Week 2

Single and Two Point Perspective

This week, I explored interior and exterior spaces through single and two-point perspective. What began as technical linework became a deeper lesson in focus and structure — learning how space unfolds when guided by a vanishing point. Drawing rooms and buildings taught me that perspective isn’t just geometry — it’s imagination and intent, a way to build clarity on the page and in practice.

Interesting Readings: MC Escher: The Illusion of Space

Watching the YouTube documentary on M.C. Escher helped me see perspective as more than a drawing technique — it became a tool for wonder. Escher didn’t follow the rules of space; he reinvented them. His art transformed flat surfaces into twisting staircases, infinite reflections, and architectural puzzles. As the narrator notes (3:14), “Escher’s use of perspective was never just technical — it was conceptual, exploring the boundaries between logic and illusion.”

While practicing single and two-point perspective this week, I began to see how Escher’s approach invites artists to think beyond realism. What if perspective is not just about representing depth, but about creating curiosity? What if drawing can lead the viewer into a space that doesn’t exist — but still feels real?

Reading Max Bill made me think about drawing perspective in a new way — not just as a method of representation, but as a creative act of construction. Like architecture with a pencil, each vanishing line is a decision. Bill writes that concrete art is “the pure expression of harmonious measure and law” — and this week, I felt how perspective could offer exactly that: harmony through structure.

Hélio Oiticica’s writing helped me feel freer in how I think about the spaces I draw. Perspective doesn’t have to be static — it can be rhythmic and alive. Oiticica speaks of “space as time-colour structure,” and while my vanishing points this week were fixed, the act of building space on the page felt full of movement — like time was unfolding in lines.

Further Readings:

🧱 Max Bill – Concrete Art (1936–1949, pp. 91–94)

Max Bill argued that art should be built from purely visual elements — line, form, colour, and space — much like architecture or mathematics. He described “concrete art” as art with no basis in imitation, but one that is planned, constructed, and meant to be perceived directly. In relation to perspective drawing, this way of thinking supports the idea that space can be designed deliberately, not just observed.

🎨 Hélio Oiticica – Colour, Time and Structure (1960, pp. 101–105)

Oiticica saw colour and structure as tools to engage with space — to move beyond flatness and into participatory, living environments. While he didn’t deal with perspective in the linear drawing sense, his ideas challenge artists to see space as dynamic, and to invite movement, rhythm, and time into the structure of their work.