Use Vanishing Point perspective to add depth to your drawing

By ROcrypton | Crypto Cartoonist | 3 Mar 2025

When I started drawing, I thought that all I had to do was scribble and that over time, my gift or talent (not that I have any, of course!) would take care of it. I believed that if I drew a lot, eventually the lines would become good on their own. In a way, that's not entirely wrong. Practice always helps. But what I didn't know was that there was a way to make a huge leap in the quality of my drawings. This method has a name: the vanishing point.

Discovering the vanishing point was like finding a missing piece of a puzzle. Before that, my drawings seemed loose and lacking depth, as if everything was floating on the page. Then, a line would appear at the bottom and I thought it was the "ground." But when I learned to use at least one vanishing point, everything changed. The drawing really started to come to life. Then I learned two vanishing points, and that's how I was able to draw the corners of buildings and houses.

What happens is that the vanishing point gives the sensation of depth, that is, it makes objects appear to be closer or further away depending on how you position them. Without it, things look flattened and unrealistic. But with it, suddenly the page stops being a limited space and becomes a universe of possibilities.

Imagine that you want to draw a room. Before, I would draw a straight wall, put the bed or a wardrobe in any way and that was it. It just seemed artificial and strange. But when I learned how to use a vanishing point, I realized that I could draw lines that went towards this point, creating the illusion of depth. Suddenly, the room seemed real, as if I could enter it. This applies to anything: streets, mobile homes, buildings, even people in perspective. You start to see that everything around you has this logic. Look at a street, for example. If you look closely, you will notice that the lines of the sidewalks and lampposts seem to converge to a point on the horizon. This is the vanishing point in action.

It may seem complicated at first, but it's simpler than it seems. The secret is to practice and understand that depth makes all the difference. Over time, you don't even need to mark everything with a ruler. Your eye will learn to see perspective naturally.

So if you draw and feel that something is missing in your drawings, it may be precisely the depth. Try learning about vanishing points and see how your art changes. Believe me, once you understand this, you'll never see a drawing the same way again.

My first drawing where I used the vanishing point to make the stone blocks 👇

In this other drawing I used two vanishing points, notice that the depth is so accentuated that the character at the bar cannot see the character next door unless it is inside the bar where the woman is. 👇