Perspective: the grand illusions

Click on a title below to learn more about perspectives.

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Shadows: to paint them is to understand them

As a painting develops, the artist painting in any medium bases considerations of dimensionality

and apparent reality through the tools of both perspective and management of shadows.

We are born in a world in which shape, depth and relative form are defined for us

as light " pushes away the darkness" the values scales of light and darkness along with

our color perception aids this process. An apple" painted with flat red springs to life when

the shadows added define its form and the fruit appears to spring to life. In the above right painting, we

"walk through the light and shadows " into the distance. Our sense of depth heightens the experience

of three dimensionality. We pass under the warm leaves of the trees feeling the sun pouring in from

the right and traverse to a far line of hills and fields where the receding nature of bluish tones becomes

part of the illusion of distance.