As a beginner, experiment with a single vanishing line perspective.
If you are painting landscapes or realistic paintings, you need to be able to create depth in your creations. You can paint the illusion of depth and three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional surface such as a canvas through the use of the perspective technique and your choice of colors. While many artists use freehand-sketching when creating perspective, if you are a beginner it helps if you use a grid until you learn the basics of the perspective technique.
Instructions
1. Divide your painting in two parts by sketching the line of the horizon. The line of the horizon is opposite the viewer's eye. Establish a vanishing point on the line of the horizon. Draw a grid on both parts of your canvas. The horizontal lines should be parallel to the line of the horizon, while the vertical lines of the grid should converge toward the vanishing point.
2. Create depth by making the elements of your composition smaller if they are at a larger distance from the viewer and larger if they are closer. Use the grid lines as a reference to preserve your measurements. For instance, paint two houses that have the same size in reality, placing one in the foreground and the other in the background. Assuming a house spreads over three squares of your grid in the front of the painting, you should draw the second to occupy three squares in the background of the painting as well. However, given that the squares become smaller and flatter as they approach the line of the horizon, you will draw the second house smaller and slightly distorted.
3. Notice that some of the shapes are distorted as you paint them in perspective. For instance, a circle will be an ellipsoid, while a square will be a trapezoid in perspective.
4. Add colors to your painting. You can create distance by using mostly warm colors such as yellow, red, orange in the foreground and cold colors like blue, purple and gray in the background. Warm colors give the illusion that an object is closer than an object of the same size that is colored in a cold color. In a black-and-white painting, use lighter shades in the foreground and darker shades in the background.
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