You don't need one. Most of the time the people who are interested in art do just fine by themselves. Art teachers can sometimes be useful for critique and help but when it comes to hardball questions they are no better than the student. I still remember asking my art teacher how to make a perfect cube in 1 point perspective he had no answer. However if this were the Renaissance I could have asked Euclid or Da Vinci and I would have been told the 3D perspective point (x,y,z) transforms into the point (x/z,y/z).

 

Art can be a mixture of concrete concepts and expression but concrete concepts seem to get no attention. Organic free forms are fine but they get far more attention than anything else. Art has a duality of concrete concepts and interpretive concepts. That said art teachers are not my target, compartmentalizing art and other subjects is. There are people who wish to create completely organic and free form art, there are draftsmen who create purely mathematical art and then there are people who like to merge the two. As far as I'm concerned many people never get the chance to explore concrete drawings and if they do they are locked into drafting classes. The Men of the Renaissance have been showing higher concepts in their art and it goes largely ignored and people still ask how to construct perfect shapes in a forced view. Too many people wish to separate art from other areas of study and this can't be done without rejecting underlying principals in science and mathematics. Many people are content to just guess and tinker until something looks right, others wish to know why and how a figure is drawn.

 

 

Other areas of study merge seamlessly with art.

 

Examples

We need Biology pictures or specimens to understand anatomy.

We need Euclidean math to draw accurate forms.

We need History to reconstruct scenes and from the past.

We need English to communicate written symbols and signatures

 

I'm just tired of people teaching art as if it is created in a void. The masters of the Renaissance were students of many areas and made some crossovers in their areas of study. My school system here offers little to the non impressionistic artist. There is no outlet for people who with to draw with accuracy, people who are not content to estimate a picture together. I was just wondering how many art teachers teach organic free form art as well as mixing in some other more concrete principals. What is there for the person who wants an effect and would like to produce it as it would appear naturally? They are just given hazy guesses and knowledge. Art can be abstract and organic but it can also be a calculated expression drawing from all areas of knowledge or any combination of both. Art should be taught as something that can encompass all areas of study or none at all. Don't ask a complicated concrete question unless you are ready for some study. Sometimes I think people compartmentalize their studies into subjects so they can ignore others. If you are poor in a subject the worst thing you can do is just reject or label it as stupid. You would be wise to find a connection to your current expertise and work on that bond until the subject becomes more comfortable.

 

Da Vinci shows that art and math mesh well.

 

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~gunderso/pages/da_vinci_models/da_vinci_drawings.htm - http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~gunderso/pages/da_vinci_models/da_vinci_drawings.htm

 

Do you need to study this? No perhaps not but there is nothing wrong with understanding that some artists like accurate representation. There is still art in this. It is not just cold calculations, even this art is not exact, the lighting could have been taken to the exact level. It could be done using surface vectors and light parameters. His work may be built using concrete formulae but still it is artistic in choice and construction.

 

The rejection of other studies in art is what upsets me. It's not just enough to simply say "I don't know" it turns into "well art is only about expression" the other subjects are more precise and seem to get rejected when coupled with art. Anything complex like 4-6 point perspectives (which relatively aren't) are rejected or ignored. My art teacher became frustrated with me personally because I used rulers and other tools to draw and it was seen as less expressive. This is a single example but the attitude is not just limited to my art. That said, I don't reject organic forms I just see that some people do them and they have some value. I think many teachers (not all of them) don't explore their field they just get their degree and stop.

 

Some wonderful concepts come from mixing areas of study many people are just too overwhelmed to get help. In all fairness these teachers may not know about higher concepts but where is the passion for higher learning? Why does learning need to stop after a Masters Degree? If somebody offers to teach you something embrace the chance there is such a lethargic response to learning because people don't see and can't see the larger implications of the newly acquired techniques. The whole theory of left or right brained people is detrimental to the learning process. It sounds like a childish cliché but people need to try and attempt to learn before they give up or even fail to start.

 

This is a more mathematical approach to plotting single point perspective, be warned that it has some programming related information in it but the concepts transcend programming.

 

To sum it up

Say you wish to plot (x,y,z) in a sheet of paper

 

You simply take the 3D point (x,y,z)

 

the new x value for the projection is newx= X/Z

the new y value for the projection is newy=Y/Z

 

This simple formula lets you play with a 2D single vanishing points. Some bad results can occur if you use a negative Z value there is a fix but I don't know the proper technique at the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

Some of it still blows my mind. Break out those handy cosine and sine functions kiddies! The following tutorial is best for people with some programming ability.

 

http://rel.betterwebber.com/index.php?action=contents&item=Tutorials - http://rel.betterwebber.com/index.php?action=contents&item=Tutorials

 

This looks promising as well. Again the more complex the perspective, the less information is available it appears...

http://www.termespheres.com/perspective.html - http://www.termespheres.com/perspective.html

 

 

Infact I have in the past let me see if I can dig some of my old and ignored rotation tutorials up.

 

http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3222&KW=the - http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3222&KW=the

 

Basically cosine and sine are used to find distances given an angle along the x and y Axis respectively. They allow you to define points along a circle quite easily. I will do another tutorial if necessary.

 

And if you are interested this is a really old tutorial on finding the color inbetween two other colors.

 

http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3533&KW=the - http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3533&KW=the

 

I am going to probably make a .pdf with a better learning curve. For people interested in getting a little math in their art. It is my responsability to spread what I have learned so others can surpass me.

I knew there was no way that this was the only point of perspective, so I went online and found that there were at least three points, but I never knew you could have even more than that, though I had thought of the possibility of trying it out. Thanks for bringing up this issue.

 

Semi random juxtaposition of words and phrases is best left to the professionals.

 

I should get started on that .pdf file I've been meaning to write on incorporating formulae into art. Perhaps a program would be easier.

 

PS. lol leel,  2point in college XD