As I started my latest piece I reflected on how much time I’ve spent in my career dealing with perspective, focal length, and camera settings in general. In those worlds these are common subjects for scenes, but in art I rarely see anyone doing unique perspectives and even less doing depth of field with painting. A lot of times you’ll see creative angles or points of view but this isn’t really the perspective I was referring to. I’m talking about how an artist or photographer chooses to see the work like picking a lense.
Here’s an example of what I consider a flat perspective. It feels mathematical and rigid to me with little room for manipulation….
If you drew lines on the buildings, they would all be straight. The roof lines will coincide with a dot on the horizon and the horizontal and vertical lines of the building make a grid of sorts. (The road is higher in the middle so we’ll ignore that)
Yet on the flip side there is what we call a fish eye lense or a camera that is skewing the perspective spherically. This is almost taking the reality as we know it and warping it. You’ll see this a lot for close up shots in movies like looking through a peephole of a door or other first person perspectives.
Somewhere in the middle of these is where I like to stay. I find both to be extreme and possibly jarring to the viewer (which may be what you’re going for.) I see a lot of beginner artists pulling out the ruler and making perfect perspectives which is not easy in and of itself! It can be very tricky, and most people may not be able to identify the problem but they can see something is “wrong”. I compare it to when a person sees a human face. They may have no artistic training but can readily point out that the face doesn’t look right. (see “uncanny valley”)
Yet there are artists that play with this like MC Esher and reinvent perspectives while they defy them. I won’t go too far with examples but there is also artists who trick the human eye with perspectives using 3d elements (reverspectives) and viewing points that trick you from one angle but look distorted from all other angles. I’m sure you’ve all seen those sidewalk artists at some point in a forward or as a headline on a slow news day. A lot of artists have a distorted perspective because they draw with their head tilted or off to the side of the work and end up skewing it inadvertently. I know a lot of digital painters will “flip” the digital canvas horizontally to avoid any favoring distortions. This isn’t really an option in traditional mediums but it’s something to be aware of while you’re creating your next piece.
Now I think it’s fun to play with these elements. I won’t reveal my stuff yet but I’ll show you an example from Pinocchio
. The artist is intentionally warping walls and angles to pull your attention towards the characters during a camera pan. This is a capture from http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com where a guy has taken the time to remove the characters and show off the beautiful backgrounds. I’m trying to use perspective in my latest to make you feel like your viewpoint angle is moving while looking around the painting. So when you look straight ahead it is normal but as you pan down the painting, I want it to feel like you’re looking almost straight down. Here is an example of this from The Princess Frog:
I hope that this has been somewhat informative! A lot of this I picked up over the years while looking at other artists. I think it’s fun to play with perspective, and now I’m off to put my brush where my mouth is.
