perspective drawing definition

Perspective drawing is a type of technique employed by artists and others to create 3D pictures on a 2D picture plane.  
Perspective drawing was developed by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 - 1446) and Leon Baptista Alberti (1404 - 1472), two architects from the 15th century.  It was one of the main ideas behind Western art until the Cubists started to question it during the early 1900s. There are two main types of perspective drawing; they include linear perspective and aerial perspective.  Linear perspective is perspective as it relates to the arrangement of shapes in space.  Aerial perspective is perspective as it relates to changes of the atmosphere through the use of tones and color. “Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to a ship...There are three aspects to perspective.  The first has to do with how the size of objects seems to diminish according to distance; the second, the manner in which colors change the farther away they are from the eye; the third defines how objects ought to be finished less carefully the farther away they are.”  (Quote by Leonardo da Vinci)