Perspective

Have you ever felt as though you could walk right into a beautiful painting? The artist is a magician transforming a blank (two dimensional) sheet of paper into a three dimensional world.

1884 Olive Trees by Claude Monet

But it isn’t a magic trick. It’s a skill that can be learned by all. Artmania’s instructors have begun teaching the techniques for creating a believable landscape with the illusion of depth; we’re studying perspective.

What is Perspective? When applied to art, perspective is portraying the relationship of objects from a certain vantage point so that their relative height, width and position to one another portray depth. How is this done?

It starts with layering and overlapping making sure there is a notable contrast between the two overlapping objects (in our case, the trees).

Trees of similar sizes are drawn differently as the distance between the tree and the viewer increases; that is, trees in the distance are drawn smaller then those in the foreground.

The technique sounds simple, but perspective is a difficult concept for the children to grasp. They see each tree as an isolated object; we’ll show them how the trees relate to one another. But achieving realism is a slow process of trial and error. We’ll allow plenty of time to practice, praising the strategies the children use effectively and encouraging the children to look with new eyes at the beauty around them.

Written by Domenica Mastromatteo