Check and Log : Perspective

What problems did you find in executing perspective drawings?

The first problem is that I find it very difficult to draw straight lines without the use of a ruler. The second was that the interior view that I chose at first glance I thought were simple (because they are very familiar to me being inside my house and seen every day) but they proved to be much more complicated than they at first appeared. 

Once I had drawn my first attempts and then started to draw the constructed lines over the top I found that my mind tends to underestimate the angulation of receding lines in particular. 

When trying to construct the perspective lines on the angular perspective exercise I found that my vanishing points were well off the side of the page and had to resort to placing the drawing on a much larger piece of paper in order to see where the vanishing points would be - this would not have been a practical exercise to complete outdoors in the wind.

Make notes on the merits or otherwise of using, or not using rulers to guide you.

Rulers can be helpful because I find it extraordinarily difficult to draw a straight line freehand. However. a comment I would make is that the drawings constructed with a ruler, to my eye look more like technical drawings than sketches (i.e a bit static, calculated and scientific rather than an honest response to the scene). I also find that when using a ruler in the construction of a drawing I tend not to look so closely at the subject and the drawing although theoretically constructed using the rules of perspective can end up looking not much like the subject at hand. I first noticed this in the 'boxed and books' exercise pack in part 1 of the course.

Personally, I am of the opinion that it is better to look more continually at your subject and draw freehand than to concentrate on the ruler and the page. Corrections can always be made afterwards with the help of a straight edge or a ruler can be used to check whether the perspective is wildly inaccurate. Having looked at the drawing by Sir Muirhead Bone, I am more convinced, as this is an example of a drawing where the perspective looks great but is not,  strictly speaking, entirely accurate.