Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Where is the eye level in this quilt?

I have never thought about perspective so much in my entire life!

I consulted with an artist at a local art alliance that I belong to. This is what she said:

Hi Chris,

I looked at your blog.  The tops of your fence posts are not in correct perspective, so take another look and use your perspective knowledge to rethink them.  The design composition is very good.  I think you are using the fence to sort of break up the large empty black space that stretches from the castle to the foreground, which works.  But if you want to move the fence, think about breaking that area up with subtly different tones of smaller shapes.  I like the fence in its current location.

Nice blog :-)

So it's the top of the posts that could be the problem. That's pretty funny. You might ask why that's so funny. My original sketch/full sized pattern had the tops of the posts drawn differently. My original thought was that we were viewing them from above. Then I looked at plenty of photos of fences and posts, got confused, and changed them. Maybe I should have gone with my first instincts. 


The real issue is to figure out where the eye level is located. That determines how to draw everything else in perspective.

At one point back in December I tried to work out the perspective and vanishing points and eye level. This is what I came up with. If this is correct then the posts would be seen from the top and would be more like my original sketch.  So here's more things to think about. I certainly want to be certain of things before I make any changes to the quilt.

Any thoughts?
Thanks for following  me through all of this. Linking to Nina-Marie.
Chris



2 comments:

  1. There's something I never stopped to consider - eye level. I've always viewed this quilt as if I were standing at the bottom, trekking up a steep hill with the fence top above eye level. Your original sketch definitely has a different eye level and angle to the fence. In some of my quilts where I've sketched out designs ahead of time I can be quite surprised at how different the final quilt is, often without me even noticing the changes as I worked. You once said you were wondering about removing the gates and I now think that might be a good idea. If nothing else, it might make it easier to swing the angle of the fence to get a truer perspective.

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  2. Very interesting problem. I will be following to see how you resolve this.

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