Art: Optical Perspective

Perspective is a tool artists use to make things look closer or farther away. The five key elements to this are: value, detail, overlapping, position, and size. Using these five main points will not only make your work look better, it will also have some depth.

First up, we have value. Another more common word you would use to describe value, is shading. Value is basically the shading of an object. Things that are closer to you, are going to appear darker. Objects that are farther away on the other hand, will have a much lighter shade to them.

Secondly, we have detail. Detail is some what, similar to value in different ways. The closer the object is, the more detail it should have; while things that are farther away, you might only see a small outline in some cases.

Overlapping is an extremely easy way to add some depth into your art work. Simply just have some objects overlapping. Seeing that something is over lapping tells your viewer that the object in front, is closer than the object behind it.

Another easy one is position. Things that are closer will appear towards the bottom of your work. For instance, looking at two apples placed a foot or so apart. The one closer to you would be lower on a flat surface like paper.

Last but not least is size. By changing the size of objects in your drawings, you can add more depth. Have you ever taken your thumb and pointer finger, and put them up close to your eyes; then looked at someone and acted like you were crushing their head? Well this is a great example to use for size. If you pull your fingers away from your eye, you'll notice that the space between them is pretty small. Well, if you do the same thing with something close to you, the space between your fingers increases. I sometimes use this to judge how big something should look on paper compared to actual size.

If you can remember these five key points, you'll work will really start to look better. You'll have more realistic looking drawings, that contain depth.