Cylindrical perspective

So, imagine you have a big, round box. If you were to look at it straight on, you would see a circle, right? That's because the box is round all the way around, like a cylinder.

But what if you were standing to the side of the box? Then the circle would look more like an oval, because you can see the edges of the box that are farther away from you getting smaller.

That's what cylindrical perspective is all about - it's a way of drawing things so that they look like they're round and three-dimensional, even though you're drawing them on a flat piece of paper.

So, let's say you want to draw a jar. You could just draw a circle for the top and a rectangle for the side, but that would look pretty boring. Instead, you could use cylindrical perspective to make it look like the jar is really round.

To do that, you draw the top of the jar like a circle, just like you would if you were looking at it straight on. Then, for the side of the jar, you draw lines going up and down from the top of the circle, getting closer together as they go down. That's because the sides of the jar are farther away from you at the bottom, so they get smaller.

If you do it right, your drawing will look like a real, round jar, even though it's just a flat piece of paper!