Finding your lines of perspective

Jackie sent me this drawing from Paul Clark and asked how to find the perspective.

Several things throw you off. First, the porch and balcony on the right is at an odd angle from

the rest of the house. It runs diagonally between the walls, so you can't use that for perspective.

Second, the vanishing points on the left and right are off the page.

The solution to that is to tape a clean sheet of paper on the left and on right of the picture.

Use only lines that would run parallel...such as the roof lines...and those that would be perpendicular,

such as the walls that come to 90 degree angles.

In red pencil, I followed the lines of the house where it meets the ground. With a ruler I drew a line to the left and off the page. I used the line under the window (the one on the right) and drew left again. In blue, I followed the line of the back of the roof (top left) and those of the adjacent roof. Where all those lines met is the left vanishing point. 

For the right vanishing point, I followed the roof lines and also the line under the top left windows, marking those in blue. For the lines below the horizon, I followed the ground lines of the walls in red. Where all these met on the right was the right vanishing point. Drawing a green line left to right gives me the horizon line (in green) 

Of course, this was a sketch, not a graphed rendering, so it might be off a little. A more intuitive way to find the horizon line would be to look for where the lines look perfectly horizontal. Make any adult heads at the height where they could go through a doorway or look into a window. 

Starting the foggy gas light painting:

Before I did anything else, I painted in lights where light might be coming out from a window or emanating from a gas light. The light on the left is not in the picture, but you would see light shining down below it onto the brick, sidewalk, and parts of the building. This picture looks more orange than it actually is. It is a combination of yellows and some orange. I made sure to color in the bricks with a wash that had a little stronger color in them. 

You don't have to do the next step, but I found it helpful, if a bit tedious. I used miskit to mask off the trolley tracks, centers of the lights, and tops of some of the bricks. I masked them off in a pattern of sorts, leaving the space between the bricks with no miskit on them. I will, after it dries, paint it in with blues and shadows to make the cracks between the bricks. 

You can, of course, paint the cracks in little by little, but I prefer the masking method.