Renaissance fresco: The School of Athens by Raphael.
Michael Hepher
I’m Michael Hepher, a full-time artist, printmaker and writer living and working in Fernie. Articulate is committed to sharing artistic voices from across the Columbia Basin, and I’m one of the lucky people who has been invited to contribute my thoughts every other month. I’ll be sharing what’s on my artsy mind, give you glimpses into life as a rural artist, and talk about what’s going on in the cultural scene in the East Kootenay. Thanks for reading!
In my previous article, I talked about creatives who, like me, started their practice on the informal path and the challenges we have in learning the technical skills that balance our intuition. Understanding perspective drawing is one of the skills that is often missed.
Humans are experts at navigating our physical world, but rendering it in two-dimensional space is actually quite tricky. Understanding the framework of our surroundings is important for visual communication with depth and precision. Drawing with perspective gives us a set of tools that help connect our imaginary world to viewers in the real world.
I regularly see work from artists, emerging and established alike, that misses the underlying structure and the resulting work is “off” in a way that feels disorienting. Those unsettled feelings can be a distraction from the emotional connection or enjoyment of the piece even when the viewer is not clear about why.
Good news! Over the years artists have created tools to help get it feeling right!
Humans are experts at navigating our physical world, but rendering it in two-dimensional space is actually quite tricky.
Contemporary art instruction teaches one, two and three-point perspective as a foundational skill, but that has not always been the case. One of the defining moments of art history was the discovery of a linear—or mathematical—perspective for drawing. This discovery was part of the catalyst that facilitated the arrival of the Renaissance.
This pre-Renaissance fresco shows that artists had a sense of how to create depth, but did not have a mathematical principle to apply consistently.
Before the 15th century, most artwork felt flat. From Egyptian hieroglyphs to the religious icons and mosaics of Christian Europe, the size and placement of objects in the work was guided by ideological considerations. A more important figure was painted larger or put higher up on the picture plane. Artists had a vague idea that certain shapes angled away from the viewer, but any depth created felt accidental, and attempts at adding depth were never employed consistently even in a single work.
One of the defining moments of art history was the discovery of a linear—or mathematical—perspective for drawing.
From the 1400s through the 1600s, many of the Renaissance masters contributed actively to a growing theory of mathematical perspective, while simultaneously applying those new ideas to their work. During that period we can see a creeping development of the use of that theory to create depth and emphasis. Renaissance paintings use one-point perspective to create a tableau—a theatre set, if you will—to stage their characters and scenes. The bold architectural backgrounds all recede to a single point on the imaginary horizon.
This Raphaelite fresco shows the development of a clear one-point perspective. Renaissance artists used this technique to create stages on which to place their characters and dramas. The use of two-point perspective did not come into regular use until the 1700s.
By the 18th century, a more nuanced aesthetic was applied by using two-point perspective to create more complex compositions. These masters and their drive to capture life as realistically as possible has permanently changed how we view art.
Since that time, the use of linear perspective has been widely expected by an artist in any medium—at least until the cubists arrived and broke the rules all over again. In the early 20th century, several art movements sprang up that had, at their core, a principle of railing against the established order, which included linear perspective.
Two-point perspective: Note that the horizon line is not always where you expect it to be! It’s an imaginary line that helps determine if you are looking UP at something or DOWN at something. Vanishing points will be on that line.
Two-point perspective: Note that one of the vanishing points is INSIDE the picture plane, which creates a unique challenge.
Surrealists, cubists, dadaists, all for different reasons, pushed right to the edge of what was considered “proper art” and just kept right on pushing. They broke out of representationalism into abstraction and discovered how to ignore perspective to create a new type of visual understanding of the world.
Like all the rules in art, we are gods of our own creative universes, and we should feel free to break rules when it makes sense for our art.
There is a limit to how far we can push our perspective without it feeling unsettling, and these modern artists used that tension to great effect. The resulting discomfort upset the entire art world—again—and created new realms for artists to explore. They upset that apple cart deliberately and with an exacting knowledge of the precepts they were breaking.
Linear perspective tools are helpful, but they are only guidelines. What we don’t want to do is accidentally make viewers feel uneasy when we miss the memo and turn our beautiful landscape into a bizarre surrealist work—all because of our lack of understanding of the process.
Like all the rules in art, we are gods of our own creative universes, and we should feel free to break rules when it makes sense for our art. To break them gracefully, it is helpful to understand them thoroughly. Knowing how to draw with perspective is one of those tools that can catapult our compositions into a professional realm because it frees the viewer from distractions. Even if we decide to build compositions that defy the laws of physics, understanding how to create that tension most incisively is a great asset.
That, at least, is my perspective.
Van Gogh showed clear disregard for perspective lines with great effect—though that effect is somewhat disorienting. It’s interesting to note that this two-point perspective piece really only distorts the right-hand vanishing point, while leaving the left-hand one more or less intact, even though it is a long ways off the picture plane. (For a current example, check out contemporary artist Amy Dryer), who shows a complete disregard for perspective with amazing results; she demonstrates an understanding of her own universe and communicates it consistently, building on the paths Van Gogh started down.)
If you’re keen to learn more about using linear perspective to bolster your understanding of your own creative practice, and of the world around you, there are some great tutorials on YouTube (such as this one) and several local arts councils offer a variety of hands-on drawing courses, including perspective drawing. Check the listings on this page to find the arts council nearest you.
To find more about me (Michael Hepher), check out the links below. I’d love to hear from you!
- Websites: michaelhepher.com / clawhammer.ca
- Instagram: @michaelhepher / @clawhammerpress
- Substack: michaelhepher.substack.com
