When you decide to teach yourself to draw, you will come to understand that you never finish learning. I find that fact very appealing. I think "anticipation" is a good word to describe my feelings about learning to draw.

However, whenever perspective comes into play, I put off learning about it because it has always looked too complicated and too hard.

Have you seen those illustrations of how to understand and apply perspective to a drawing? What is your first thought when you see them? I know I have thought "Not right now, that looks way too hard." All I could see was a confusing maze of lines going in all sorts of directions.

I am very pleased I ignored it because I have recently discovered that it is now starting to make sense. (Gosh, how many years later is that?)

A good system to adopt is to do some drawings, then read a drawing book (it doesn't matter which one, you'll always learn something new) before going back to implement some of the ideas from that book. This is a very worthwhile approach because it stops you from becoming stale as you gradually learn.

If you continuously read up on the topic of drawing, the hows and whys of perspective will finally start to make sense as they slot into place in your brain.

If you currently have a problem understanding perspective, please don't agonize over it, simply draw subjects that don't involve too much perspective. Pick and choose what you want to draw and you can give yourself years of drawing pleasure without the trauma of learning everything there is to know all at once. Simply allow yourself the time to learn.

In the meantime, you can rely on your eyes to judge perspective in your drawings. You only need to remember that things appear smaller and more indistinct as they get further away from you.

I have been wanting to develop an easy method to understand perspective but once I started jotting down my notes, I realized I was only repeating those same intricate instructions that first confused me. The fact is, that information must have finally sunk in as I continued to draw, read and draw.

To gain a gradual understanding of perspective, learn one-point perspective first. Allow some time to practice that before moving on to two point perspective. The main thing is to follow your intuition, you will know when you are ready to take it on. As with everything in drawing, if you simplify the process you will eventually understand how it works.

When I decided to teach myself to draw step by step, I never dreamed that there would be years in between steps! That doesn't matter though, I'm only doing it to please me and now I can say I have a new perspective on drawing!

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