Artist often portray what they can see around them. In many pieces of art, the environment is portrayed in one way or another. Landscape paintings were especially common in the 19^th Century, and landscapes continue to be popular in art today. Many artists have chosen to portray city life instead, and created cityscapes, which portray urban life.


One important aspect to portraying either nature or urban life in drawings or paintings is to master perspective. Using perspective, artists can create an illusion of space. The main idea is that things look smaller the further away they are, and lines seem to meet at the horizon. There are many ways to create perspective. Linear perspective is quite easy to learn. Linear perspective is created with the help of vanishing points, towards which the lines all move. Linear perspective is especially useful in creating cityscapes, where lines are straight. Linear perspective can be created using either 1, 2 or 3 vanishing points.

Test 2.1 Create a cityscape drawing using either 1-point perspective or 2-point perspective. The more vanishing points, the harder to draw, so if you have not used linear perspective before, start with one vanishing point.

Check out these videos for a good look at perspective (each video lasts 10-12 minutes), or the images below for a quick step-by-step guide.

One Point Perspective
Two Point Perspective