Because one of my passions is art, I constantly relate the things I learn in this class to drawing concepts. At first I was surprised that there was so many similarities and overlaps but the more I thought about it the more sense it made: this class is, essentially, all about seeing. Art is (generally) about looking. In my last blog post I wrote about geons and how they relate to art but in this one I’m interested in the concept of depth. We have pictoral depth cues, which is when 3-D worlds are projected onto 2-D surfaces. How do artists create depth in art? By mimicking the way the eye perceives depth. Occlusion is one of the easiest ways to create depth when drawing or painting. Because the eye automatically perceives the occluded object to be further away or behind, it’s a simple way to create the illusion of depth. A lot of the things artists do in creating depth are less about specific artistic techniques and more about automatic reactions: we don’t consciously think about the fact that smaller objects look farther away or occluded objects look more distant. But as I draw I know that these are essential things to do if I want the picture to make sense spatially.

One of the most important, basic elements of trying to artisitically create the illusion of depth is linear perspective. One of the first things an artist should do when they begin a piece is find their vanishing point. Once those parallel lines are on the paper, it’s a matter of making sure everything you draw follows those lines. While drawing, the diminishing lines guide me in terms of how big or small whatever I draw should be. We learned about anamorphosis, which is purposefully distorting something so it only makes visual sense when viewed at a certain angle. This is something that a lot of artists do and I’ve used this technique a few times myself. But it’s very difficult because before you try to distort depth you have to already know how to create it normally.