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Don’t Ever Forget About Eye Level!What you look at, in that particular instance, is the eye level of viewing your object and its environment. In other words, it’s the height, distance, and position in which your eyes see the object.The implication of this concept will determine how your perspective in digital painting will come out. Most forget about how objects will look in a particular angle. It is extremely important that everything in your painting corresponds to where you are as the viewer. It is what gives your painting believable depth! To understand this concept, you need to know what impacts it has on perspective. 1. Zero point perspectiveWe’ll start with zero point perspective. Contrary to what the name implies, it does not necessarily mean that there is no perspective. To wrap your head around this concept, imagine our perspective cube. What will it look like when there’s no perspective? It’ll look like a simple square! It’s the same thing with a cylinder in that it becomes just a circle (or a rectangle depending on how you look at it). But perhaps the biggest example is when you look at a mountain range. It seems flat. Why is that? This is not because there isn’t any perspective acting on it, it’s because the mountains are so far away, or in the instance with the square, positioned in a way that the vanishing points seems to run on forever! This is what gives the object its flatness! 2. Its affect on two point perspectiveDepending on how you stage your painting, one point perspective is great for dealing with an ideal environment, where everything is parallel to the horizon, in which the z axis interconnects them all. However, there is always an element of two point perspective in any scene as soon as you shift your eyes to one side. This is where eye level makes its impact. To illustrate, there are three possible positions to think about in one point perspective and two point perspective: above, at, and below eye level. We will use the horizon as a reference point.
Each specific level lets you see the object in a variety of ways. As suggested, above eye level says you see what’s on top of the object, at eye level shows what the object looks right in front of us, and below eye level shows what you can see under the object. (Note: it is when you view an object in perfect one point perspective that the object becomes flat on paper!) 3. The other behaviorThere is a difference between how you view two point perspectives in the three main eye levels.You can experiment yourself by simply doing two point perspective with two vanishing points at eye level. Then, I want you to draw the exact same cube in perspective above and below the horizon and connect them to the two vanishing points. The object will look distorted eventually. Why? You connected the cube correctly to the vanishing points. This is a mistake that most beginners make as they assume all you need to do is connect the same vanishing points! The reason why this is wrong is due to the fact that the vanishing points are not constant! In order to keep the object the same size, the vanishing points must move parallel to the initial vanishing points of the cube!
Just for education purposes, I still had to compressed the vanishing points closer as to fit the example on the screen. As you can see, the cube will look better, in terms of proportions, when the vanishing points move accordingly. You will also notice that the center vertical line gets shorter as the vanishing points increase. Eventually, it will get to a point where all you see is the top of the shape. When you do get to that scenario, you will soon discover you can’t use the same horizon point anymore. It has also shifted along with the vanishing point! It does this to maintain the shape of the object rather than distorting it even further. 4. Expanding your knowledge!The moving vanishing points are an interesting idea that most beginners miss. Regardless, it is important to know this because it reflects what our eyes are capable of seeing. For example, just look all around you. Your field of vision is limited. There are very few instances, if any at all, where you should see both vanishing points in two point perspective in real life with your field of vision. Your picture should reflect that! This is where the digital tools for creating guide lines discussed so far, such as the Photoshop line tool and the Painter perspective grid, will help you with building the proper perspective points that extend beyond the canvas area. Another thing to note is that the perspective I used in this example are usable only if the ground is a perfectly flat plane. However, real life topography has bumps all over! What do you do in that case? Eventually, your understanding of eye level will lead into concepts of tilting perspective, three point perspectives, inclined planes, and the ‘false’ horizons. It’s a lot to learn but will become easier with a little motivation and practice! Return from Eye Level to Digital Art Techniques.
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