A Rant with Perspective
Part 2.
And now teaching again after a five year break, has been thoroughly enjoyable I have felt relaxed and comfortable. That is until last week when a sense of weakness caused me to go completely against my, usually sound teaching instincts. I decided that my keen students after several mutually enjoyable lessons (doing it my way) needed a proper perspective lesson.
The first dodgy sign was over preparation, I have always been passionate about teaching and thoroughly enjoy preparing, especially, reworking and updating familiar subjects. And to begin with as I revisited the theory of expressing 3 dimensional things 2 dimensionally, I was pleasantly surprised, a distinct feeling that I had moved on and could easily assimilate a projected conceptual construction into the lesson but as the time drew nearer, I felt anxious.
The lesson began very positively, me brandishing great visual aids as I showed and demonstrated vanishing points, one, two and even three point perspectives, all in easily digestible bite-size pieces. The students were keen and the first exercise was a two dimensional hand-out which they duly and correctly thought through and placed all the construction lines in the right places, it was thrilling…
And then we looked at real boxes and again things began well, it was all there in my head…until…getting carried away I stacked three boxes all at different angles to each other and tried to begin construction from a fixed view point. It was horrendously complicated and I suspect even Leonardo would have had trouble. I struggled on and staring hard at my little boxes as all logic dribbled away and I could made no sense of it whatsoever. I felt like Miranda when she turns intimately to camera and says, “I have absolutely no idea where I am going with this…” except that it wasn’t funny. My students were embarrassed, fidgety and lost. Eventually I pulled on the last rags of dignity and somehow managed to draw the bloody boxes and then impose the construction lines afterwards, which at least proved the theory.
And that seems to be the point, in my “Eureka” moment I understood that this mental construction that we know works, is nevertheless a separate thing, similar to comparative measuring where you shut one eye, hold out your pencil and take a measurement and then on your paper you make another parallel, relative measurement, the first measurement is a different scale and non-transferable (**) it is its own separate thing. And so it is with the rules of perspective if you let them into your head while you are drawing or take them too seriously, they will block out what is actually there and get in the way of your precious visual curiosity, exploration and final understanding.
If I have learnt anything from this salutary experience it is to trust my instinct that says perspective can help you understand your position in relation to an object.
It is just a point of view.
No more “true” than photography or holograms. So I am putting it in its place at the very far reaches of my brain and will begin each new drawing with a humble nothingness, prepared to discover something I don’t yet know.
** Except for sight-size.
