ABOVE: Detail: ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ (below) – Jan van Eyck – 1434. Is this mirror a clue?

SINGLE POINT PERSPECTIVE AND WHY YOU DON’T NEED IT

The difference between observed drawing or painting and working from a photo reference is that we as humans see a scene or object using both our eyes while a camera captures a photo using one eye, the lens: a single point perspective.

A single point perspective photo shows every detail exactly as and where it is and is in sharp focus everywhere. A drawn or painted image viewed with both eyes is at the discretion and skill of a human looking hither and thither continually changing focus and depth of field – a vastly more difficult endeavour, but I suggest also a vastly more satisfying accomplishment. Interestingly, superb portraits and a 1434 Flemish genre room interior by Jan van Eyck suggest that actually they are a little too perfect. Photographic in fact – but I hear you say photography will not be invented for 200 years … so what is going on?

I suggest that the main purpose of artwork at that time was to accurately record a subject. Ready money and demand to produce being the driving force – not like today as ‘art for art’s sake’.

As a well-paid practicing professional artist of the 1950s, before commercial photography took over completely and killed illustration in the press, commercial artwork was an honourable profession. I believe that most people have a deep desire to make pictures. Young children make pictures without any prompting – picture-making comes naturally to us all – at least up until about age eight or nine. By age 12 or 13 something has often happened, confidence lost perhaps, the hand not able to keep up with the eye, or worse you were destroyed by someone who should have encouraged you.

Children usually draw what they have seen or experienced through their own eyes …. and then go further. If Dad has big kind hands, they give Dad larger than life massive hands that they love, if a beard it will also be likewise exaggerated. They are adding their feeling to the image, adding that undefinable empathetic comment that a photo lacks. I would like to encourage photo copyist painters to take their highly capable painting skill to a more exciting and rewarding stage. Let your graphics also show your personality and creative freedom. Painting is only drawing with a brush – a sketchbook tells me more about an artist than any finished painting. I love Mallard Turners sketches at times more than his wonderful large highly finished works. In his pocket on location a small wad of 5×7 inch papers, a pencil, and a mini watercolour set on his thumb, he drew everything as he saw it. No dogs or cats – but don’t let that stop you. Like Turner and Hockney draw everything – it is your diary of events and interests. Written words and especially ‘art speak’ tell me nothing about the head behind the hand. For me, artists speak in graphics; it’s the wordsmith journalists who write copy, using words.

Having a good eye and hand helps, however the skill for the eye to take in an object, whatever it may be, and then to transfer via the arm, to hand and fingers holding whatever to make truthful marks on a single plain that resembles what the eye views, only comes with practice. Sketch and draw and your painting will improve I promise. My iPad Pro with its magic pencil is another world.

Actually, we use ‘two eyes’ not one. Together they allow us to see in perspective, and this is the difference from a photo. Our vision is constantly changing, we view each specific point of focus at a time, edges are slightly blurred. Never do we view an object or scene in sharp focus throughout. We rove around rapidly focusing on separate parts so that we can appreciate and build up the total picture. Not so with 1/25 of a second photo.

So how is it that early Flemish portraits, all superbly painted, all about the same size, all in high contrast sunlight, so perfect? A vast leap forward suddenly occurred from flat simple images to photo realism, almost overnight. Why? How? One interesting clue is that the pupils in the portraits are constricted, detail very correct, the model having been posed in the strong natural sunlight which also results in wonderful high contrast definition. Details so perfectly painted that we would not expect an artist of that date to note. Handwritten notes survive of extraordinary colour observation that makes one wonder. Why write notes if the painter is working from life?

The small portraits all appear to be more akin to a single point perspective image, not as one draws using two eyes. Is it possible in this medieval age of invention, with quality formed glass, that somehow a projected image was optically traced before painting? Handwritten eye colour notes to later fill in on a tracing? We will never know.

A small convex mirror can give an upside-down image reflection in low light if the subject is in full sunlight while the artist with mirror is in shade – a building recess perhaps to make a tracing – the subject in sunshine outside. One such mirror features prominently in an interior painting with reflected figures, in the painting on pg 30. Is this mirror the latest thing to make an accurate optical projection? Are we being offered a clue? Who can say. We must listen to others who are better informed, which makes artist Hockney so interesting by comparison to an art historian. As a studio boy my 1950s artist mentors always said, ‘If you can do it, you do – if you can’t, you teach.’

David Hockney, a gifted artist who can draw anything the way he pleases, was criticised because he exhibited pencil portraits and even ‘Little Boodge’ in his show. He made a fascinating study to question the use of early optical gadgets – ‘Secret knowledge’ his resulting book (yet to be read by me) – after making Polaroid collages. Unlike non-artist writers he pushed boundaries and his uniquely creative mind recognised that these Flemish studies were all single point perspective – as is a Polaroid photo. He explored the possibility that these early artists used optics and has proved that such drawing aids were developed and used. Artists welcomed technology as we do today, so that they could reduce time and effort by their studio journeymen to meet the demand of their clients. But had to pre-empt their rivals before the mirror tracing secret was generally known. Likewise, chefs often have secret ingredients or cooking methods that they seldom care to share.

Before Hockney, nobody questioned this sudden massive leap from simplified images to truthful, highly detailed drawing. As an artist he noticed perfect technical drawing and symmetry in a hanging chandelier which he attempted to copy himself, featured in in the ‘Arnolfini Portrait’. No small feat to accurately draw. Computer technology only available today confirmed from a photograph of the painting the perfect accuracy of that early Flemish image by rotating it digitally through 360 degrees. An insignificant chandelier so accurately drawn, just part of the furniture, not the subject, painted in 1434 before perspective was understood?

This sudden achievement, a photo realist result 200 years before photography was invented, is intriguing. Should we be surprised? I think not! New ideas, new materials and technology develop all the time, we do the same today. Art itself is ever in change according to the excitement of the age, new ideas, new materials; all lead to new creative possibilities. Hockney was only doing the same, as the Polaroid camera became available.

Are we presently into a new art direction? A new ‘reason’ for art to exist? What will we admire and call art in 50 years’ time – what will be the reason that dictates future artwork?

The remedial therapeutic benefits of ‘the making of art’ are recognised already and rate highly. Ever-increasing numbers of people are making art as a hobby or pastime; that is the ‘doing’ of artwork rather than corporate art, commissions from the printing industry, city, church or society. The making of art as a pastime worldwide has today a real place in modern society, possibly more important than ever before. No longer a need for religious messages used as a record of place or person, or originally as survival magic in a cave ritual, that I enjoy discussing.

Based on sales of art materials I suspect the major preoccupation with art serves the like of yourselves to simply enjoy producing works. The art money industry will always exist but is quite apart, nothing to do with art and everything to do with money. It will continue to exponentially grow supported by a host of writers and art historians that Garth Tapper considered to be ‘two a penny’. However, since film and the digital image, art must become something else – maybe a holographic three-dimensional presentation. However, projections are rather different and awkward as collectors’ items. Can future holographic projections gain in wealth over time?

Hobby painting embraces hundreds of thousands of people, if only on a Wednesday; the purpose of artwork has perhaps changed. My own past career would not be possible in today’s world. Photography and the computer have replaced the use of hand drawn images; illustration consequently faded from the once lucrative profession of the commercial artist. Let’s remember that Leonardo was first ‘a hand for hire’ and therefore commercial.

At your own personal level, with just the cost of a pencil and sheet of paper, making art has massive reward. I also believe that most people can draw well if they really want to. Art is not a heaven-sent skill, we all learn and get better as we do with most everything we attempt – drawing simply must be worked upon, but many can’t be bothered. Perhaps our art is more to do with our enjoying to use and communicate our ideas through graphics rather than words?

Some will say it’s the satisfaction of escaping to be in that wonderful space where the making of a painting is totally absorbing and might be compared to a solo dance of a kind, that fills our whole and very being.

The copyists, that is those who enjoy the skill of replicating a photograph, also get a buzz of a kind, but I personally would like to encourage those of you who fear breaking away to let ‘your inner force’ take you over. You likely have virtuoso skills which will result in more meaningful and ambitious work. I once had a student quite terrified by the idea of not using a photo to copy. We solved it by cutting a postcard sized window in a piece of card, holding it up to view her subject through the window as if looking at a photo. This convinced her brain to believe this was a photo, not a scene through a window – quite soon she was able to throw the card away. The problem was not her lack of skill, it was her confidence to believe she could see for herself.

Six hundred years ago these new highly detailed perspective works were a massive sudden jump to accuracy that had been unseen in art before – the ability to produce a truly representational image quickly and relatively easily. A better accurate traced image made quickly was more profitable with a simple available art drawing aid. With intense competition between artists and atelier studios these professional, very commercial, artists no doubt hid their method as long as they could.

Ingres, in 1812, drew detailed pencil drawings of English ladies in Paris that suggest optical assistance. The pin-hole camera developed serious use as the camera obscura, still in use in 1890 in my village – again seldom talked about. Darguerre, William Fox and others were pioneers of photography. The invention of the ‘digital image’ has been another massive leap which has eclipsed roll film and conventional cameras. We happily embraced low-cost technology available to all to record, even without apparent skill, as never before – but perhaps that has also inadvertently increased the strength of drawing.

How interesting that what was always thought to be ‘observed drawing’ is being proved to be the product of a gadget. Jan van Eyck introduced and birthed what we call today – photo realism. Nothing is new.

A copyist is only a copyist – please think about that and have the confidence to be creative and original. You are worth it. Art is and has always been many things. Gadgets will always be used, but presenting your graphics and ideas through your own two eyes must be more worthy and satisfying for you yourself. Maybe this is why people just love to watch an artist capture a subject using only their eyes, hand and a brush – it’s a wonderful ability that I am sure most of you have.

Remember – sketchbooks are the beginning, but next time, conversely, I must introduce you to my own amazing gadget, my iPad Pro that I use continually to sketch or draw, and to write these thoughts. I can even send fast funnies to editor, Meg, who I caught eating chocolate frogs.