Educational Media Reviews Online

This instructional video explains in concise segments four basic perspectives for architectural drawings of buildings. Axonometric, isometric and one- and two-point perspective drawings are demonstrated with the help of computer graphics. At 20 minutes in length, this video is not so long as to produce a roomful of dozing students, however, it is perhaps too densely packed with information for students to adequately absorb all four drawing techniques.

While the video does an excellent job with graphic examples of the illustration styles, utilizing computer animation to clarify the technical aspects of the four types of drawings, it also complicates the process. Two-point perspective, for instance, is generally taught very quickly in class. The learning process for students comes through demonstration and practice. This video overloads the segment on two-point perspective with a lot of language, confusing what is actually quite simple. Without the opportunity to work through the process as the technique is explained, students may not retain useful knowledge.

Vanishing Points would not be appropriate for the layperson, who would not be prepared with either sufficient drawing background or the proper tools to make use of this information. The video’s producers are clearly intending to provide an instructional program to be used in the classroom for graduate or undergraduate architectural training. An instructor of architectural media might present this video in lieu of demonstrating the various drawing techniques, but generally speaking, a video would only be a preface to the actual learning process. Students will not be able to practice these drawing styles after viewing a video without additional example or demonstration, and practice. For this purpose several excellent books are probably more helpful to instruction of these techniques. Francis D. K. Ching’s Design Drawing, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1998 immediately comes to mind as the standard for architectural drawing styles. Ching also authored Architectural Graphics, which is now in its third edition, also from Van Nostrand Reinhold. Other titles include Architectural Drawing: A Visual Compendium of Types and Methods, by Rendow Yee, John Wiley and Sons 1997, a very thorough primer on architectural drawing covering everything from tools to 3-D modeling. For the less architecturally inclined, Basic Perspective Drawing: A Visual Approach, by John Montague, John Wiley and Sons, 1998 provides a straightforward introduction to drawing in perspective.

Not recommended