Reddit reviews The Art of Perspective: The Ultimate Guide for Artists in Every Medium

Improving my grasp on perspective has been my goal lately. I've been thinking about getting a book like this The Art of Perspective. But I wanted to ask if you have any recommendations for other books or exercises?

This is a really, really good question and if you ever take an art history class in college, it will be a source of major interest. In a way, I think you're asking how art "evolves," and why it still does today.


The answer is, perspective in art and realistic distance wasn't a fully explored idea in the West in 2D art until the late 1300s. It took so long because until that time, it just hadn't been innovated and cultivated in a way it could be copied and developed enough to spread. The entire concept of realistic life frozen in a painting, as we see it, had to be applied to art and gain a technical perspective. Field of view, distance, light distance in 3D, everything. It started development in the late 1300s by Italian master painters like Brunellishi and Giotto and the methods evolved forwards from their early work. Artists had to invent an entirely new way of designing images against distance, and applying depth. It was technology as much as art. The methods had to spread, refine and take hold by word of mouth, written and visual communication, and popular demand. Artistically, it was like not only giving up MSPaint for Photoshop, but inventing and programming Photoshop as you used it. But people loved it.

So the short introduction answer is this: realistic 2D art is a relatively new invention, and it developed because artists finally had the technical understanding of why the real world looks he way it does, and how to expess it in 2D.

Firstly, let's think of art in it's functional form. Artists usually try to communicate something with their art. Even typography, a true art expressed in a most functional form, is an art. You'll find papers and official documents today favor, say, times new roman over rosewood or comic sans because of the message communicated through typeface. So too in older societies did certain forms of communication and expression gain credibility and trust. This has a huge impact on how messages get prioritized, communicated and carried onwards. Art looked the way it did because it served a purpose and pattern. For new art, you need new ideas and methods to be sustained and spread. That wasn't always reliable in the past. This brings me to education.

Education in the arts varies largely from country to country and time to time, but there was a time when artists didn't have wide exposure to certain ideas and artistic methods which are now universal. An apprentice painter in early 1200s medieval France might not have had any idea about how to communicate perspective or body ratios, even if he had a vague idea of what they meant. More importantly, he probably might not have the right technical language for it, other than the notion it looked better to paint some objects further away and other things closer. Art has always been popular, but making realistic art means following technical rules to apply realistic images. And no one had yet figured out a uniform method to do that.

Very few artists become talented at technical, detailed representations of realistic life without access and exposure to some key artistic methods and ideas such as texture, shading and light, and the effects of perspective. But that communication of ideas and standardization is education, and for a long period of history, education was expensive and often elite. Art methods were re-learned in older cultures simply because there were less chances for widespread artistic communication and streamlined learning to travel to and from one artist to another. Technical theories like frame, drawing the eye, and light needed to be applied in 2D in such a way that it was a reliable tool, a law of expression.

I'll break here for a big example which will answer most of your questions: maybe you've asked yourself why paintings or drawings from the medieval era backwards tend to look a bit "flat" or 2D and very geometric. Or why you'll have seen statues from Ancient Greece which are incredibly realistic in form, yet the same period has mostly similar 2D pictures on their pots with exaggerated persons and items. Why is one more "real" than the other, what was special?


We really don't know why some artistic ideas take hold when they do, and why they develop in certain cultures, but it was important then and part of its success relied on increased access of information from artist to artist as society and he church funded arts, and partly because artists had better informational literacy about art and the world around them as the renaissance and increased arts appreciation and demand increased demand for new art. Other countries developed fantastic art with certain uses of perspective, but Western European art followed certain patterns of realism applied even today. It was monumental in effect. And they learned by doing, apprenticeships, and from other artists, as they went. The impact was better funding in he arts, patrons, and better technology. Those artists saw things differently and grew a new art form.

It was sort of like discovering as a child how to tilt a window towards its corner when you draw. Times a million artists, for the future, as well as yourself. We still love the old ways, of course. But realistic art encouraged new expression and attention to detail never before available, and it was truly a turning point in the history of civilization.

Sources for additional reading:

On the origins of Perspective in art

My Favorite Online Applied Source of Knowledge

Practical book I used in first year of school


Now go create something hilarious! Art can be realistic, or as silly, as you make it. But its good to have as many tools to do it as possible!

ah, still view only. that's alright. couple of pages from my sketch book and i finally got around to posting this thing.

going to work on finishing some pages and sketching out some new ones now.

also, if anyone want any reading material for perspective, check out How To Draw Manga: Sketching Manga-Style Volume 4: All About Perspective, How To Draw Manga Volume 29: Putting Things In Perspective, and [The Art of Perspective] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Perspective-Ultimate-Artists/dp/1581808550). and yes, those how to draw manga book is a god send. I feel like a lot of books get too technical but these book explain concepts pretty simply.

If you do want something more technical, read Perspective! for Comic Book Artists. I liked it but it got confusing and difficult at times, haha.