National Opera House, Riga

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Excellent!

I do a lot of sketching on the hoof and this was drawn during a particularly prolific period of several months, filling sketch books. We'd just booked tickets for the Latvian National Ballet and as we walked away I looked back, to find this composition. The following morning I left everone in bed at the hotel and set up on a convenient bench. It's clearly a two-point, one to the left out of shot and the other to the right within the composition. Vanishing points are often out of shot and as long as you find eye level first - the height at which all lines of perspective are horizontal, regardless of which plane they are in - everything else can be set out to suit. (Don't use the head height of passers by if you're seated). Best to check the pitch of the top-most angles to be clear what must be targeted below; urban sketches often fail because pitch lines are underestimated. The facades absolute far right were completed back at the hotel; an hour's gloveless sketching at -4°C was enough.