I teach art to children and adults. I decided to add my lessons to my blog to have easy access to them while in class and to make them available for anyone. Even if you are not learning painting or drawing, these lessons can help you have more appreciation for art. I am keeping these lessons super SIMPLE as the actual lesson happens in person and I am trying to reduce my computer time. The lesson below is part of my Perspective Drawing class.
Is learning Perspective Drawing
THAT important??
"I am an artist! I can just wing it"
"I can draw by feel or memory"
"My art teacher told me to
throw away all my rulers!"
If you don't like reading long articles, just skip to the images to see how I corrected some perspective errors.
Many artists, including some art instructors, stay away from perspective drawing for many different reasons. Some are valid and some are not.
Some of the valid reasons could be: preferring a more expressive or personal style, creating illustrations for children that have the look as if a child drew them, choosing to paint landscapes and nature where there is very little use of the perspective methods, doing abstract art, folk art, etc.
Some artists don't use perspective methods for the wrong reasons: they dislike doing something that feels too technical, they don't want to take the time to understand these concepts that may seem at a first glance too complex, they are producing fast art so that they make quick money (some artists can make fuzzy looking paintings in 10 minutes, they call it "impressionism" and are able to have an inventory of thousands of paintings on ebay)... ok this last reason may not necessarily be wrong but it could be a topic for another article.
Some artists actually break the perspective rules on purpose to create some amazing optical illusions. These are the impossible artists, some of my favorite artists. This article is NOT about this type of art. The impossible artists actually know perspective drawing very well and they are able to tweak it to their advantage. I usually tell my students: in order to break the rules you have to learn them first.
I have collected random images that I couldn't help to notice the obvious perspective errors or a total lack of it. I fixed these errors to show my students why perspective drawing is important. They are all from "professional" artists. Originally I wasn't planning on posting them online therefore I do not have most of the artists' names. If you happen to know their names or if you are the artist, you can let me know in the comments. In regards to the copyright of these images, I am using them as part of a lesson which under copyright law is allowed as "fair use."
I must clarify that I am NOT saying that not using perspective methods is wrong. Sometimes I don't use them but most times I do. It's up to the artist to decide when to use them. Knowledge is power.
ALL THE ART EXAMPLES USED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE NOT MINE. READ THE ARTICLE TO UNDERSTAND WHY I CHOSE THESE EXAMPLES.
Original work. The perspective errors make it seem as if the truck had a front flat tire or as if the front of the truck was sinking in the ground.
These are some of the errors I found (there's more besides the ones shown). This image appears to have more than one horizon line and the tires look wonky.
There were two ways in which I corrected this image. Compare them side by side:
Corrected option #1
Using the horizon that corresponds to the way the truck was drawn and fixing some other errors. If all that blue of the sky is not desired, there can be some hills or mountains far in the distance (not shown in my correction) while still keeping the truck in flat land.
Corrected option #2
If the horizon line is high on the paper then the eye level of the viewer is also high (same as the horizon line), therefore viewer must be able to see some of the top of the truck which I added. I also did some minor changes on the tires (on both options) but they are not 100% correct (it would've taken me a long time). Drawing tires without the use of perspective methods usually results in tires that "need some air or repairs."
In one point perspective the vanishing point is usually in the center when it's an exterior scene (the viewer normally sees equal portions with the left eye as with the right eye). In an interior scene the vanishing point may not be centered if there is something blocking the vision of one eye such as a wall on the side, etc). As I already mentioned, I kept the vanishing point on the left so that this painting wouldn't have major changes.
When making the changes to all these images, I focus more on the perspective part than the quality of the image, so there may be some blurriness or patches here and there that I didn't take the time to correct.
Another option to correct this painting would be to think of this table as if it existed in real life (without making any changes to the table). Since its vanishing point is way up high, it means that this table is NOT parallel to the ground. The back edge is higher than the front edge, in other words, this table is slanted. The apples then would be rolling down. The only change needed would be to place the apples right next to the front edge of the table.
I am still updating this article.
Come back later to see the rest!!!
