Eye Level - An Essential Perspective Tip for Artists

We are learning how to practise training our artist's eye during everyday life, because unfortunately, we can't be drawing 24/7.

In this video, we are looking at eye level and how that affects what we are seeing. Eye level and horizon lines are really useful for understanding perspective, whether you are drawing landscapes, figures or objects.

We look at how eye level affects the way you see people and things depending on their distance from you, the difference between the eye level and horizon, what happens when things tilt and how things are angled or curved depending on whether they are at your eye level or not.

My dog steals the show in this one. Hope you enjoy it!

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Thanks for watching!

0:00 Introduction: Horizons & Eye Level
2:29 When the ground's not flat
3:03 Vanishing points
3:37 Tilting objects
5:23 Examples
7:03 Final Thoughts

[walterhundt]

I don't think I've seen/read anything on perspective that is as clear and concise as this video. Thank you and well done!

[Musashi]

8 years of drawing and no one ever told me about 5:05. Thanks so much! ><

[SlurryNoises]

I don't think i've ever been as shook as when I saw the eye level-line part and how the eyes stayed on the horizon line as you got closer to the camera... Huge moment of revelation for me, thank you so much!!!! Same with all the packages' lines converging at the horizon line despite not being parallel!!

[vovabelikv]

Walking around the streets became unimaginably interesting for me. It’s like I have ignored all of these peculiarities and now I can see and enjoy them. Thanks, Kenzo!

[censoredby_yt]

Your method of teaching makes difficult topics easy to understand. This is the most easy-to-digest perspective teaching I've come across yet! Thanks Kenzo.

[charlesz]

A great teacher is also a great learner. And vice versa. Thanks a lot for the video!

[dinaraaisautova]

I don't feel so terrified about perspective now! Thank you so much! ❤️✨

[Sky-deoy]

Ohhh the box lid thing! No one ever told that to me and it always confused me cuz I couldn't spot how perspective worked with those. Thank you so much!

[LegendaryGlasses]

You can't possibly imagine how grateful I am for your videos. They're changing my life for the better!

[AmeleeBasham]

This is a huge blessing. Thank you for compiling all these examples together! To understand something effectively, getting "perspective" to tackle a topic from multiple angles with simplicity is priceless to me!

[ShintogaDeathAngel]

I know this is 5 years old, but I really found the thing about the eye level staying the same as a subject moves closer/further away a revelation. I’ve always found perspective a bit tricky, so thank you for that! Subbed!

[MillionPM]

this is the best explanation of the fluctuations in perspective drawing that I have ever watched, read or heard. I wish this had been around 20 years ago. Would have saved me a ton of headaches.

[juliaable]

Thank you so much for making this! I'm teaching myself perspective and so have been trying to observe things more intentionally in everyday life. And today while walking up stairs, I realized that there was a vanishing point above my eye level/the horizon. This confused the heck out of me, having learned that the vanishing point always falls on the horizon line. Now the mystery is all cleared up :) Really appreciate you teaching perspective with real-life objects as opposed to drawings. Hope you can do more of these perspective videos.
Cheers! 😊

[kathyweckerle]

Excellent proof that the horizon is always eye-level. I live in a valley. Thank you so much for simplifying this proof.
Lesson: The horizon is not physical
as we were taught outside of art class. I was a rare case because I loved art and science. I became a draftsman before computers and my drawing was always technical. Art and descriptive geometry taught me these horizon principles.
Application:
Ships do not go over the horizon. Look through binoculars and the ship will come back. The horizon line will move above the bottom of the ship.

I will look to see if anybody else has good art lessons showing that the bottom of an object always disappears first on a flat surface. That is unresolved angular resolution. People need to learn these things:
Oceans are level. Water is level. Gyroscopes indicate airplane level/parallel with sea level on the attitude (angle) indicator instrument.
(altitude/height above sea level known by air pressure)

[japaniamanga]

These too videos on persective are so helpful and so clear. You don't just talk about boxes, you make us understand it with real life. Best videos i've seen to undestand perspective so far. Keep doing them and thank you so much! Can't wait for the ones about lights and shadows! :)

[littlehungrywarrior]

this video finally helping me understand why I've always struggled w/eye level... I'm very much someone who learns from walking around real life and observing the world, as is recommended here. eye level never connected with me.

watching 1:22... yeah that's what I always hear. then i get to 2:16. and I get it now. i get why eye level never clicked.

i am small.

[yussufabukar]

This is a golden video talking about something hard to find any where else. Thank you for sharing!

[sameehakhaliq]

Thank you Kenzo. You are my savior and always come on time with he right content I needed most

[drawgonanimation]

I just LOVE this kind of videos you make! It’s beyond helpful and I have never seen anyone teach it this way on YouTube before. Again incredibly useful. Thank you for your hard work making them.

[DaeJM]

Thanks and keep doing this. Best tutorial I ever saw on YT, that explains important things about perspective, that everyone else usually ignores in there's videos.