..There IS an easier way.

This is the key to everything. It makes all those 4-foot lines obsolete. See how it has all those vertical markings by point size (top line of text). Here you see 4pts through 8pts. but the thing is double-sided, and it continues all the way up to 15pts.

You can find this ruler at most university bookstores that support drafting, graphic design or other type tools, but because so many people have been asking me about some online locations, I tried to find some links. These rulers aren't the same as the Haedler Ruler (they don't seem to have as many type measurements), but you should be able to substitute it just fine. If nothing else, do a search for Type Gauge on the net's art stores. The better ruler to buy is the one with the cut slots that would resemble my Haedler ruler. There are other more elaborate rulers with would have more measurements, but it is a solid piece of plastic, so marking the ticks off would be difficult. FYI.

Okay. Check the diagram below, but here's the general gist:

In your live area, mark where your horizon and vertical is. Now, the general placement for vanishing points is about 8 feet apart (that's the usual distance one can actually see through their periphrials). One vanishing point is nearby, the other is 8 feet visually away from that. Well, here with a dot, I've placed the first vanishing point. It could be off the page, but I'm doing an exaggerated perspective to show how this works.

Figure out how you want your page to expand. Either things get closer as they go to the left, or they get closer as they go to the right. Where the horizontal meets the end of your picture, line up the ruler using the 15pt (the gauge that is the widest between notches) on your edge of your picture line and start with zero. Then, down the side, mark off every two notches. Or every one, or every five. Whatever. I find two most convenient. 15pts is the largest size, so wherever that measurement is, that's where the perspective will seem the closest. Don't forget to turn your ruler around, start at 15pts' zero at the horizon line and mark off up the side of the page. Now, on the other side of your pic, pick a smaller guage. Here I've chosen something around 9 or so. I lined up everything at zero, and notched off every two.

For convenience, I start at the zero mark and count up, numbering every five notches. This visually makes things a little easier when the page is covered in lines.

For 3-pt perspective, mark off your vertical in the same way you did the horizontal. Remember, if you want a birds-eye view, put the 15pt at the top so it gets closer to you there. For a worms-eye view, put it at the bottom. Here I put it at the top for demo purposes. Mark off every two, and then to ease your eyes, number the lines every five.

Well, you know where your first vanishing point is (the dot), so you can just start drawing your lines off of that easy enough. But for the left vanishing point, gauge where you want the line and match up the numbers. You'll see in this example, I matched five on the left to five on the right, one on the left to one on the right, and so forth. Do the same for your vertical lines.

Block in your shapes with some carbon-based utensil and you're good to go!

Notes: This example is extreme. For lesser perspective, use a greater gauge for your farther away notches. For example, starting with 15pt as your closer notches, use a 13 or 14 for more slight perspective. The smaller the accompanying number, the more wacky the perspective.

Also, don't forget, you can always tilt your horizon and vertical lines on an angle (they're still perpendicular to each other, of course) and this will make the point of view even that much more dynamic.

You can even go in between your numbers for your linework. Many times, I do a '4.5 to 4.5' or even a '4.5 to a 6.5' but that you need to keep track of ratios a little more, so it's a bit tricky.

Sometimes I find it really useful to do a VERY light sketch of the layout I want BEFORE I do any of the measurements. This way, based on my visual sketches, I can more easily guess what gauge I want the notches at. Place your straight edge on one of your sketch perspective lines and see where it crosses the edge of your pic. Then, measure up side for your 15pts. If it measures, say 20 notches of your 15pts, then on the other side of your pic, find out where it meets the edge. Then, choose a gauge that measures 20 notches of one of the smaller gauges. Did that make sense?

This method works REALLY well. I'll use nothing else. Just to show you actual pieces can be done this way, here are some examples from my comic 'The 13 Days of Christmas' published by Sirius Entertainment under their Dogstar Press a few years ago:

'on the second day of christmas, my true love gave to me...vampire barbie...'

'on the fifth day of christmas, my true love gave to me...buckets of blood...'

'on the ninth day of christmas, my true love gave to me...voices from the void...'

All of these were done using my Haedler methods. I didn't have any marks on my art table farther away than what was required of my nearest vanishing point.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I hope this answers a lot for you, and sorry about the bog down with bytes, but it's for a good cause. One needs visuals for this kinda stuff...