Da Vinci's Perspective

Leonardo da Vinci's look into perspective

One of the most famous artists for his keen eye for perspective in his art is Leonardo da Vinci. Being able to to basically create a perfect view. From a young age, his earliest works coming about when he apprenticed under Verrocchio, he created amazing pieces of art.  Leonardo was very intelligent man, a renaissance man with many talents from art to sculpture to science.

His earliest works (at least by the consensus) 


 The Baptism of Christ
 
  file from: http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/leonardo-da-vinci/the-baptism-of-christ 


Annunciation    
 file from: http://www.leonardo-da-vinci-biography.com/annunciation-leonardo-da-vinci.html


due to copyright laws his artwork is now public domain since the allotted time for copyright has passed

His understanding  of the world around him helped him have a better grasp of  placement and key relations between the points in his art is a part of what makes his artwork phenomenal. Beyond the astounding perspective views using his finding and understandings of science helped him create more realistic and modern art. People are still amazed at his precision just as they were back in the late 1400s.

Here are a couple sites for more information about Leonardo:
http://www.biography.com/people/leonardo-da-vinci-40396
         The biography channel did an interesting video of Leonardo da Vinci that you can watch here. It goes on about the The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown that was published but does have good information beside that.
http://www.museoscienza.org/leonardo/
         This site is in Italian but if your browser can translate or you speak Italian this is an interesting site about the Leonardo museum and more information.

Perspective: One and Two Point

Perspective

One of the basics in art that many people have a hard time with is perspective. Mostly from what I know and see people over-think it.

In art, perspective is

a technique of depicting volumes and spatial relationships on a flat surface,

according to dictionary.reference.com.

Basically, put what you see on the piece of paper.

Many get all worked up about that they can't get it to look right, even I'm guilty of this, but relax. You're taking a 3 dimensional world and putting it in a 2 dimensional world, some things are going to get a little wonky. Though perspective is a giant subject so don't expect to just get it overnight either, unless you're some artistic genius. I'll come back to perspective several times in later posts but for now I'll just take a little dip into this giant pool.

I'll start with the basic one point and two point perspectives. These show how the objects will relate to each other based on lines in certain directions to the horizon.

Basic Terms

Horizon: the line across dividing the paper into 2 sections. Think of like the horizon between the sky and the ground.

Center of vision: the imaginary line where the center of your vision (view) is, the center of the drawing.

Vanishing Point: the point at which lines converge or where all the  lines go.

Eye level: the horizontal line where your vision, this is kind of like the horizon line but this doesn't have to be the horizon line

Here are some perspective drawings I've done of two different hallways: