Throughout my artistic study and journey. Perspective has always been a subject that I’m not comfortable with. Because it’s almost like math. It feels dead and too binary. And when you are doing it wrong? Someone will call you out. But what do you really need to know about perspective and how does it fit into a watercolor painting? Let’s put things in “perspective” today.
I strongly recommend you check out today’s video because I go a lot more in-depth about this topic
So without going too technical, perspective is simply showing what you see in the 3-dimensional space on a 2-dimensional surface. So that your painting looks natural and believable. The general idea of perspective is having a horizon line, which is also your eye level. That’s the farthest distance from you. Everything you see can be above, below, or right at your eye level. Objects can also be close or far away from you. This is when perspective can help to properly show the distance between an object and your eyes. And we can do this with the help of vanishing points. A vanishing point is a point that the two parallel lines converge into the distance. One thing that’s very important to understand is that vanishing point is actually object-based. Which means that every object you see has different vanishing points.
For example, if you have a cube facing you like so. You have a single vanishing point, and that’s also known as a one-point perspective.
As soon as you rotate it to the side. You now have 2 vanishing points.
And when you have multiple objects that are facing different directions. You will have multiple vanishing points. So in essence, the horizon line is viewer-based, and the vanishing point is object-based.
There are 3 things you ought to know about working with perspective in watercolor:
1. Find simple scenery to work with -
As I just mentioned. Vanishing points are object-based. So if you pick a scenery with objects facing all different directions. You are asking for trouble. Instead of picking a complex scenery like that. Select a scene with a simple perspective. This is why a straight street scenery is typically preferable because all of the buildings are built alongside the road. So they pretty much all share the same vanishing point. This will be much easier to manage and to simplify.
2. Rember your eye level, watch the scale and placement -
One of the most often mistake I see in students’ work is scale and placement. It is very, very important to remember where your eye level is. Because everything is relative to your eye level. For example, if you stand on a street that’s around the same height as everyone else. Most of the figures in the scene will share your eye level. Most sedan cars are about the height of your chest to shoulder. So it should reflect that in your painting. This means no matter how far or how close, you won’t be seeing much top of the car at all. Even if you are painting a scene that has no figure. You can still check the scales of the objects in the scene compares to a person. Everything in the scene is human scale. When you draw a house with doors and windows. Think about how a person fits there.
3. Observe often, so you can eye-ball things more accurately -
While I’m not against anyone doing a very complete technical drawing for a painting. Chances are this is not how you want to draw for painting. Otherwise, you’re going to spend a lot of time and energy on the drawing, you are going to be very tired by the time you get to painting. So what I usually do is draw it more intuitively while keeping perspective in mind. To do that you will need to observe often, study the scenery and draw often, get the perspective into your muscle memory. That being said, I still make some mistakes from time to time when I am being a bit too careless. So I should do more practice as well.
Perspective can feel technical and scary. But as long as you think about where everything is in relation to you, things should make sense. Of course, observation and practice are the keys. So let’s keep practicing together.