Perspective drawing

[boatkitchen]

Hi,

Does anyone know where I can find source material for how to draw plans in perspective view?

Thanks,

Max

[Dave R]

What sort of things do you want to draw with a perspective view? If you want to draw by hand check out technical drawing books at the library.

[boatkitchen]

If you look in Roger Taylor's first book of good boats, there are these drawings of the Cogge Ketch, clearly to scale, from perspective's like off the starboard quarter and so on. There is obviously a defined technique for drawing any set of lines from an angle other than its perpendicular(i.e. Plan, Half Breadth, Body Section) but I don't know it. Anybody out there know how to do this?


Thanks,

Max

[paladin]

It's relatively simple to do but rather than get into it here a couple of cheap art books will show and explain it better. Go to any art supply store and for about 3 bucks they have various "how To" books.

[Dave Fleming]

Try to find the first book by William Garden of his designs, there are two and in several printings. I am referring to the first book.
He has a chapter on Perspective Drawing and if I recall correctly he used a vessel similar to the Cogge as the illustration.

[htom]

The technique is called "two-point perspective" or "three-point perspective" (depending on the number of vanishing points used; more than three is entirely possible.)

http://www.ider.herts.ac.uk/school/courseware/graphics/3d_graphics.html has some links to pages with good illustrations.

For "how-to", Chuck has it nailed; go to a local artist supplies store and ask. Do not go to Office Max or Office Depot, they won't be able to help. This will be a little shop within a half-dozen blocks of a college campus, or one of a number of little chains ("Dick Blick Art Supply" is a local example.) "Artist Supplies" is probably the heading in your yellow pages.

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

Furthermore, it's possible to buy gridded "perspective drawing" paper. It means that the vanishing points are chosen for you, but from what I understand that doesn't seem to present major problems in practice. If you've already got the lines laid out properly, it should be essentially only a question of transferring salient points on the hull onto the grid in each of the three dimensions, and fairing between them.

[paladin]

if you purchase the predrawn "gridded" perspective paper you probably won't find it at the art store...there's always the chance...but you will find it at most drafting supply stores for architects. It comes in 15 degree increments from..say a Zero perspective to 15, 30, 45, 60 and 75 degrees. The 30, 45 and 60 degree may be stock for instance, but the 15 and 75 may be special order only...eyeball is pretty good for anything most folks need to do unless this is a work of art for a builder or to bribe the missus....

[Will]

I agree the perspective charts are the most practical way to get going .I've got a set of Lawson Perspective Charts that I bought for 16 bucks a long time ago ; at a drafting supply store as mentioned . Van Nostrand Reinhold Co.

[gashmore]

I just dug through my old drafting books and remembered "Design Graphics" by C. Leslie Martin. It covers all projection methods but half of the book is prospective drawing including 1 and 2 point light source shadows.
It is 40 years old but I don't think the rules of optics have changed much other than that the bottom of things look a little fuzzy now through these bifocals.<g>

[htom]

Most of the angled grid paper is isometric, not perspective. Look closely before you buy.

[Will]

Yeah my perspective charts are on heavy paper and are intended to be reused ,you lay traceing paper over them .There's a horizontal labled Horizon Line , a vertical labled Center Of Vision , and one or two labled Vanishing Points . With the exception of the single vertical ,every line converges toward a vanishing point ; there are no parrallels . Instructions with examples are included to make sense of all this .

[Ken Leap]

Max,

I have some experience with perspective drawing. All of the advice given above sounds good to me. (I have never used perspective-grid paper, though.) A drawing done by hand will probably get you to your finished product more quickly and with less heartache; those art books will help you. But you might want to consider a computer-aided approach, if you are so inclined.

Recently I experimented with using a 3D drawing program to draw a boat in perspective. See the thread in Building/Repair titled "Building a digital boat from study plans."

I don't recommend that you go as far as I did, unless you want to make a career out of computer illustration. Have a look at the rendering:

www.3lefties.com/leap/boat.html (http://www.3lefties.com/leap/boat.html)

(I probably could have built the actual boat in less time than it took me to figure out how to do a rendering, which is still not complete.)

Instead, I recommend the following. It is relatively easy to put the key points of a hull into a drawing program's 3D space. Two-dimensional cross sections can be entered and then spaced appropriately to create a 3D boat. Don't even bother with curves. Just build a simple piece-wise-linear skeleton. Once a simple skeleton is modelled, a view can be generated using the program's 'camera.' Camera position, viewing angle, and focal length can be adjusted to get the perspective view that you want. I would quit right there with the computer and finish it off by hand, putting in the curves and other details.

Many computer programs are available. For the simple task recommended above you might consider a bare-bones 3D program called "Dimensions." You can download a free tryout version (Adobe Dimensions 3.0 Tryout) from the following site:

www.adobe.com (http://www.adobe.com)

This free download does everything that the purchased version but does not allow you to save files or print drawings.

Let me know if you need more information.

Ken