Before you study the perspective of a cylinder, it helps if you understand the perspective of a circle which is explained on the previous page.

A cylinder is simply a circle which is projected into three dimensions.

fig.1 is an illustration of a cylinder which is formed by a circle projected vertically from the ground plane.

The ellipses that outline the cylinder are all the same width. However, the roundness of their curves gradually increases as they rise above or drop below eye level.

Note how the ellipse at the eye level is seen as a straight line.

fig.2 is an illustration of a cylinder which is formed by a circle projected horizontally from the picture plane.

The circular curves that form the cylinder are all the same shape, but their scale reduces as they recede from the picture plane towards the vanishing point.

Our examples use one point perspective, the simplest form of perspective drawing.