Line

Line

One-point perspective

Looking straight down a street or a nave: every receding edge meets at one vanishing point on the eye level. Verticals stay plumb, cross-lines stay level.

When you look straight down a lane, a wynd, a cathedral nave or a railway line, the walls on either side recede toward a single point on the eye-level line directly in front of you. Every edge that runs away from you (the tops of walls, the bases, the sills, the cornices, the lines of the pavement) aims at that point. Every edge that is vertical stays vertical. Every edge that crosses from side to side stays horizontal.

Set it up: eye-level line, vanishing point on it, then the near corners of the two walls as verticals of the right height. Connect their tops and bottoms to the vanishing point. Everything else sits inside those lines. Windows get narrower and closer together as they recede, which the dividing-bays method handles.

This is Forrest's Old College Wynd, Meryon's narrow Paris streets, and every abbey interior. It is the simplest perspective and it makes the strongest pictures, because the eye is pulled into the depth.

Visuals

One-point perspective of a narrow lane: all receding edges converge to a single vanishing point on the eye-level line, while verticals stay vertical and horizontals stay horizontalVPeye levelUse it when you look straight down a street, a nave, a wynd. Verticals stay plumb.Cross-lines stay level.Forrest's Old College Wynd, Meryon's Paris streets, every cathedral nave: one point.
FigureOne vanishing point, on the eye level, straight ahead.

Pitfalls

What

Vanishing point placed above or below the eye level.

Why

The street tilts uphill or downhill.

Fix

The VP is always on the eye-level line unless the ground really does slope.

What

Verticals leaning toward the VP.

Why

You have started to converge them like the receding lines.

Fix

Verticals are plumb. Check each against the paper's edge.