How to Use Foreshortening for Perspective

Once a character has been drawn, the artist will likely want to redraw this character. When redrawing this character however, the artist quickly becomes concerned with whether or not the new character has the same proportions as the old character. This is expecially a problem when drawing a character from different angles. For instance, if an artist wants to redraw a character from a side view and the original character was drawn from a profile view, the character will look unrealistic if each part of the body isn't the right proportion. To make sure that the profile version of the character has the same proportions as the side view of the character, an artist can use a technique called foreshortening.

Things You'll Need

• Drawing pencil
• Pencil eraser
• Drawing paper
• Ruler
• or
• Graphics tablet
• Graphics program

Instructions

Using Foreshortening

1. 

   Determine whether or not you need to use foreshortening when drawing. The more different that the angle is for the new picture of the character, the more likely that you will need to use foreshortening.

2. 

   Open a image of your character with a frontal view.

3. 

   Draw horizontal lines extending from different parts of the frontal view of the character. Any part of the body that is distinct should have lines drawn that extend from it. Draw lines extending from the top of the head, the forehead, the eyebrows, the bangs, the eyes, the mouth, the chin, the shoulders, the elbows, the waist, the skirt, the knees, the ankles, and the bottom of the feet.

4. 

   Redraw the character using the horizontal lines.

5. 

   Erase the profile character and the horizontal guidelines.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are having a hard time drawing a bent arm or leg in proportion to a straight arm or leg, try drawing the part of the arm or leg that is pointing in a different direction separately. For instance, if a character's arm is bent and only his forearm has moved, try drawing the forearm separately. Then you can rotate the picture of the forearm and use foreshortening to get the proportons of the forearm right. Do the same for the other limbs until you get then just right.

• Avoid drawing the same character without using foreshortening unless you are really experienced with drawing proportionate images.