Principles of perspective drawing

[spiderplanet]

 Fresh from the oven, piping hot Dreamwidth content!

Today I went on the customary "Walk until I find something interesting" walk.  I found a baseball that had been demolished by a dog, but it was right by the dog park, so the whole area smelled like poop.  I did not hang around for a photo because I was worried that the smell might carry through.  

I took this photo instead.



Image shows train tracks converging towards the horizon

If you took a drawing class in elementary school, you drew a version of this picture.

First, draw the horizon approximately 2/3 of the way up the page.  This makes the "interesting" part of the picture (the train tracks) take up the most space.  Next, draw a dot on the middle of the horizon.  Next, draw the lines for the tracks... Keep drawing until you think it's finished.  The goal is to understand the following:

• the horizon exists
• things appear smaller as they approach the horizon 
• things appear closer together as they approach the horizon

People who enjoy drawing will also learn the following:

• Nothing will ever be finished to your own satisfaction
• Art is done when it's time to turn the assignment in, or when you are making it worse by proceeding
• You suck, and you will always suck, but if you continue to practice, you might suck less.

Feel free to get your ruler or straight edge and draw this picture to completion.  

Comments

[caffeine]

I do actually recall the assignment. But I don't think they ever said (outloud) the last 3 bullet points.

[spiderplanet]

It takes a while to learn. For a long time, many people who enjoy drawing believe that someday they'll think of themselves as 'competent' if they keep at it.

[laramie]

Also, the place on the horizon where lines converge is called the 'vanishing point.'

[spiderplanet]

Yes, yes! And it wasn't taught in the lesson, but we were to understand that the vanishing point always exists, even if it's not visible.

[dreamshark]

The truly amazing thing to me is that it took so many centuries for artists to "discover" perspective. How could you NOT notice perspective??? Do people who have not been taught to see that vanishing point actually see the real life train tracks as running parallel as far as the eye can see?

Very nice picture, btw, for all the compositional reasons you mention.

[spiderplanet]

This does blow my mind a bit too.

Someone who understands art history better than me may correct me, but as I understand it, perspective in European art wasn't 'discovered' because it wasn't important. Art existed for a specific purpose, to teach the illiterate about religion. If something is painted big, it's because it's important to the story. "Art" (or at least art that has survived) existed for and about the church. It is not a coincidence that the printing press and perspective in art happened within a relatively few years of each other.

Peasants did create art because humans created art, but most of it couldn't survive this long, and the supplies they would have had access to would have been limited.

[dreamshark]

I seem to remember (but am too lazy to look it up) that perspective drawing was invented, or at least perfected, by the guy that designed the great cathedral in Florence for Lorenzo the Magnificent. He decided that he needed it in order to make the really detailed architectural and engineering plans that such a structure required. He then went on to use it in his paintings. Being the very model of "Renaissance man" he was of course a brilliant artist as well as architect, engineer, and Gods know what else. I think his name started with "C"

But wouldn't you think that the same techniques would have been useful to all those people designing slightly less overwhelming but still daunting cathedrals and public buildings in the preceding couple of centuries?

[spiderplanet]

That stuff was all design/build. It's a terrible method that's all the rage these days.