4th Grade One Point Perspective

Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface (such as paper), of an image as it is seen by the eye. The two most characteristic features of perspective are that objects are drawn:
* Smaller as their distance from the observer increases
* Foreshortened: the size of an object's dimensions along the line of sight are relatively shorter than dimensions across the line of sight

After the 4th grade students learned about perspective, and more specifically one point perspective, we began drawing on 12 x 18 paper. The students made a dot to represent the vanishing point. Streets, sidewalks, buildings, cars, etc all lined up according to where their vanishing point was. This allowed the city view to start out bigger and become smaller and you look further down the street. Students had many creative ideas to develop their buildings.