Creative Perspective for Artists and Illustrators

introduction

WHAT IS CREATIVE PERSPECTIVE?

The answer will be found in the work of top contemporary illustrators whose work is reproduced and analyzed in this book. As their pictures are studied, it will be seen that they are more dramatic and more convincing because the artists took broad liberties with textbook rules, often violating the academic methods of scientific perspective.

How to violate perspective (profitably) is fully as important for a practicing artist as are the rules of perspective, which are quite simple. When rules are violated and perspective effects are achieved through the artist’s own devices, his methods can be called creative.

This book has been written for the student who, while in no less need for thorough knowledge of academic method, ought also to learn that by using perspective creatively he can bend it to his uses rather than be limited always to strict conformity.

Another factor which makes this book timely is the very great influence upon picturemaking—hence on perspective—of the airplane, the cinema, and modern photographic concepts. They have introduced new ways of looking at our familiar world, ways that have made us radically revise some concepts of perspective appearance.

Then there is modern art which defies tradition and projects revolutionary viewpoints into the art of picturemaking, freeing the artist from slavery to conventions that formerly were considered inviolate. All of these influences have made the older texts obsolete in part.

Although the creative aspects of perspective are emphasized in this book, the academic precepts are demonstrated sufficiently to give the student of freehand perspective what theoretical knowledge he needs to have of conventional practice—having in mind the beginner who first needs step-by-step introduction to this subject.

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Fourteenth century woodcut by an artist who had no knowledge of scientific perspective.

The facts of perspective, to repeat, are quite simple. They can be learned readily by anyone of ordinary intelligence. The only difficulty lies in their effective use by the artist. By effective use I mean something other than their correct application to picturemaking in a photographic sense. Such use may not be effective at all. Effective perspective more often than not is to be had in violation of photographic reality and the so-called rules of mechanical procedure. (Throughout the book the term photographic reality or photographic appearance is used to refer to such a transcript of nature and objects as is recorded by the camera.) Photography comes nearest to being what we see, or think we see, with the physical eye. In reality, no picture—photographic or otherwise—can duplicate what our eyes see. For one thing, the camera picture is recorded on a flat plate or film; the retina of the human eye is concave.

All pictures, we must recognize, are a compromise with what the eye actually sees. The assumption in perspective theory is that the artist’s direction of sight does not change in the making of his picture. As a matter of fact, it is never static; his eye restlessly darts here and there over the entire area of the scene without being conscious of doing so. It has to, because the eye can focus only upon a single point—and a very limited one—at one time.

In spite of this inconsistency, we have been taught to predicate our method upon the erroneous assumption that every picture is in reality the record of what can be seen without shifting the gaze from point to point. We establish what is known as the center of vision, and give the picture plane a fixed relation to it. There are exceptions to this procedure, as we shall see.

Some of the greatest art of past centuries-yes, most of it-has been produced by artists who have been either ignorant of or indifferent to scientific methods of representation. Long before the early Renaissance when modern perspective procedure was first used, painters were employing a sort of perspective that suited their purposes very well indeed. Some moderns might even maintain that truly creative painters were better off without the tyranny of rules which, admittedly, has weakened the work of many painters in periods when slavish adherence to scientific perspective has been regarded as essential to good picturemaking. Although unaware of the rules of perspective as taught today, the old fellows knew enough about appearance to make their pictures sufficiently realistic. The Chinese, the Japanese and all oriental artists throughout the centuries got along very well without perspective rules and gave the world much of its greatest art. But, in recognizing this, we must at the same time remember that before the invention of perspective the painter’s public was used to these strange —to the modern eye—methods of representation. The entire concept of picturemaking was quite unlike that of our present era, which demands the appearance of reality in illustration as people have come to conceive it in terms of photographic appearance. But even the concept of photographic reality has recently changed. Modern photographic practice has accustomed us to the camera distortion of close-ups and odd angle exposures which not so long ago would have violated our sense of reality.

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Abandoned Powerhouse, an oil painting by Julian Levy, collection of A. L. Simmons.

In this picture the artist, being familiar with scientific perspective, violated it for the sake of design.

And modern art—I am speaking of painting now—frowns upon naturalism. The modernist actually flouts scientific perspective, goes out of his way to avoid it. In this philosophy, nature painting is not art at all and the further the artist gets away from it the better. At any rate, perspective as used by the modernist is quite different from that employed by the naturalistic or illustrative painter. The latter uses perspective to give a realistic appearance of distance—of going back into the picture. The modernist distorts scientific perspective in order to flatten out the depth effect into two-dimensional pattern. He tries to keep his painting on the picture plane; that is, on the surface of the canvas.

Conservative painters continue to employ perspective devices that give emphasis to photographic appearance. But the best of these conservatives are by no means slaves to mechanical rules. They take many liberties with perspective that to the layman’s eye may not be obvious.

What I have just been saying applies particularly to the painter. The illustrator’s problem is entirely different; his function, usually, is to depict the facts and events of the familiar world with as much realism as possible. He must make his pictures look natural. Photographic perspective—that is, scientific perspective—is indispensable to his purpose. Yet even the creative illustrator is not a slave to his perspective. Although he has to be thoroughly conversant with theory, in practice he favors design when design is in serious conflict with perspective. And he has adopted, to a considerable extent, the modernist’s intentional distortion. Such distortions have indeed become a vogue in contemporary drawing. A large body of present-day illustration, which might be typified by Richard Erdoes’ drawing, achieves a liveliness and design distinction while it ignores perspective rules. But Erdoes is as thoroughly versed in perspective as anyone could be; what is more, he could not have achieved the beauty of this artless drawing were he not a master of perspective.

The existing conflict between design and perspective in picturemaking may be a new thought to beginners, but the serious art student soon becomes aware of it. More and more he discovers that the demands of design—that is, the arrangement of lines and tones needed for effective composition and for the clear expression of his idea—force him to violate perspective rules; and his picture actually may be more convincing when his lines do not conform to photographic reality.

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Street Scene in Morocco, from Column Magazine, by Richard Erdoes.

Every one who draws or paints, in whatever manner, ought to be completely conversant with the laws of scientific perspective. Unless fortified with this knowledge the artist is ill-equipped either to draw accurately or to take liberties with the facts of appearance. The great majority of artists, and all illustrators—even those who most often seem to do without it—frequently are called upon to put the facts of scientific perspective to meticulous use in their work. Without intimate knowledge of it and great skill in its practice, no one can pose as a professional illustrator.

In all learning processes there is theory and there is practice. Each is dependent upon the other: they should go hand-in-hand. The business of the author and teacher is to present theory; practice is up to the student. In the classroom the instructor can dictate to his students the kind and extent of practice he considers necessary; on the pages of a book he can only advise.

So, I advise the serious student of perspective to spend a great deal of time putting into practice the procedures demonstrated on these pages. He will need a lot more than the reading and understanding of the theory that he will find set forth in this book. He will need practice, and plenty of it. One acquires skill in drawing only by drawing, drawing, drawing and more drawing.

By way of emphasizing the effectiveness of concentrated practice, I am tempted to offer my own learning experience during my first six weeks of art study in The Massachusetts Normal Art School in Boston (now the Massachusetts School of Art).

The first day of school we were ushered into a large studio, in the center of which was a disordered pile of wooden grocery boxes of assorted shapes and sizes. Chairs and drawing tables were arranged in a wide circle around these uninspiring models. We were directed to draw the boxes. That was our only instruction; we were given no perspective theory, no hint of any kind of procedure.

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Advertising drawing by Eric Fraser for the American Rolex Watch Corporation.

We assumed that this exercise was merely a device to keep us occupied during the confusion of the opening day, and we looked forward expectantly to the morrow when something more exciting would be forthcoming, perhaps drawing from a living model. Imagine our dismay to find the situation unchanged except that the boxes had been knocked about a bit. We were told to draw them in this new arrangement. The next day it was the same, and the next. Sometimes each drawing was limited to an hour, sometimes to two hours. A monitor was chosen to rearrange the boxes at stated intervals.

This went on for six weeks without any theory whatsoever! We were told nothing about foreshortening or about convergence of lines; we were merely instructed to draw what we observed. The accuracy of our observation, I should explain, was checked and corrected by the instructor who admonished us to use our eyes more expertly. At the end of six weeks we were finally taught the scientific facts of perspective appearance.

When, years later, I began teaching perspective at Pratt Institute, I remembered this grueling and uninspiring six weeks, and I was critical of the method. I reasoned that it would have been better had we, at the outset, been given some theory that would have warned us what to look for as we drew those rectangular forms day after day.

I soon changed my opinion. I discovered that my own students very readily mastered the theory I was offering them, but still they couldn’t draw. That was because they lacked the very attitude that was forced upon me by that six weeks’ grind which taught me so well how to use my eyes. I came to the conclusion that theory and practice should be mixed in the proportion of 1 part theory to 50 parts practice, and I suggest to the reader that this premise be kept in mind.

Much drawing from objects without dependence upon theory cultivates the habit of three-dimensional thinking. One acquires the feeling of form: the feeling of lines and planes actually receding and not merely fooling the eye by their direction or shape on the paper. The professional artist forgets the surface of his paper—the picture plane —as soon as he begins to draw or paint upon it. When he sets down lines