PERSPECTIVE in Comics (with a student)
Perspective in Comics is sometimes hard to grasp at first. It’ll take some time for some, (I still struggle sometimes) and may come easier to others. It will, however, take lots of practice to feel comfortable with Perspective for everyone.
Tom Hart went over some basics of One-Point Perspective with student, Beverley Kort, in the Online Year-Long Program, 2020-2021.
Here’s Beverley’s comic example for reference:
“I tried to combine putting people in spaces, linear perspective and hanging heads all in one, not sure how successful it is. looking forward to the zoom today.
(comic inspired by Betty by Delainey and Rasmussen in Saturday paper).” - Beverley Kort
This is a great and hilarious comic, and a brilliant attempt to One-Point Perspective.
Tom Hart writes back:
“One thing worth noting about One-Point Perspective (which is what the store is rendered in), is that rarely do the lines converge so tightly in real life as they are in the upper part of your drawing. Why? Because they converge in real life hundreds of miles away at the ‘horizon line.’
It's tricky to get used to this. The things that are going to converge that in that small of an space are going to be far far away.
So, when rendering groceries stores, etc. we need to realize we are probably seeing a small sliver of the the converging lines.”
Notice how if I extend the lines towards us, the viewer, and then place more of you there, there is room for 7 of you, to be walking in full stride. Since this is extremely rare except at like, Home Depot or something, we've started with too wide a spacing of our aisle.
Another thing -- if you look at that, you see the high horizon line, but your drawing of you is flat, as if the horizon line is somewhere in the middle of your body.
This latter situation is common and normal. Peanuts works that way, and tons of other comics, cartoons, etc.
If YOU were in the same space, with the same high horizon line, we would see the top of your head, the top of your shoes, etc.
So not a big deal, but worth pointing out, that there are two horizon lines.
I'm still trying to get you to get that aisle right, so let's move on.
So one thing, in a panel like this where something that FEELS long but isn't in the space of the hundreds of miles to the vanishing point, is that we probably need to cut the things we are drawing, because we are accidentally extending very far. See above.
But even still, we'll get closer if we lower the horizon to some sort of compromise between super high and right along your body.
It's probably something more like this. Note the horizontal line here is NOT the horizon line, it's merely the wall or other part of the store (which is almost always going to be what we will see there.
The faint lines from the aisle continue to a slightly lower horizon. This drawing is a little closer.
Quick search for grocery store inside in google photos brings us this (see above). You can see a lot of this in action.
I drew on top. it's got a super low horizon, more in keeping with your placement of yourself.
It doesn't have the front of the aisle, I'll try to find one that does.
This one is ok, and a good demonstration of the [floating] heads and all that. I made you a tiny bit smaller (since you are a drawing and not a person) so you cross the line at the eyes. He crosses at the neck. I can't figure out why the woman on the left is so low, she might be quite small.” - Tom Hart on One-Point Perspective with a student.
Do you struggle with Perspective in your comics?
One-Point Perspective is only a glimpse into the world of Perspective in Comics. There’s a lot to learn and we’ve got a ton of resources on it for you to be the best perspective connoisseur you can be.
For more intensive comics learning with teachers at SAW, check out SAW’s Year-Long Intensive Program
See what we’re all up to on SAW's Mighty Network.
Cheers, Karr