The SECRETS of DRAWING, Perspective Part 1
All you’ll ever need to know about perspective! LEVEL 0
Intro:
Almost everything in Art is Subjective. A personal journey exploring your individual interpretation of the world.
But the laws of Perspective are a notorious exception.
Since the time of painter Brunelleschi in the early 1400, their rules have proven themselves so valid a solution that they became the standard of how artist convey 3d space in 2d format, ushering a revolution and opening the doors of European renaissance.
As such, these rules are one of those things any serious artist absolutely must master. No excuse. And YET, I’ve seen professional colleague *Cough* making an occasional perspective mistake *Cough* *Cough* (I will NOT name names)!
Thankfully, although it requires practice to fully master, the rules themselves are not rocket sciences and I’ll demonstrate EVERYRING you’ll EVER NEED to know about them in these easy, simple to follow sections.
The whole plan goes as follow-
Level 0 Horizon as absolute reference of height and Reverse engineering Horizon.
Level 2 Multiples horizontal vanishing points.
Level 3 New Dimensions, dept vanishing point. Triangle of Death!
Level 4 Godlike level of Escher and beyond …
Let’s GO!
Level 0 Horizon as absolute reference of height.
Above anything else and before messing around with vanishing points, you guys need to realize the Horizon is a Height reference. The height of the viewer eye/camera, a common reference of elevation, valid at the camera height and all the way to Infinite distance. Any elements intersection the horizon does it at the same relative altitude.
Having established a reference height, it’s easy to deduce the relative height of another object.
What if Nothing is Crossing the Horizon? Is every reference Lost forever? Of course not! I like stacking up reference elements, extra heads , entire Bodies, whatever already established reference you have handy.
Now, keep in mind that shoulder height, for example, is not an absolute thing for every Characters.
Or that the surface might not be flat, offsetting your trustworthy reference.
THERE, you have fully grasped Perspective Level 0! That wasn’t too hard was it.
I leave you with a little trick I’ve ended up using quite a lot.
I usually draw my horizon first and then populate the space with elements,. But sometimes, I draw elements first and I reverse engineering a Horizon line.
BUT careful, this work with two elements because you can always find a common height for them. By 3 elements there’s no guarantee anymore and there’s not always a horizon that matches them all! Drawing the Horizon first would have been wiser.
There, I’ll see you later for LEVEL 1 as we tackle the nefarious Vanishing point.
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You guys are the best.
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Thank you. This was one of best and logical demonstrations of real world thinking about the practical use of the horizon line. I can wait for part 2.
C'est donc ben cool!!