Importance of Perspective in Art
I don't know about you, but I sometimes struggle with perspective in my artwork while painting buildings, cityscapes or anything with cubical volume. Even if I KNOW what I am seeing to be true, it may not work on my 2D surface. I draw and redraw with paint, tirelessly adding more paint and then just give up. It pays to sketch the object (several times) first before ever applying paint, but even this can work out on sketch, but seemingly not when applying paint.
This is when we must just forget what we are seeing, Dig into our intuition or imagination and make it work. We can do this with losing an edge, changing a perspective, changing a color note, softening an area or greying an area (and maybe 10 other ways). But I am going to use the latest painting I did as an example.
When out in the field painting what you are seeing and doing it fast it can lend itself to mistakes, and sometimes has to be fixed in the studio. I may repaint this painting with the new ideas I did in photoshop, or maybe even change the composition entirely. What I loved about this grey day painting was this old white house by itself, I made up the laundry outside, as this house was abandoned or used for storage. But I thought the laundry gave it some life, and a pop of color.
Here were my feelings after seeing this again days after painting it outdoors, in very cool weather... burr!
1. It was too harsh
2. perspective of roof and porch needed improving
3. too rough in areas
4. grey down some darker values
SO, I have photoshop, and I put the painting in there, I did some changes (step 1), then really made some changes (step 2), then looked at different compositions of the same painting (Steps 3 and 4) taking what I liked about the painting.
Step 1 Step 2
Step 2 total things fixed
Step 3 Step 4
As you can see, the lighter values added, I think make for a softer painting and still feels like it is a grey day. I strive to be a better painter every time I sit or stand behind my easel. I encourage you to als0 experiment with your works of art, do not be satisfied with one output of information. Sometimes the 2nd and 3rd times are better.
Enjoy!
