 |
|
|
Philadelphia Story II--Spires by Sarah
Yeoman, watercolor painting, 14 x 20. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I don't mean literally shrink it, but if you take a photo of
your painting and reduce it to thumbnail size and it still holds together
compositionally, you've got a good piece on your hands.
|
|
 |
|
|
Very Large Array II by Kisu, oil painting, 18 x 36. |
|
|
|
For this to happen, big shapes matter and so does
perspective. I look at thumbnail size images everyday and if a painting has the
ability to catch my eye when it is that small, I know it is worth a second look
on a larger scale, and usually it either has a strong underlying perspective
drawing grounding the composition or interesting shapes that lead you through
the work.
In our Member Gallery on Artist Daily, stamp-size images are
all we see at first glance. Here are a few paintings from the gallery created
by artists from our community whose works rock on the small scale because they
are spatially strong and employ an interesting use of linear perspective.
Sarah Yeoman's use of perspective in Philadelphia Story II--Spires immediately caught my eye. The fact that the
building isn't front and center allows for an interesting profile of the
buildings to be created on the left. The diagonal lines marking the corners of
the building give the illusion of lightness and soaring heights.
The atmospheric illusion of vast distances is obvious in
Kisu's work, Very Large Array II. The
low horizon line allows the sky to take on a sense of volume that wouldn't
otherwise be as successful.
 |
|
|
Sunset Dreamin' by Frank Weitzman,
oil on canvas, 30 x 40. |
|
|
|
|
|
Sunset
Dreamin' by Frank Weitzman is an otherworldly scene that I find as
preternaturally still as I do beautiful. The artist reverses the traditional
use of atmospheric perspective by using light, not dark, toward the farthest
reaches of the scene. The light pulls the viewer forward into the composition
and the vanishing point in this one-point perspective setup becomes the setting
sun.
Perspective Made
Simple is one of our most popular DVDs in the Artist Daily store because it
is tailored specifically to teach artists how to draw perspective and use it to
create believable and interesting spatial arrangements in their work. If you
want to know that your work holds together no matter where or how it is viewed,
from full-scale to thumbnail size, Perspective
Made Simple may be a good place to start. Enjoy!
