Sunday 13 January 2013

Linear perspective in drawing -- nothing useful at the moment

I'm in the middle of writing a guide to linear perspective, well I say middle but I keep restructuring and rewriting, so I'm probably only really 10% done. None the less I've got a fair bit of wordage out already and I though I'd visit the Wikipeadia page on the subject and it was not a huge surprise to see the same errors I'd seen repeated so often in other sources. Part of the problem I suppose is properly defining what you mean by perspective, in the context of drawing and painting. Most of us realize that, perspective is a literal synonym for view or vista that's commonly used to label the art of depicting distance or regression in graphical form: so there's obvious scope for confusion already. That's probably why the term linear is usually prefixed in this context. Unfortunately that's only a partial resolution, because the technique of linear perspective i.e: the rendering of a  drawing with apparent realistic regression in dimension in relation to distance through the use of a geometric technique is very specific. However it's not the only method of drawing realistic perspective, see what I mean, confusing or what?

I suppose the only people interested in linear perspective now are artists, the draftsmen who used to produce so many drawing for architects and the technical illustrators have all been replaced by cgi, so it makes sense to target a guide at artists. One problem that arises from this for someone writing a guide is, definition of terms, you can't write a technical guide without lapsing into jargon really, it just becomes unreadable without it. That's one of the problems I'm having, I've noticed that the level awareness of concepts like: carteasian co-ordinates, planes and vectors has -- er, diminished in prospective artists. So I really need to define them but should I do it, inline, which looks really messy and can be teadious and interpreted as patronizing by those familiar with such, or should I place them in an appendix. Dunno, I'll have to think on that, one thing I have made my mind up about though is the necessity of brevity on the subject. The books I read as a youngster, the same ones with the mistakes in, were all quite wordy and hard to follow, replete with endless examples of, one point, two point, three point perspectives as they were termed. Artificially so, as I found once my comprehension of the subject increased.

One thing you might be pleased to hear though, is that the subject is a whole lot simpler than you might suspect, once you've cleared you head of misconceptions and have clear idea of the technique. Oh well I suppose I'd better get on with it then.






4 comments:

  1. I'll want to read that guide. When it comes to perspective, just like Jack Kirby, I fake it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It shouldn't too long down the road, not sure if I can pay much attention to it this week though. I'm a big Kirby fan, linear perspective should be treated as an aid to composition and not a straight jacket by artists I think, Kirby was a master of composition amongst his many talents.

      Delete
  2. Looks interesting - will you be publishing it in book form or posting online? I wanted to say thank you as well for the Xmas and New Year wishes last month - hope you also had a good one. I will be away for a bit so I'll have to catch up with your progress when I get back.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll be putting the guide up here or a version of it, maybe a pdf version for download too, I think it'll be too concise (hopefully - it's getting a bit wordy at the mo.) to be a sale-able proposition for a real book. Anyway I hope you're not away for too long, good luck in the meantime.

      Delete