Student Show, Perspective Part I

Student Show a Grand Success!

The first "Drawing from the Heart" student show was a huge success. Over 50 people attended the reception on Sunday, November 8th held at the Blue Moon Coffee shop in Lake Oswego. We will have an encore reception on December 6th with fresh holiday gift items from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Please join us.

Perspective, Part I

For the next few months, I will be covering perspective. Let’s start with the most confusing concept: horizon line.

So many of us have problems with perspective. For years, I had the hardest time understanding it, and I think my main problem was the idea of the horizon line (HL). No matter how many books I read, how many people I talked with, it just was one big puzzle.

I think my confusion was based on the traditional concept of the horizon. As all of us, I was taught that the horizon was where the sky met the ground. But that's NOT necessarily the horizon line in art. So for now, please try to forget that whole idea.

Instead, your horizon line is YOUR eye level. As an example, I’d like you to take your hand in a horizontal fashion up to your eyes. Then move it forward—what do you see? That’s your eye level—your horizon line. Now stand up and do the same thing. The horizon line has just moved up. Sit down on the floor and do the same. The horizon line has moved down. What you are doing is seeing different horizontal lines or your eye level as you move up and down.

You can do the same exercise with your camera. Place your camera up to your eye and change your different eye levels. When a photographer takes a picture through her viewfinder, she is looking at the landscape at her eye level or the horizon line. I hope this helps you to understand this complicated, but in fact, fairly easy principle.

Next month, we’ll cover vanishing points and lines.