Keeping perspective in perspective

What is perspective?

In simple terms, perspective provides various ways for an artist to create the illusion of depth on an otherwise one dimensional surface.

Aerial perspective, a term first coined by Leonardo da Vinci describes the act of recession. Colour fades and contrast weakens the further away the object. It's nothing we didn't already know, but sometimes we need to be reminded.

A camp fire at its height will appear red, yellow or orange, but most of all it will appear warm. As the fire dies the colours fade and eventually all that remains is grey or white ash. Basically no colour at all. Now imagine sitting in front of that fire. It will feel hot - let's face it, the hotter it is the closer it will feel. Stay in the same place and when the fire has died and cooled and it will seem much further away.

Let's translate this into art . . .
Cool is further away - we've just proved that. So objects in the distance will be cool and not warm. Paint distant hills blue and they will recede. Add warmth and they will advance.

Why does this happen? The answer can be as scientific and complicated as you like. But it doesn't need to be. In order to paint recession all we need to remember is that atmosphere scatters light and gives distant objects a blue or pale hue. All colours appear washed out. Distance also blurs and contrast diminishes.

Let's put some of this theory into practice.

In this first image the hills are blue. They appear very distant, an effect also heightened by the lack of any strength in the tone. There is also no defining feature in the hills to confuse the mind.

Changing the hills from blue to green brings them forward. Because the green of the hills is cooler than the brown of the foreground they still appear distant. Incidentally, the green colour of the trees is the same in all of these images.

Darkening the immediate foreground pushes them back further. This happens because the new colour is the warmest and darkest part of the image.

Adding a dark red shape pushes them back further still.

Now replace the green and bring back those blue hills. This coupled with the red rock gives the deepest impression of depth in all four images. How long would it take to walk that far?

Darker colours appear closer, no matter what their colour. In this instance the red rock appears to be no closer than the blue.




Aerial perspective isn't rocket science, but as with most aspects of art it needs to planned before putting the colour down.

Do we need to consider anything else to get the perspective right? There's plenty, but vanishing points, orthogonal lines and other such scary principles as one-point, two-point, and three-point perspective are another subject for another post. For now, let's discuss overlapping perspective.

 The sign, even though it is the lightest object, appears to be in front of the rock, which in front of the trees, which are in front of the hills. This is self evident and appears that way because they all overlap, starting with the sign.

This image takes us out of the comfort zone though. Because the sign sits higher up than the rock we know that the sign must be further away. The problem is that the dark tone of the sign brings it forward. This makes it hard to accept that it the sign is further away and to be honest, the sign actually seems to be floating in the air. You would have to work very hard to bring the sign back down to earth and keep its distance behind the plane of the rock.

This is a bit better, but only just. We are saved by overlapping perspective. The sign is clearly not in front of the rock. However, the dark tone of the sign now makes it look as though it has been driven into the rock rather than sitting behind it.

How does this apparent faux pas translate into actual painting? One easy mistake to make when painting is to place a dab of the darker colour you are currently using for a foreground part of the painting into the background. Is it laziness, a sudden moment of inspiration or a lack of intelligence? I doubt that it's any of those. It's just that momentary lack of thought that we all have on occasion.

You probably won't even notice you've made a mistake until you step back and realise that, like the image left, you given more prominence to a middle distance object than the darkest part of your foreground. By doing so, you will have lost some of that feeling of depth.

Size perspective is another important rule. When two similar types of object, such as trees, stones or sign posts, are placed beside each other the larger of the two will appear closer. You'll have no such worries if you are painting an elephant and a mouse.

Be aware though, that no matter what the size and colour, the object that starts lower in the painting and is the first to overlap will always appear to be the nearest. Exceptions might be signs hanging by wires (it might help if the sign overlapped the next nearest object). Or a pterodactyl as it swoops down to land on your darkest foreground rock (Again, it would help if it was flying in front of the next nearest object).

What is the lesson to be learned from all this? Plan, plan and plan again. Plan your darkest tone and don't be tempted to go back into the background with too dark a paint. Plan the colour and tone of your most distant objects to fit in with your darkest foreground tone. In other words, don't start too dark in the background. For more information on composition please see the post at What exactly is good composition

If it helps to give the correct perspective then overlap objects. Do this even if your reference source doesn't.

Most of all, play around with size, scale, colour, tone and every other principle that you can utilize to help you produce a good painting before you start. Don't regret not having done it afterwards.