Drawing and Painting with Perspective – Lesson 4 – Three-point perspective and atmospheric effects

Application of linear perspective to references and problems involving three-point perspective.Drawing and painting with warm and cool and creating atmospheric effects.

Three-point perspective

Here’s where we complete our linear perspective journey. As you might imagine, three-point perspective extends the idea of receding space in the third and final dimension (setting aside philosophical and metaphysical arguments on the nature of space). In many cases, two-point perspective works well and the walls of buildings, for example are vertical. Three-point is intriguing, because in a sense, it’s the purest linear perspective – with all directions receding from the viewer’s eye. There are also practical uses for looking up at tall buildings or with wonderful bird’s eye views and looking down on your world!

…….as we will find in this video explanation (with apologies for some wobbly video quality in a couple of places):

Examples

To construct this tumbling cube, I used three vanishing points at the edges of the paper. In this case, none of the vanishing points are on the horizon (wherever it may be) because the orientation is not defined (as it would be for buildings, etc).

A cube in three-point perspective

Conversely for this bird’s eye view of a barn, I used two vanishing points at the top of my page, left and right, defining a high horizon and a third vanishing point deep below my picture space.

A birds-eye view

Here’s a good step-by-step primer website: https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/technical-drawing-for-beginners-three-point-perspective–vector-23680

Exercise

  1. Take the two-point perspective drawing of the desk from Lesson 2 (your re-drawn version in proper two-point perspective, not the original reference) and now apply three-point perspective with a third vanishing point below the picture space.
  2. Alternatively, take your drawing of a street scene and add in a skyscraper behind the original buildings, with a vanishing point above the picture space.
  3. Optionally, develop a drawing or painting containing three-point perspective. By all means send me the your initial layout for review.

Atmospheric perspective

The effects of atmosphere invariably enhances the illusion of perspective. With distance, colours fade because of what might be referred to as and “atmospheric veil”: This is the effect of moisture, pollution, dust, pollen – you name it, it’s all between you and the subject. The further away, the more pronounced the effect. The two related effects are:

  1. Reducing  the degree of colour will fade out a subject, making it look like it is lost in the mist and hence, further away. Lack of colour, fading to a blue-grey gives the impression of distance!
  2. A second effect of atmosphere is that the veil “greying out” the forms has the effect of losing contrast between lights and darks.

These principles can be applied to any subject to add an impression of perspective, with greens getting less intense, and lighter the further away – with the sky lighter and greying into the distance as well.

Painting in  3 zones

One great approach, is to think of the painting in terms of three segments and then tackle each with a view to creating contrast between foreground, mid-ground and background.

Painting in three zones

 

…split up that greenery!

Different artists may split up the picture space differently and it’s your call as to how you divide things up.  In the above example, my main objective was to split the very similar greens into different zones to prevent them all merging together into one big lump of greenish-ness. 

The key then is to tackle each with a view to creating contrast between the segments. Using atmospheric perspective to set a degree of chromatic intensity for each zone will create a natural perspective. Different brushwork, values and colours could also be used to split up the scene. This will help define focus too.

Example

In this nice example by Sheila Bell, we see the principle clearly, chroma and colour the foreground, some definition with less colour for the island and the far shore misty and greyed out. The sky too, greys out towards the horizon.

Sheila Bell, at Bate Island, Oil on watercolour paper, 16 April 2019.

Exercises

  1. Draw or paint an actual or imaginary beach scene, the blue sky greying at the horizon and the beach becoming less yellow at the waterline. The water itself may not lend to atmospheric perspective because of waves and reflections.
  2. Take a photo reference and split it into three distance zones, then develop it as a colour drawing or painting, making choices to emphasize the differences between zones. Pay a little attention to ensuring that the three areas do not look like “cardboard cut-outs” of course – however not much!