♦ [ART] You Don’t Have to Take a Perspective Workshop—But You Probably Should
Free resources for learning perspective are everywhere— it’s an amazing time to be an artist. But if you want to accelerate your journey, workshops can save you immeasurable frustration.
If your vanishing points keep drifting or your buildings still don’t sit quite right on the ground, a workshop can save you hours of frustration—and months of compounding mistakes.
Let’s get this out of the way first:
You do not have to take a class or workshop in perspective to get better at it.
There are incredible books. Here are the top two: Scott Robertson’s How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination and Framed Perspective Vol. 1: Technical Perspective and Visual Storytelling by Marcos Mateu-Mestre. There are game-changing YouTube channels; Proko and Drawsh are great. There are online courses taught by artists who really know what they’re doing. And if that approach works for you—amazing. Run with it. See Above.
But here’s the rub:
Perspective is sneaky.
And errors in perspective compound the longer you draw without catching them.
That’s where a good teacher—especially in a live workshop setting—becomes invaluable.
A good workshop does three things better than any book or video:
1. Instructors see what you’re not understanding or applying incorrectly—usually way before you.
Books and videos are great at showing you how something works. But they can’t lean over your shoulder and see where your drawing is about to fall apart.
Your instructor can.
For example, if I see someone with a blank look when I mention vertical convergence or three-point perspective, I know exactly what’s not clicking—and I can explain it a different way, right then and there. No algorithm can do that. No YouTube pause button can save you from misunderstanding a fundamental idea.
Same goes for the very first mistake I see most often: not understanding what the horizon line really is. If you get it wrong, everything else gets built on that incorrect foundation—and it will take you twice as long to undo that mistake later.
2. Instructors catch your mistake before it spreads.
Perspective problems don’t stay small. They’re like leaks in a dam—if you don’t spot them early, everything will collapse when the trickle explodes into a torrent.
Put the horizon line in the wrong place? Composition is thrown off.
Buildings tilt at bizarre angles?
Figures don’t scale right?
Everything seems oddly floaty?
If I’m in the room with you, I can stop you before that happens. Not to scold, but to support—saving hours of frustration and hair pulling. Drawing that are off don’t just magically get better, no matter how hard you try.
3. Instructors demonstrate the value of precision.
Perspective is a precise system of drawing, especially at the beginning when you must DEVELOP an intuition. Perspective is NOT intuitive. A Perception that you drawing is WONKY, might be.
In the long run, we don’t want stiff, mechanical drawings. But at the beginning? Use a ruler, a sharp pencil, and accurate vanishing points. Keep parallel lines parallel, and perpendicular lines truly perpendicular. Not kinda perpendicular… really perpendicular.
“Close enough” won’t cut it.
Miss your vanishing point by a little?
The error will grow the further out you go.
Draw lines that almost converge?
You’ll see it. The viewer will feel it. And the illusion will break.
It’s not about perfection—it’s about understanding where the structure has to be correct to support the illusion of a real space.
So—do you need a workshop? Nope.
But is it the fastest way to learn perspective without losing your mind? Absolutely.
If your time is valuable and your creative goals are ambitious, being in a room with someone who can diagnose what’s going wrong and help you fix it early can be the difference between persistent frustration and “aha… now I get it.”
I trust you. Do what’s right for your learning style and your budget. I know you are smart enough to figure it out on your own.
But if time is precious, a good teacher accelerates you past “trying to get it” to “hell yeah, I got it now!”
If this seems self-serving because I teach workshops? I admit it. But I want my students to know what they’re gettin’.
Charles Merritt Houghton
29 April 2025
will do. I should have another in June.
Count me in! Do keep us posted on the next workshop!