ELI5: What Is Perspective in Art?

Perspective in art is a magic drawing trick that makes a flat picture look like it has real, deep space with things that are close to you and things that are far away.

Imagine you are standing on a long, straight sidewalk in your neighborhood:

• Things look smaller when they are far away: A dog walking right next to you looks big, but a dog way down at the end of the street looks as tiny as an ant, even though it is actually a full-sized dog.
• Lines seem to meet: If you look at the two edges of the sidewalk, they seem to get closer and closer together until they touch at a tiny spot in the distance. In art, that magic spot is called the vanishing point.
• Close things block far things: When you hold your hand right in front of your face, it can block your view of a whole car across the street. This is called overlapping.

Without perspective, a drawing looks totally flat, like stickers stuck on a wall. But with perspective, the drawing becomes a window that looks like a real room you could actually walk right into.