I’ve wanted to write about “the perspective” for some time now, and I think the time has come for me to mingle with this subject again. I say again because it has been quite a while since I have been teaching drawing with the perspective technique. I will be writing a series of posts, or should I say tutorials, about using this technique for your work. I’ll be explaining it thoroughly but with clear and easy instructions so you can easily adapt perspective drawing to your work. I know it seems difficult, but do not fear you don’t have to get that technical to use this technique right. 

We will see to the perspective drawing technique later on. For now lets see where perspective comes from.

The artist’s intention has always been to convey his thoughts, ideas or creativity through his work. Sometimes the intention is to depict an important historical scene, so that it is documented for later generations. And sometimes the intention in the artwork is to be educational as well as figurative.  Nonetheless the artist always wants to be understood. To be understood the artist uses the most suitable techniques at hand.

Cave paintings in Lascaux, France, circa 14,000 BC

If you observe paintings according to their drawing style you can easily see that the paintings before the discovery of the perspective technique are much different than the paintings produced after. The artist developed his technique through the ages to display his art more successfully and to be understood better.

The paintings or drawings pre-perspective are generally more 2-dimensional lacking the depiction of depth. For example if you observe cave drawings, although they are rich with colour, they are more figurative than realistic as depictions. Sometimes we see some use of shadow as in the cave paintings circa. 14,000 B.C., found in Lascaux, France. The horse’s belly as we see in the picture above has been painted in a darker tone to give us a sense of depth. However, since the drawing technique is flat, (in flat I mean near orthographic as in plan view or side view) the images only give us a symbolic depiction, not a visual depiction that we are used to in our time, such as in photography. 

A wall painting from the tomb of an ancient Egyptian nobleman named Nebamun. The tomb was built circa. 1400 B.C. and is near Thebes.

When we observe  Ancient Egyptian art we see a kind of different distorted technique used by the artist. This form of depiction is commonly found in the artworks of this era, and it is very interesting. What makes Ancient Egyptian art interestingly different is that we see different poses in one figure, as in the painting found on the walls on the tomb of the artist Nebamon, to the left. The portrayed figure is hunting for fowl, and as he takes action we see his torso and left hand from the front, while he is facing left, his feet are also displayed from side view. Even more interesting is the position of his right hand, we see this hand in a weird angle from the back. Why did the artists of Ancient Egypt display the human body in such fashion? What was the artists’ intent? We don’t know for sure. Did they see or want to see their figures like this? I doubt it. But I do know that their drawings and paintings were not implemented with the perspective technique. They most probably either were not aware of perspective, or they had not developed a technique. Instead, the artists of this period tried to tell us a story about an event, by showing us the figures through different angles at the same time, creating an enrichened painting with a kind of depth we see comic graphics nowadays.

Doric Order, Temple of Zeus, by J. Buhlmann

As significant as Ancient Egyptian art may be, the Egyptian artists were not the only ones who questioned the way we perceive. Later other civilizations continue to study and develop other techniques in the search of more realistic depictions. Moreover, In the Hellenistic period, the Ancient Greek were anxcious to display their architecture with more monumentality than the actual size permitted. So they went even further than depicting realistic scenes and used illusional tricks to give the impression that the building was larger than it actually was.

The Greeks designed their architecture with specific styles such as the Doric, Ionic, Corinthian. The mostly used style of this period was the Doric style, which was thick in proportion; Whereas the Corinthian style developed later on, was the most lean of the three styles. With this thickness of proprtion of the Doric style, the columns especially, were slimmed towards the capital. This gave the illusion of a 3 point perspective, (which I will elaborate later on in my posts), which is the kind of view we see when we look up towards a high building. We notice that buildings get narrower towards the top. Since the columns were slimmer at the top the architecture seemed taller than it actually was. It was an artificial enhancement of the perspective effect.

The Parthenon, Acropolis,..., photo by Grayce Roessler

Entasis

This enhancement trick wasn’t enough for the sake of monumentality. The architects of the hellenistic period also gave a slight bulging curve to the colums profile. Thus we see an additional visual effect that we normally ignore, an optical illusion to correct the fact that we see straight columns as pinched and flat surfaces as curved. We see objects this way similar to the fish eye view, but the curvature in our vision is much more subtle.

The Ancient Greek were certainly aware of the perspective in the Hellenistic period. They were aware of many other things as well, as we learned from the use of entasis in the architecture of the period. They utilized a portion of perspective in monumentalizing architecture, however, they didn’t know how to implement the technique into painting and drawing. Although an important step towards discovering the mystery of perspective was taken, the general problem was not yet solved.
Ofcourse, you must be eager to know why perspective is the most important discovery of the millenium. To learn about the rest of how perspective was integrated into art, wait for my next post. I’ll be explaining it all, soon…

Related Reading:

Basics of Biblical Greek Workbook

Lascaux, Hohle der Eiszeit (German Edition)

Keys to Drawing