Two-Point Street Corner with Vanishing Points off the Sheet
An examinee sketches a two-point view of a corner shop from the pavement. The building corner is 3 m away, the eye level is 1.5 m, and the two vanishing points fall far outside the 30 × 42 cm sheet. The brief asks for a convincing street corner with a figure at the door and a bicycle leaning on the wall. Unable to place the VPs, the student draws all horizontal edges parallel to the paper and makes the upper-storey windows tilt down toward the corner. A 2 m awning projects over the pavement and is drawn 2 cm deep on paper, the same as a 0.5 m signboard beside it. The pavement's paving lines converge but the shop's plinth does not. The candidate has 50 minutes and asks whether to erase and restart or to 'adjust the worst bits'.
1. Diagnose the perspective errors and recommend restart versus repair under the 50-minute limit.
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Diagnosis: The VPs are outside the sheet, which is normal for a 3 m corner with a wide angle; the error is drawing all horizontals parallel. Each façade needs its own VP on the eye-level line. The upper windows tilt down because the student has no VP and is guessing. The awning and sign are both drawn 2 cm deep although their true depths differ, so foreshortening is not understood. The plinth not converging contradicts the paving lines and breaks the ground plane.
Recommendation: Do not erase the whole sheet blindly. First check paper abrasion and how many major edges are wrong. If the corner, plinth, windows, and awning are all parallel, the drawing has no shared spatial logic; a quick restart is cleaner. In 50 minutes: 10 minutes for eye level, VP directions, and block-in; 20 minutes for shopfront, awning, windows, plinth; 10 minutes for figure and bicycle; 10 minutes for value and unity. If the paper is already heavily worked or the candidate is slow, repair in this order: eye-level line, two VP directions, plinth and corner, windows, awning, then figure. 'Adjusting the worst bits' without a VP system will reproduce the same errors.
2. Describe an off-paper vanishing-point method and explain how it controls the awning's apparent depth.
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Off-paper method: Tape a larger underlay sheet behind the drawing, or use a long straightedge and a pin-and-thread line. Align the straightedge with a known horizontal edge of the left façade and mark where it crosses the eye-level line on the underlay; repeat for a right-façade edge. Those marks are the VPs, even if they are 40–60 cm outside the paper. Transfer only the angles back to the drawing with a ruler, checking each new edge against the thread.
Awning control: The awning's side edges must go to the same VP as the shopfront's horizontals. Its apparent depth depends on its angle to the picture plane and its distance from the eye, not on its real length alone. A 2 m awning projecting strongly toward the viewer can appear shallower than a 0.5 m signboard that lies nearly frontal. Draw the awning's front edge and its two receding edges first, then use diagonals to locate the midpoint and check the depth. If the awning looks as deep as the sign, the student has copied a symbol for 'awning' rather than projected its planes.
3. Correct the figure-to-door height error using eye level and the 3 m distance.
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Eye-level reasoning: At 1.5 m eye level, the 2.1 m door top is above the horizon, and the 1.7 m figure's head is also above the horizon but lower than the door top. At the door plane, the apparent height ratio must be about 1.7:2.1, so the figure cannot equal the door. If the figure is drawn at the door and the same height, the student has scaled by symbol-person equals door-rather than by projection.
Desk method: Hold the pencil at arm's length, mark the door's apparent height, then compare the figure's apparent height at the same distance. Alternatively, use the horizon: the figure's eye level is about 1.6 m, close to the 1.5 m horizon, so the figure's eyes should fall near the horizon line; the door top should sit clearly above it. Because the corner is 3 m away, a figure standing at the door is at roughly the same distance as the door; a figure stepping forward would be legitimately larger, so first fix the ground contact and depth. Correct the figure's feet, then head, then the door-frame relationship.