Perspective

I was writing a post saying that perspective didn’t add to the reality illusion.

I’ve changed my mind.

I think perspective can significantly add to the illusion of reality in a painting. This painting is very early in the process and I’ve only got a bare minimum sketch and have started to fill in some areas. I don’t know if the sketch is correct until I’ve started to fill in paint areas. Until I start filling-in I don’t know for sure if I really like it. If I am trying to match the painting with my imagined idea of what it should look like then perspective is certainly part of it. At other times I have used perspective tools like a vanishing point but this painting doesn’t benefit from that. At present the coffee cup is a little too impressionistic for me. I remember doing things like this in painting class years ago and the exercise was to ignore any thought of perspective; or reality for that matter.

I typically do a very rough sketch and then start filling-in areas. When something looks wrong, I fix it and continue to do so until it starts to look right. A little wrong is OK but this is definitely too much. Perhaps the amount of wrongness that I will accept defines some of my style. Wrongness can be for many reasons but rightness only exists in our mind when what is on the painting matches with our internal view of the world.