How Is Creating Perspective In Art Similar to Perspective In Life?
Perspective is a point of view, and everything we see and hear is interpreted as an amalgamation of perspectives. We can learn a lot about how to widen our perspectives in life from approaches for creating perspective in art. In art, perspective depends on the point of view of the artist and the viewer. Similarly in life, perspective is subjective based on the sender and receiver and can change based on individual beliefs, experience, knowledge, emotions, and awareness. In art, changing the perspective of a drawing can completely change its meaning and impact. And in life, changing our perspective can lead to new insights and opportunities.
Art 101: Creating Perspective
The challenge in art is how to represent a more realistic multi-dimensional world on a flat surface? Artists use a variety of techniques to create an impression of depth, space, and distance. Adding a horizon line to a drawing represents where the sky meets land or water, and its vertical placement frames the eye level of the viewer. Recognizing that objects appear smaller and less clearly defined as we move further away, artists can add one or more vanishing points that the straight lines converge into, giving an illusion of objects receding into the background. By adding two or three vanishing points objects can appear multidimensional.
Light and shadow can be used to convey depth, and also provide a reference to the viewer of where the light sources is originating. An artist’s use of color tones and values to make objects intended to be in the foreground appear brighter and more clear, while keeping objects in the background muted or blurred can mimic what one might see in reality. Last are the application of filters used in art and photography as well as audio, which change the tone or mood of the piece, remove unwanted components, and soften or blur parts or the whole.
Applying Art Perspective Techniques To Life
Perspective in life is a subjective interpretation of the real world into our individual mindset. It’s shaped by beliefs, experiences, values, biases, knowledge, blind spots or lack of knowledge, emotions, and awareness. In art, adding vanishing points, light sources, color and shading nuance creates more dimensionality to transform a flat surface closer to an illusion of reality. Similarly in life, expanding the dimensions and filters that we interpret all things through will create a more comprehensive and representative view of reality. Putting the horizon line or vanishing point in the wrong place will distort how the image is viewed. Similarly having a reference point that is biased in interpreting motives or actions can distort our perspective and meaning interpretation.
Becoming better at seeing the bigger picture, and incorporating an ever widening set of inputs can enable being more open to different viewpoints and angles to more holistically represent real life complexity, similar to how an artist uses different techniques to represent the subject to their viewer. Being mindful of how our emotions, values, knowledge and experiences have an impact on what we see, hear, and how we respond in the present can impact our future experiences, relationships, and perspectives.
A favorite example of the impact of perspective comes from the children’s picture book Zoom (Istvan Banyai, 1995). Through a series of pictures that continually “zoom out”, it conveys how important it is to understand the bigger picture and context before drawing conclusions on what we are seeing. As each page zooms out to the next image, we are reminded that what we thought we saw, was really something different in meaning and implication. This is a great lesson to keep in mind, to continually zoom in an out from where we are at, to see and interpret the full perspective.
Expanding Perspective Dimensionality
Just as in art, there are techniques that can expand our ability to more fully represent the reality we interpret. Below is a model of six practices that can help to grow our perspective dimensionality in moving from a space of being around and more comfortable with reinforcing points of view, to moving into a more mixed view environment, and then widening outward further to seek and incorporate divergent perspectives regularly to enable greater understanding of reality.
Model For Expanding Perspectives
Suggested practices for expanding perspective include:
Curiosity: Continually ask questions and be curious about people, places, and perspectives of others
Alternative Sources: Practice seeing and interpreting from the outside in. Consider the situation or challenge from new vantage points. Change up the horizon line or assumed vanishing point or end game like techniques in art.
Filter Clearing: Being mindful to unclog unconscious filters by explicitly asking “what am I missing or where are the blind spots?” Continually retune what is signal and what is noise in our individual interpretations. Changing what might be considered noise in the Reinforcing Perspective Dimension to embrace as signal can move us outward in the ring of perspective dimensionality.
New Relationships: Taking the opportunity to meet and have conversations with new people with varying experiences, beliefs, points of view, and connections.
New Experiences: Seek out new adventures and experiences, continually expanding the comfort-zone and where we spend time
Constant Learning: Live as a constant learner, reading and considering many different types of content, styles, implications, and subject matter
This is one person’s perspective. What is your point of view?
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