A Matter of Perspective

As an illustrator I find it important to get an impression of depth and movement in my artwork using perspective.  In the context of vision and how we view the world and the objects around us it is the way things appear to the eye based on their positions and sizes. Close things appear bigger in relation to the same object placed further away.  As objects become more distant they appear smaller due to the decrease in the objects visual angle.  A good example of this is a road or parallel rain tracks they appeal to meet at a distant point, referred to as the vanishing point, this point is called the horizon line or geometric horizon at the level of the viewer’s eyes.  While typing this I was suddenly struck by a memory of a sunny afternoon in my school art classroom, where it was first explained to me.  I’m sure most people can remember doodling the horizon lines and box houses vanishing into the distance similar to the example of the vanishing road or track.

Going, going, gone, this image is a classic example of perspective with one vanishing point.

It is understood that the Greeks were not the first to appreciate perspective when scholars wondered for example why a hand seemed to change size when it moves the honor goes to a fellow called Alhazen a mathematician who lived over a thousand years ago he realized that the cone of rays or light reflected of the hand grows narrower when moved away and larger when closer.  A much more recent and jokey way of looking at this perception was the scene in Father Ted when Ted bored and stuck in a caravan with Dougal tries to explain the difference between a small toy cow and the real ones further away outside the window.  “Ok one last time! These ones are small but those ones are far way.  Small…far away”.

The practice of using perspective was dusted off after largely being forgotten, resurrected in Florence, developed by renaissance artists, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci (not the Teenage turtles characters)  They developed their craft using multiple vanishing points to build up a three dimensional image on a flat canvas.   The rediscovered science of perspective  created a lot of excitement in the art world the marriage of the image and mathematics revived the composition of an artwork the new aim to not only make figures lifelike but to create a sense of movement of people in the space around them.  The practitioners had moved away from the artist as a recorder of an event to capturing the movement of the scene.  Creating grids on a canvas to precisely create the perspective of the 3D world, objects would be drawn out before painted in a wire frame way.  The same way that today’s computer artists build the characters and settings in computer animation or CGI.

Leonardo da Vinci's Study for the Adoration of the Magi, note the perspective lines and vanishing points.

Paleo Uccello and his Perspective Study of a Chalice created circa 1450.   A wire frame drawing  similar to the  way  a computer artist creates a wire frame model in which to paint and add detail to.

Once you get the hang of perspective and can figure out the logic behind how it works it you can do it more intuitively when sketching out an image.  As with anything one you nail down the basics of it you can have fun with it and distort it in what’s called forced perspective.  You can affect the appearance of things in a drawing, exaggerating the size of something to appear bigger or smaller than it actually is.   This is something I like to get into my images whether it’s in children’s illustrations or for publishing and advertising artworks.  The trick is to fool the eye and draw attention to certain details, helpful in my educational artworks as there is a small artwork space to work with and you might need a character hold something and see what it is but also include the detail of a room and people behind him.  So I would use this distortion effect to pull out this person and distort the size of the hand and the object to appeal closer up.  Seeing is believing, you have to get this just right or the brain will recognize the fakery and disengage from the image.

In Parkour I've shown an aerial view with the city sprawling off into the distance.

This distortion is used to amazing effect in Leon Keer’s art he produces street images on flat surfaces such as paths or sidewalks.  Drawn in chalk and then coloured, wonderful 3D images when viewed in the right position appear to leap out at you from their flat surroundings.  From standing at another position they appear smudged or distorted and the illusion is gone.  Using the same techniques as the early practitioners in Renaissance Italy, Leon and his contempories create these incredible visual feasts.

Going up! Leon Keer and one of his creations.

My math’s teacher always bemoaned my lack of ability in class I like to think that my understanding the art of perspective and putting it into practice I’m solving mathematical problems every day.

A little help refresh those memories of lessons can be found in this how to guide. http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-Perspective

Or a good reference for kids is How to Draw Comics “Marvel” Way by Stan Lee.  I still have my own aged and well thumbed through copy on my book shelves

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If you would like to read a little more about this try The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski a great book that covers art and mathematics and the development of the human mind and scientific progress.