Day 22: Vertical Perspective #30SAL

*Nighttime in a City, Persian manuscript folio attributed to Mir Sayyid ‘Ali, Tabriz, Iran, c. 1540*

Search the internet for perspective, and Western perspective is pretty much all you’ll see. Billions of lessons illustrating the importance of one point, two point, and three point perspective. Lessons state that this is something every artist needs to learn in order to correctly render the three dimensional world on a two dimensional surface. It is not only useful, it is required for all artists, and it is the only method for drawing the world as it really is.

The Virtual Instructor showing Western one point perspective

To the idea that Western Perspective is the only “true” perspective, I say pshaw

It’s not immediately apparent, but while these linear perspective rules can be useful for some drawings, this is not the only form of linear perspective available for educated artists, and there’s an ugly reason you don’t know about other forms.

Western Perspective as we use it today is from the Renaissance, specifically, from Filippo Brunelleschi. In this way of seeing, there is a single point of view (POV), and objects get smaller as they get farther away from the point of view. This method is presented as the only technique for drawing things as they really are. For proof a piece of glass can be used to trace a scene, confirming that objects diminish towards a common vanishing point. As anyone who has taken a perspective class will attest, this way of drawing does not come naturally to us. We must be educated to be able to draw with this method.

This way of drawing was connected with math, science, Christianity, and due to the forces of history, it was connected with colonization. As part of colonizing other cultures, the strategy was to use Western cultural artifacts to bring other cultures around to the Western way of thinking. For hundreds of years this form of drawing has been part of an assumed dominance over other cultures. Artists who do not draw with these methods are labeled as primitive, ignorant to the rules of art. Many forms of drawing were judged according to this perspective, and deemed incorrect. Even in current perspective lessons, it’s said that other cultures do not have any form of consistent or linear perspective at all.

*The Japanese adopted the Chinese style of axonometric perspective*

The truth is that while artists in various cultures are perfectly aware of Western perspective, they recognize it’s failings, and they often choose to use something else. Depending on what they do, where they’re from, and what they want to express in their art, cultures around the globe have their own “true” methods for perspective, and we should know about them. Some examples of non-Western perspective are: parallel, isometric, axonometric, and multiple perspectives.

Yesterday’s post introduced Inverse, or Reverse Perspective. Today’s challenge is about Vertical Perspective.

Vertical Perspective

Most artists naturally draw with a kind of vertical perspective, and most viewers naturally see with it. Without consciously thinking about it, lots of us humans tend to organize a composition with far away objects higher up, and closer objects lower down. This is vertical perspective.

If you’re going to use vertical perspective as your method for showing space, you get to set aside the requirement that objects be increasingly smaller in size as they get farther away. Once size is not dictated by rules of space, you can use size to express different elements of your picture. For example, you can very logically size important things large, and less important things small. Or you can just size things so they look “right” to you. It’s a great way to create! Ready to give it a try?