Perspective: Cityscapes

Project Goals

Students will be demonstrating their mastery of perspective techniques, particularly, constructing block forms with parallel edges properly flowing to their vanishing point.

Artist Inspiration

Benoit Peeters and Francois Schuiten

Benoit Peeters and Francois Schuiten are a comic-writing duo who are best known for their comic series, “The Obscure Cities.” Their artwork consists of carefully crafted architectural drawings which clearly demonstrate perspective drawing skills. They are a good model for us to learn from.

For a look into their working process, follow this link to YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGckqkN777M

Gallery

Example art from the Obscure Cities

Example art from the Obscure Cities

Example art from the Obscure Cities

Example art from the Obscure Cities

Example art from the Obscure Cities

Example art from the Obscure Cities

Example art from the Obscure Cities

Materials

  • Pencil
  • Ruler
  • Colored Pencil
  • Acrylic Paint
  • A3 Paper or A3 Plastic Drawing Sheet
  • Template Drawing

Directions

  1. Lay your paper over the template drawing to establish the vanishing points. Trace over some of the buildings to help get started. If you are feeling advanced and want more control over your drawing, you may skip this step and place the vanishing points and buildings yourself.
  2. Fill in the rest of the city buildings without the template. Add objects in the sky and in the ground.
  3. After the drawing is finished, color the drawing with colored pencil or acrylic paint.

Template Drawings

Template Drawing 1

Template Drawing 2

Template Drawing 3

Template Drawing 4

Template Drawing 5

Template Drawing 6

Template Drawing 7

Template Drawing 8

Template Drawing 9

Template Drawing 10

Rubric

Students will be assessed by the perspective skills covered thus far. Furthermore, some basic requirements to ensure drawing quality and experimentation will be included.

  • Students have included block forms that were not a part of the template drawing.
  • Students clearly draw multiple block forms sharing common parallel edges. The edges of these forms accurately flow back to their common vanishing point.
  • Students demonstrate awareness of forms being in front or behind of another form. This can be demonstrated either by shadows or by shapes occluding another shape.
  • Students demonstrate manual control of colored pencil or acrylic paint by being able to color up to the boundaries of their shapes.
  • Students include a variety objects into their cityscape that are not the block buildings.