Wonky Houses
By Paul Dion


Have you ever looked at a painting and thought; “What a great painting but something is not quite right”. Chances are that it has something to do with the perspective.

Perspective is a complicated subject and many artists rush at a drawing or painting without giving serious thought to perspective.

To explain perspective the example of standing in the centre of a straight railway track, looking to the horizon and seeing the tracks converge to a single vanishing point on the horizon is often given.

Did you know for example that the horizon is always given as the height of the viewer’s eyes above the ground? So what if you were lying down or standing on a tall ladder or even a mountain or for that matter suspended 1000 metres above the ground in a hot air balloon? Well, simply put; the horizon should appear progressively higher in your picture with each of these examples. Put another way; the higher you are, the more land (or sea) and less sky you’ll see.

Back to the rail track and a situation where you’re facing north and the rail track is heading north- east. The tracks are parallel to each other but out of the corner of your eye you can tell they appear to converge towards some other vanishing point on a wider horizon just out of sight. 

Now imagine sitting atop a 100metre pole and looking North towards the horizon. Imagine also the rail tracks rising vertically from a point on the ground 20 metres in front of you and heading straight for heaven. Do they appear to converge at some point in the sky just out of sight?  The answer is; “yes but only from a

 


point 100metres from the ground because your eyes are also 100metres above the ground”. And what of the rail tracks below that 100metre point? They too would appear to converge at some other point deep beneath the earth and definitely out of sight!

It’s all so terribly complicated and any artist worth his or her salt should make a point of studying and understanding perspective so their work will never have that “not quite right look”.

Having said this it should also be mentioned that some notable artists deliberately paint “Wonky Houses” but make no mistake, they understand proper perspective and know exactly to what degree the perspective can be distorted to create their desired effect. 
    
Vincent Van Gogh manipulates perspective in his painting “The Church at Auvers” to create a mind staggering image of a little church buckling under the weight of the sky.       


The Church at Auvers
by Vincent Van Gogh


 


© Paul Dion 2006.