If you followed the 30SAL challenge last year, you may remember a series of posts about perspective. These perspectives include much more than the dominant Western standard of 1 point, 2 point, and 3 point linear perspective. These perspectives span the globe and include centuries of humans depicting space on a two dimensional surface. We’re going to revisit a few of those perspectives this year, starting with this:
Inverse Perspective
If you’ve taken a drawing class, you might have learned to draw with 1 point, 2 point, and 3 point linear perspective. With this perspective method, objects that are farther away are drawn smaller, and perpendicular lines recede to common vanishing points in the distance. In inverse perspective, objects that are farther away are drawn larger.
If you’ve become accustomed to Western or Renaissance style linear perspective, you might think inverse (or “reverse” or “divergent”) perspective looks naive and awkward, but about 50% of adults who haven’t learned Western perspective drawing, when told to draw a box, draw it using inverse perspective.
Trinity, a Russian Orthodox painting by Andrei Rublev. Tempera on board, 1411 or 1425-27, 56 x 45 inches
Inverse perspective is commonly seen in Byzantine and Russian Orthodox icons, Chinese and Japanese art, and sometimes in children’s drawings. In religious artworks, one reason behind drawing objects that are farther away larger in size is that they are growing closer in relationship to god. In contrast, the linear perspective method that started in the Renaissance put primary importance on the point of view of each individual, and on science and logic.
If a person was to stand still without moving and only look within a small area in front of them, Renaissance perspective might be similar to what we see, but as our bodies are built to move around and our minds are built to think about things from varying viewpoints, the argument could be made that showing multiple perspectives is inherently the more natural way to draw.
Artistically, inverse perspective allows us to convey the tops and sides of objects along with the front for multi-dimensional and narrative gain. Basically, unless you’re using your drawing as a blueprint for building, inverse perspective allows you to describe more of an object. Cubism also took advantage of this idea, and showed objects from various points of view.
There are other methods for linear perspective, such as isometric, axonometric or orthographic, oblique or parallel, and convergent perspective. All of them have different applications, are interesting, and are visually useful to communicate objects in space. With all the different ways to draw things, I wonder how Renaissance perspective became the only one taught in most art classes?
Day 21: Inverse Perspective #30SAL Challenge
Today’s Challenge: Create something using inverse perspective, in which the objects get bigger as they get farther away. #inverseperspective #30sal
Share your drawing on Instagram with these tags: #30sal, #inverseperspective
Feet in blanket, drypoint and embossed chine-collé on 14×11″ Rives gray BFK. (The color is a little dark and dull in this photo, because the paper was still wet) An accidental print resulted in some body-less feet at the bottom of the page, and Nikki had a brilliant idea to add chine-collé to the empty …
I posted recently about how originality is not really what we’re built for. You can read that post here. After saying how natural copying is, I thought I should follow up with some conversations about copyright issues. Typically these conversations go straight to talking about the legal system. I personally find the artistic, personal, and moral …
[image_with_animation image_url=”9927″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Chris Harvey’s notan study in preparation for his painting 6th Floor Vancouver Library Popularized in Sir Arthur Wesley Dow‘s book on Composition (1899), Notan is a Japanese design concept based on simplified light and dark shapes. The idea is that composition is based on value, and by waiting to …
Day 21: Inverse Perspective #30SAL
If you followed the 30SAL challenge last year, you may remember a series of posts about perspective. These perspectives include much more than the dominant Western standard of 1 point, 2 point, and 3 point linear perspective. These perspectives span the globe and include centuries of humans depicting space on a two dimensional surface. We’re going to revisit a few of those perspectives this year, starting with this:
Inverse Perspective
If you’ve taken a drawing class, you might have learned to draw with 1 point, 2 point, and 3 point linear perspective. With this perspective method, objects that are farther away are drawn smaller, and perpendicular lines recede to common vanishing points in the distance. In inverse perspective, objects that are farther away are drawn larger.
If you’ve become accustomed to Western or Renaissance style linear perspective, you might think inverse (or “reverse” or “divergent”) perspective looks naive and awkward, but about 50% of adults who haven’t learned Western perspective drawing, when told to draw a box, draw it using inverse perspective.
Inverse perspective is commonly seen in Byzantine and Russian Orthodox icons, Chinese and Japanese art, and sometimes in children’s drawings. In religious artworks, one reason behind drawing objects that are farther away larger in size is that they are growing closer in relationship to god. In contrast, the linear perspective method that started in the Renaissance put primary importance on the point of view of each individual, and on science and logic.
If a person was to stand still without moving and only look within a small area in front of them, Renaissance perspective might be similar to what we see, but as our bodies are built to move around and our minds are built to think about things from varying viewpoints, the argument could be made that showing multiple perspectives is inherently the more natural way to draw.
Artistically, inverse perspective allows us to convey the tops and sides of objects along with the front for multi-dimensional and narrative gain. Basically, unless you’re using your drawing as a blueprint for building, inverse perspective allows you to describe more of an object. Cubism also took advantage of this idea, and showed objects from various points of view.
There are other methods for linear perspective, such as isometric, axonometric or orthographic, oblique or parallel, and convergent perspective. All of them have different applications, are interesting, and are visually useful to communicate objects in space. With all the different ways to draw things, I wonder how Renaissance perspective became the only one taught in most art classes?
Day 21: Inverse Perspective #30SAL Challenge
Today’s Challenge: Create something using inverse perspective, in which the objects get bigger as they get farther away. #inverseperspective #30sal
Share your drawing on Instagram with these tags: #30sal, #inverseperspective
Or post to this Padlet.
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Feet in blanket, drypoint and embossed chine-collé on 14×11″ Rives gray BFK. (The color is a little dark and dull in this photo, because the paper was still wet) An accidental print resulted in some body-less feet at the bottom of the page, and Nikki had a brilliant idea to add chine-collé to the empty …
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I posted recently about how originality is not really what we’re built for. You can read that post here. After saying how natural copying is, I thought I should follow up with some conversations about copyright issues. Typically these conversations go straight to talking about the legal system. I personally find the artistic, personal, and moral …
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[image_with_animation image_url=”9927″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Chris Harvey’s notan study in preparation for his painting 6th Floor Vancouver Library Popularized in Sir Arthur Wesley Dow‘s book on Composition (1899), Notan is a Japanese design concept based on simplified light and dark shapes. The idea is that composition is based on value, and by waiting to …
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