Art Lesson: Interiors in Perspective

10th-grade Art Lesson: 

When I was in school, my art classes never taught perspective. Blessing in disguise, because I learned from a wonderful book linked at the bottom of this post. That book took me farther down the rabbit hole than any reasonable kid would go (ex: book got me sketching praying mantises and alligators in perspective). Nothing has increased my breadth as an artist more than leveling up my perspective drawing skills.

One cool thing about teaching perspective: students who do well here are often different from those who do well with the other art lessons I run. But be warned that this is a challenging lesson for all students, and you'll be working closely with each of them to get their paintings across the finish line.

Accommodation for weaker students: They may work in monochromatic watercolor.

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The students are charged with designing an interior for a themed resort hotel (themes = haunted forest theme, cats theme, pirate theme, and so on). 

They have to figure out lighting and how to render their interesting interior objects in perspective, with cast shadows, etc. Top examples:

A lot of students can't reach this level of polish, but they all work out their cast shadows, camera angles, and colors. Even a simple room in perspective is challenging, and they level up their illustration skills a lot. That was the case with the simple room below:

I drill students in perspective practice before asking them to render their own interiors. The class has draw-alongs to make a 3D chair, sofa, and bed in perspective (these aren't easy!!).

When they start their own designs, some students will be highly ambitious—I wish I still had a photo of one boy's room set inside a pinball machine, or of the room inside a DSLR camera shutter and next to the sensor. Other kids chose simpler subjects while trying to perfect the cast shadows. (I nudge everyone towards highly complex rooms.) 

Here are two students with less-than-average painting experience who struggled with perspective and paint mixing. But they learned so much about how shadows behave.

Their handle on perspective and cast shadows approaches the level of many professional children's book illustrators. And then their confidence with paint mixing and brushing polished surfaces will improve with practice. These are paintings they should be proud of at age 16.

While students pencil-sketch their preliminary outlines on paper, they must struggle through getting their perspective correct before they even think about cast shadows or surface patterns. (If their perspective is tight, then their cast shadows will be pretty easy. Exception is if they have a special situation like a light source behind jail cell bars.) 

This is a tough project, but it yields tremendous learning in a short time. It seriously starts to close the gap between them and their favorite pro illustrators. In fact, I like to start the unit by showing some of the children's books they admire, and some visual development for films like Big Hero 6 and Ready Player One.

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Perspective <<book>> for students—the same one I used to teach myself: