will be super exaggerated and as it move away it gradually become almost isometric.
How did you correct your drawings without using vanishing points?
@@coreygraham860trial and error like they said
@@coreygraham860you don’t 😅, there’s no feedback loop regarding that, it’s a bit of a flawed method because of that I feel ( if used in isolation, which the students were made to do, from I’m aware )
Oh that sounds interesting I looked his name up and he has a yt channel. Was that channel where you learned his technique from?
moderndayjames has a great video about that
For those who have not yet bought Marshall's perspective lessons, I am telling you as someone who struggled with perspective so much and regard it as a top 3 most difficult things I have to learn in art, Marshall is your guy
His course is so easy to understand and is so, so good
And affordable!
umm sorry for stupid question but can you link his course? is is standalone? i cant find it
I’m guessing you’re talking about the lessons on his website on perspective, the 1994 ones for $12 and not the new course he’s working on as of now cause I was searching on proko’s website couldn’t find anything
@@dobi26jo37 yes the one on his website that's the one I was talking about. I linked it here idk where it went though maybe youtube took it down
same!! couldnt either
@@dobi26jo37
I could listen to Marshall talk all day. He has that wise man on top of a hill energy about him and it's great.
Ye!
Ar ar ar ar
100% correct. We see a curved world but we know it's actually straight lines, but we don't actually percieve it that way. Drawing what you percieve vs drawing what you know reality should be. Learning the construct of perspective as a foundation helps you go beyond that to a less rigid and more natural perspective where the lines don't line up perfectly to a grid, but they 'feel' right. Eric Canete's art is a great example of this.
When I was a senior in high school I worked for Realtors, drawing architectural renderings of homes, and buildings. I taught myself how to use one, two, and three point perspective. I would work in pen and ink, then using water soluble colored pencils to color my work to look like watercolor. It was an integration of art and mathematics that gave me incredible pleasure, and money in my pocket. This was in the '50s, and I styled my work after a famous architectural renderer named Jacobe.
I thought an old critique video came up but its a new one!
Love to see Marshall here👍
Definitely an older style Proko thumbnail, right? Thanks for clicking anyway!
I had Marshall as a perspective teacher in college a little under 10 years ago. This brings me back, good times. Love you Marshall.
I realised this when I studied perspective through the camera lens. Once I understood that perspective is defined by where I placed my intention, drawing backgrounds and characters in complex perspectives became a lot easier to express. I started using my senses than calculation, thus making the drawing more natural, even though it may not align perfectly with perspective lines.
This is something I figured out by myself after years of not conforming with perspective point techniques being so limited. Loads of objects will break 1, 2, 3 or even 5 point perspective if you shift them by even a little. So i canned all of these techs and just follow perceptual, scene based perspective and after a few years I can do it in my sleep. Glad to finally see a video of experienced artists confirming this is in fact true. Just choose an FOV and draw everything based on the POV of a lens, and it will open your mind to infinite compositions compared the hard grid, box-based models.
I sometimes can't believe how over complicated, while also over simplified, my art teachers in public school and university, made it seem. Always using the same examples, 1 point = a room, 2 point = train tracks, 3 point = a skyscraper. And no, there will be no more examples, only boxes. For the rest of the class. Direct quote "you probably wont be using 3 point unless you're drawing skyscrapers, and you wont be using 2 point unless you're showing off some kind of design, like a car"
They NEVER explain that perspective points are just a tool, and not actually real, and that EVERY object drawn on a picture plane is gonna be in a version of these perspectives, not that there are types of pictures that have only one 😂 I'm pretty sure they don'tbring this up becausethey literally don't know it.. I mentioned to one teacher "you know a quick way to discover if you're looking at a 2 point or a 1 point is that 1 points will have true horizontal and vertical lines, and 2 points will only have true verticals" I pointed this out by instinct. I had never been taught this.
And he looked at me like I was saying something either untrue, or just totally useless to the lesson, and brushed me off! I was so confused! But all I can assume is he had no idea what I was tlaking about, and really wasnt open to talking about it. 😬
Then a little while ago, yEARS after I was done with that college course, I was trying to explain perspective to a beginner drawing friend of mine, (whos taking THE SAME CLASS I TOOK) I realized out loud "The horizon line is a lie! It's all lies!" And essentially had a total breakdown. I've never had trouble drawing what I needed to draw in perspective because I just drew from life intuitively. Whenever I wasn't sure about something I just fudged it!
But when I tried to explain it to someone with 0 experience, I realized the teachers I learned from never actually taught me how it worked either! And we're all just relying on intuition to make up for really crappy lessons!
This video is actually so great. Learning the way others "THINK" is, sometimes SOOOO MUCH more important than simply learning the way others "DO". I've learnt so SO much from this
Always good to see the Marshal/Stan dynamic. This helped me understand it a lot more and want to draw
Been study art for a few years now and in the last 2 months I’m just starting to realize how important boxes truly are. I regret not doing it sooner but it’s better late thn never
This is one of my favorite videos of all time! I keep coming back, realizing more with each viewing. Thank you Marshall and Stan.
Mind blown. It's just like the problem of mapping on a globe. The more of the globe you include, the more distorted your lines become.
Great! I was *blissfully* unaware of all the straight lines appearing curved. Now I can't unsee it. In under 3 min you have completely changed my perspective Sir!
Very well explained Marshall, you are a perfect teacher. I always explain that our eyes are spherical inside and outside, but a camera-sensor and a piece of paper are flat. That's why there is no "true" perspective on paper.
I'm glad Marshall mentioned that it gets more complicated when we look with two eyes. Just try closing one eye at the time and see things jump around. Neither of those views are what we see with two eyes. It's a combination that's bigger than its parts. But human vision is even more complicated.
One aspect is just how tiny the area where we actually have sharp vision is. Try taking a regular playing card at arm's length and moving it in from the periphery of your vision towards the center while staring straight ahead and see where you can see what card it is. You'll be surprised at how close to dead center you need to bring it to tell. So it's just a tiny part of our field of vision that has any sharpness at all. The rest is just more limited cues plus our memory filling things in. And if you move your eyes, you've switched to a new view. It's not the same one. (Fun thing: We're basically blind while the eye moves. The eye knows that it'll just get unfocused nonsense during the eye movement and ignores it.)
And then there's the big aspect of how our vision actually is interpretative. We don't see a bitmap of pixels. Shapes and distance and motions is hardwired into perception and there's no neutral view without that information baked in for us to see.
Looking with two eyes is just another mechanism to understand distance beyond linear perspective. Brain compares images if each eye. The bigger difference the closer the object.
Game programmer here!
Marshal described 3d programs mastery of perspective.
...All we do is divide the x and y coordinates by the depth z. boom linear perspective :P
Currently studying math and I just admire Marshall's take on why math is both and invention and a discovery. I am actually leaning more and more to it being a discovery.. Unravelling a hidden truth.
Something that always helps me is imagining where I am (the camera) and the direction my eyes (the tilt of camera). Put yourself in the scene mentally.
This is so enjoyable to listen to and you guys make me love perspective even more than I already do 😭👍 Also I definitely agree with artists who are true masters of perspective are really masters of thinking in 3D and knowing how to manipulate their "stage" or subject matter's form in any angle because again they're thinking in 3D. For sure one of the greatest skills any artist can learn. Anyway, keep on doing good work team Proko!! 👏👏👏
This dude is my favorite guest on these shows. He's so into it. I'd live to learn from him. And I do actually. He's a great guy
2:32 😂 This is how I teach perspective in my class. I said "Imagine your driving a car. One point is the straight road, two points are the houses on the block, three is the package on the passenger seat."
I draw 3 panels in an "L" layout and draw the inside of the car integrating a point from each panel.
Thank you! This was fascinating to watch.
I come to perspective from a divergent place.
When I was in elementary school, the itinerant art teacher did a unit on perspective. I understood it from the beginning. She drew a cabin as demo. we copied it. I asked her, "how do you draw a room inside the cabin?" She said, "Reverse the vanishing pointgs." And away I went.
In high school art, my art teacher called the horizon line the "eye level" line. It made sense since we lived in an environment of hills and valleys, no where near a desert or sea.
In art school, I took an art history course and came across the frescoes in Pompeii which showed still lifes of fruits and glassware painted in perspective. Iin asking one of my professors about this he said, "The Renaissnce didn't invent how we see, but they did systematize how to create the illusion of depth on a flat surface.
This same professor, now my friend, and I one day made a list of all the historical perspectives. Before he died we had hit about 19.
Here's the thing which was mentioned in passing in the video.
The illusion is dependent upon one eye - a single point of view. We require two eyes to make the scene work (perceiving depth) but we have to manufacture the illusion from a single point. Move a bit and the scene falls apart like all those painted scenes on the streets.
Thanks again. apologies for the biography.
best wishes
This fascinating and enlightening conversation (as well every other video on this channel) is absolutely invaluable to me in my journey towards understanding what I don’t understand about perspective! Thank you so much!
I'll always be thankful to Marshall, those 90's videos taught me perspective 🙏🙏
The philosophical draftsmen are back! How lovely! Speaking of which: I love the perspective course by Marshall from 1994 (you can spot him at 0:12). It's funny how he uses the chalkboard until everything is messy. The first lectures are quite easy to understand. The further into the course it's really challenging, to follow along and even more to create your own versions. Still today I am coming back to it regularly to refresh my knowledge. I am intrigued and very curious to see the new one! Thank you lads for sharing. It is a pleasure and interesting - as always. 😘
This channel is a service to humanity
I can listen to them talk all day
So good it deserves all the algorithm love. Comment 3 ❤ Proko, it’s great to see you clearly being an amazing student. Most hosts have a pompous air of, pre-filming, always knowing all things. That’s ridiculous! People have guests in to teach EVERYONE.
Anyway, thanks for not being pompous and thanks for these lessons!!! ❤❤❤
I bought Marshall's Perspective Course, and it goes far beyond what they taught me in college. Marshall is also a great teacher and has a way of explaining things to make it easier too. I wished had known about him in the 90s.
Glad you liked it! His older lessons were fantastic.
This year, his new and lengthy perspective course will finally be coming out with us. We'll share some of those lessons here and hope you find that they live up to those old lessons!
@@ProkoTV I just started the Drawing Basics Course and I have no doubt I will learn a lot. I remember when I discovered your first Proko videos which then led me to the Draftsman Podcast. I can't tell you how much I have already learned from you guys not just in skill but mindset too. Also, I love the humor. You guys are great and I am so glad you both teach the world!!!!
I was recently struggling with this since ive decided to seriously understand perspective and there were so many gaps i didnt understand. Like i knew the fundamentals but not like basic intuitive stuff which was explained in this video. Loved this video tysm all the time ❤
Your environment and objects section was golden. It was thought provoking and a good way to look at perspective. I think it'll help me out as I practice perspective more.
I really enjoyed this format of video. Really demystifies the concept of perspective to hear two seasoned artists discuss it and even disagree on aspects of it.
Hey Marshall, hey Stan!
Great video guys, I also think there is too much confusing stuff about perspective rules around.
My personal way of explaining it is that all perspectives are basically 5point perspectives, just sometimes so far zoomed into the grid-sphere that the lines almost seem straight. Like you can always imagine the 5point sphere and pic a rectangle(frame of drawing) inside it that defines whether you are more looking up, down, left or right. The smaller your rectangle is the less curved your perspective lines are going to be.
Always great to see your videos guys!
Can't get enough of Marshall and Stan, this videos are awesome!
This is an AWESOME video. So many mindblowing concepts. Now I understand vanishing points more as a consequence of decisions about parallel lines converging than a hard decision made before starting to draw. I even feel cheated to not have that explained to me earlier 😅 You two go ahead and make it fun too - such good friendship vibes. Thanks so much for making this content so acessible. Love and cheers from Brazil 🇧🇷
perceptual perspective is a natural evolution of a "wait a minute ...." moment. i noticed that lines curved and then later on saw an artist doing that which I thought I singularly discovered and would have been revolutionary. then found out digging further, many many others have come up with the same conclusion ages ago.
Exactly how I felt when I discovered.
Perspective and perception combinated it's hard topic. I can't imagine best teacher to explain this. Thanks guys.
This is inspiring, the more I listened and the more I understood the concept of what you guys were saying the more inspired I became. It's sounds so simple when you break it down like this.
The branch of math that studies and extends perspective is called projective geometry, and it's one of my favorites. It tells you really precisely what it means for shapes to be "in perspective". Recommend NJ Wildberger's series on it if you are interested.
how useful this video was to me, during the last two days I was in conflict with myself for not being able to express the fact that looking at the road seemed different from when I drew on paper, it seemed like something was missing, but I couldn't explain what it was , the best analogy I thought of was that, when I draw on paper it's as if I did everything inside a cube using straight lines, while what I saw seemed deeper without straight lines, almost like a "fish eye".
I'm taking a 3 years course in comics, the second year is nearing to its end. We have a teacher who tought us all the basics of drawing (anatomy, perspective, storytelling, etc.), we put a lot of effort into perspective since we were all doing it wrong. We spent a month (maybe more) redrawing scenes and pages, everytime from scratch, we spent two whole lectures doing one mountain range in the most accurate way possible. By the end of the month we were somewhat capable of putting things into perspective, that is when out teacher sits down in front of us, looks at us dead in the eyes and states: "Perspective doesn't exist anyway, and comic artists don't actually do what you are doing"
And then we learned intuitive perspective. I swear the confusion on our faces was a sight to behold
Marshall seems like the kind of guy that makes having a beer even more fun.
NGL this was one of the most inspiring pieces of content I've experienced in years
One of my favorite games to play is to trace over a "flat" image like a front-facing figure and "perspective it" by adding a horizon and a vanishing point...to arbitrary parts of the figure, making it warp and distort. Perspective grids are just grids, and when you distort the grid, you can create many kinds of effect.
As someone with vision problems, perspective drawing has always been a problematic issue for me. Something I eventually learnt was you could actually tell if an artist had eye problems from looking at how they paint & draw, especially with older artists we show case in galleries and you can tell where they 'faked it' to compensate. Learning this made me feel less panicky about my struggles with my eye conditions.
I was totally lost at the start but as the video went on I started to understand the idea that each element of the artwork has its own perspective and mini perspectives within itself. The only thing I need to know is how you draw the larger bounding boxes relative to the universal perspective of the piece... very tricky for someone at my level to understand how im meant to think and see the 3D space on the paper to be able to orient the objects correctly. Great video
Fascinating video. Especially interesting the question of are these concepts discovered or invented (math, perspective, music scales, etc) I'm of the view that these are discovered realities rather than invented concepts but I can see arguments for both. Great video!
Remark about old cameras and paralel vertical lines was quite a revelation to me :) Nice talk, always good to recall some fundamentals.
I daresay that there is a very simple way to explain what perspective is. Cameras work according to the law of perspective. It is a real phenomena because optics is physics. It is likely that Brunelleschi used some optical device to develop the law of perspective. One, two, three points perspective are useful simplifications that can also be beautiful. Thanks Marshall and Stan.
As someone who works with cameras and 3D computer graphics, I was hoping to find something like this in the comments section.
Useful explanation
It's always a pleasure seeing Marshall in videos. I loved listening to his views on perspective and it made me think about my own beliefs when it comes to art, in general. Also, I wonder if the interview that he's doing will be available anywhere?
Good explanations to something that is very complex. I learned conic perspective with strict rules and projections on a screen. It’s an instant in time at a specific angle and “printed on a screen”. With this system I can draw one, two,three or whatever points.I can understand what are isometric drawings and others. I can project shades and shadows from given angles. It’s a good way to understand what I am drawing.
When I go do plain air the concept of printing on a screen helps me a lot.
Honestly mind opening! I never noticed my fisheye view of the word before. Thank you for making me a better artist❤✌️🤘
So good to see Marshall. I’ve missed hearing him talk. Would love to take the course.
I could listen to Marshall all day long.
this is dope, i initially got hooked on Proko because of the podcast xD the point of view ;) on art that you guys have is something i agree with all my heart
The strangeness of perspective vs real vision has fascinated me for decades. Now that I finally have a real job AND a launching art career, I’m excited to finally try your courses.
Great video!!
Thanks for turning me onto Fechin! Sat in a a doctor’s office looking up his paintings. Then started looking at sketches. Those blew my mind!
This was such an awesome video to watch. It is so nice to see the perspective of experts. And both these guys I see is being experts. I have spent 20 years teaching myself how to draw basically by looking at things and trying to draw them whether it was a cartoon character or a person or building or whatever and I was just doing it on my own watching UA-cam videos and reading books and then drawing. I was slow at it I didn't practice every day during at least 20 years I would go months at a time without drawing. But then one day in the last year or so everything came together and now I can draw whatever I want and I can't even explain how or why. But one thing I do is I don't Focus too much on the rules of perspective as much as I just look at a drawing and I can tell it doesn't look right now and I'll figure out what I need to do to make it look right and I'm almost never measuring perspective or putting Horizon Lines and Vanishing points I'm just trying to figure out what looks right and I'm getting pretty good at it lol.
Marshall is the gift of mankind. We need to protect him.
Loved this conversation- thank you for sharing your knowledge with us!
Marshall and Stan have such great straight man couple energy. Best art brosephs.
I once had a panic attack in art class because my neurodivergent brain decided that It's All Vanishing Point which represented a Truth About the Universe
The beauty of neurodivergence.
❤
Too much cannabis before class??
Came here for Marshall. Received Marshall. Very happy viewer. Bring back draftsmen!!!
I miss so much you to doing the draftsmen podcast, there is so many cool ideas and some many cool concepts that come along when you start talking, really nice lecture on perspective this is, Thank you!
Don't look at the sphere! I can't unsee it anymore 😂. Sometimes at least. It's so fun though how we are able to percieve or not percieve things depending on our brain and thinking. Same thing with the nose thing, we technically see it all the time but our brains just say "Nah".
Love to see Marshall here, even better to see Stan along him!
A note on the last notion: while I think mastering the forms of 3D space is important, at some point learning how to put objects into perspective relative to each other is also valuable, just to have a rule to fall back on when thinking about depth. It does come back to boxes quite a lot... though I find breaking the boxes into cones/triangles adds more appeal/beauty.
Anyway, perspective taught me the usefulness of knowing where to define the bounds/container of some object I am placing in the environment/world. Playing with the position/rotation/scale of containers is how I imagine 3D space, because most 3D programs have these as components to describe objects. I think we are on the same page here, when they are talking about tumbling objects in space. Perspective gives me shortcuts to avoid the need to model everything to get a reference, and saves a lot of time.
Discovered this when I made a panaroma 360 art 😂. Things only remain straight if the camera is looking directly at it, at that point the only way to make things spacially sensible was to relate the objects with one other in space using a connected line , basically a perspective grid. It's a fun experience that I would recommend all to try.
In college art history classe "one point" was used to illustrate how we went from simplified to more complex portrayals of how we understand a universe we're trying to recreate.
Always helpful to hear your perception on art topics!
Love this take on perspective
Ok so I just wanted to say, the talked about all I tried to understand in my mind , because expepet the promo videos, like a year or more before I clicked on 1,2,3 point perspective that was only roles bla bla bla without how it effects in real life so I figured myself and tried to visual in my mind , there is a toad one point prepective line , and I thought to myself what will it be if I put a box that is 3 point perspective on the road, I knew it made sense because its possible in real life and I thought as long the boxes(or the object u visual in a box) cover to 1/2/3 prospective line it’s ok , like he talked about the human body, and I m so glad that they talked about it because a lot of videos don’t talk about it and I had to figure out it for myself, I just want to say thank u for the channel and videos and speak of things that a lot of artists need to figure in there own
All I saw was Marshall. Glad for another Draftsman podcast.
Without being a pro, just from listening amd thinking, one thing I want to add is: These perspective drawing methods make most sense and mainly fascilitate drawing our industrialized constructed invironmemts with all their right angles and parallel lines. If you establish vanishing points and create a radial grid, it becomes mich easier to fit allthe lines from architechture, technology and city planning inside this grid. You dont have to gues anymore as far as how to orientate the angle of a line. Just follow the grid. There is a reason why mamy drawing that illustrate or demonstrate perspective use checker-board planned cities or architechture as their motives amd I believe that these object of our self-made environment in reverse are the reason for perspective drawing methods with vanishing points to emerge.
I miss your podcast 😭
Same. I know they've covered everything three times. But I want to hear it another 30 times, from different angels, with guests and interviews 😂
One of my favorite duos!
It’s good to see Marshall again !
Marshall and Proko's collab means interesting and happy learning. ❣️
So great!! ❤ you Dr Vandroff!!!! ❤❤❤
wow. This is the explanation I've been waiting for. Thank you!!
one thing that would be really interesting to cover is how to draw reflective metal, as this is essentially the study of perspective (as metal simply reflects things back in strange meshes) combined with the physics of light. I started trying to learn how to paint reflective metal and it took me back to perspective
what is especially complicated is that the 'perspective grids' or meshes on reflective surfaces, are often 'in perspective' themselves, if you view them from the side or above
I can’t wait for Marshall’s perspective course!
Neither can Marshall
Perspective is the thing i struggle with most as a casual artist trying to improve slowly over time. I just don't see the world in a similar way to most people and i get frustrated trying to.
Awesome! Thanks Proko & Marshall!
I don't need to learn perspective. I'm just watching because Marshall cures my depression.
This was a great talk, and a pleasure to listen to. Now I’m off to watch some Kim Jung Gi videos.
This is cool when considering different focal lengths of a camera lens.
"Parallel lines will meet somewhere" is such a weird, romantic sentence to me. I love it. Might get that tattooed.
This really puts things into perspective for me. Thanks!
really enjoy marshall. more marshall!
Siento que tengo suerte de existir ahora con tantos maestros que enseñan cosas que ayudan a agilizar el aprender
« You’re so far away from the line that you can’t see the line. The line is a dot to you. »
That was a line (pun unintended) said by Joey in the sitcom Friends and I feel there’s some truth to it.
The paradox is that the way we try to emulate 3D is fundamentally 2D. When you think of it, the idea that separated points when looked from far away join into a single point is obviously incoherent with reality. The points never ever join, they stay separated. It’s the human ability of perceiving those separations that diminishes the further away you go.
Without going too philosophical, there’s a parallel (other pun unintended) between this and perspective in the other sense of the dictionary : if you exclusively think about things two dimensionally from one point perspective, you will only have a somewhat accurate perception of reality if those things are right in front of you.
MARSHAAAALLL!!! We love you!!!
Excellent conversation and explanation of techniques developed to understand the limits of human vision.
11:40 I'd like to note that in a 3d program, you can actually prove that rotating an object relative to the camera, and doing the inverse rotation on the camera relative to the object, places everything exactly the same; in some sense these are just the same operation.
(They are not strictly the same operation because the lighting will fall differently if you rotate the object rather than the camera; if you want to control for that, then you would rotate the object AND the lightsource relative to the camera.)
Another interesting experiment is scaling an object relative to the camera; you can do that while in a 3d view and see that every contour and placement detail of the object stays the same -- same size, same location on the picture plane, even though, if you look at the other views, it's obvious you are making the geometry wildly distorted. This was interesting for me because it illustrates that there are is actually a range of 3d geometries that map to any given 'lineart' you could make; it's only once you start looking at shading -- non-binary values -- that you can tell them apart.