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| 8/15/12 Copic Multiliner SP pen, watercolor, Stillman & Birn sketchbook |
When I took Gabi Campanario’s urban sketching workshop
a few weeks ago, he tried to teach me the concept of single-point perspective
using my eye-level horizon as a guide. This wasn’t a new concept to me; I had
read numerous books on perspective that explained this same concept, usually
illustrated with cubes standing in the middle of a blank plane and lines
extending from their edges to that imaginary single point. My brain understood and
accepted what Gabi and these books were explaining, but my eye and hand were
having difficulty catching up.
I was ruminating all of this as I sipped coffee and munched
a raspberry muffin at one of Cloud City Coffee’s outdoor tables, wondering if I
would ever “get” perspective on the sketchbook page and not just in my head. Looking
at the outside wall and roofline of the building (which is a renovated garage
with roll-up doors) – a scene I’ve looked at many, many times – I suddenly saw that the roofline, floor line and
siding lines, if extended, would converge at a single point. I put my
sketchbook up to my eyes, its plane parallel to the ground as Gabi had
instructed, to find my eye-level horizon, and – OMG! – the single point was
sitting there, right on that line! You mean it works in reality as well as in
books!? The proverbial light bulb over my head, which had been flickering dimly like
it was about to go out, suddenly turned on!
Maybe someday I’ll work on automotive sketching. But for
now, I’m happy that architectural sketching has become a tiny bit less
intimidating.
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