6. Detail & Pattern
In this sixth and final instalment of his series, Figure Drawing author JAKE SPICER looks at how detail can be used to emphasise a sense of depth in a picture
Iwanted to conclude our examination of the principles of depth by showing you how the manifestation of detail can emphasise an impression of space on the picture plane. Informed by the limitations of our own vision, we expect to see more detail and clarity in the nearby elements of a picture, and less detail and clarity in the distant elements.
By introducing more individual expression to close subjects and allowing distant subjects to recede, first into repeating pattern, then into shapes of unified tone or colour, we can emphasise the impression of depth.
This third principle of illusory depth, alongside diminution and atmospheric perspective, is often overlooked because it seems so very obvious. Using concentrations of detail as a visual cue is as much about your choice of subject and vantage point as it is about the manner in which that subject is rendered.
It is this principle of depth-through-detail which informs the propensity for landscape artists to frame a view with foreground foliage – leaves hanging from boughs above or grasses springing from the ground below. The same principle helps urban sketchers imply space in a crowded street scene, with detailed likeness picked out in nearby faces, giving way first to an anonymous pattern of simplistic heads and then to the amorphous blob of the crowd itself.
Like the effects of atmospheric perspective, the influence of detail on our perception of depth stems from our direct visual experience of the world but it can also be manipulated to exaggerate or underplay that depth, as well as being used to draw the attention of a viewer.
While photographs are often limited to a single point of focus, drawings and paintings are fictions bound by fewer limitations. We can use concentrations of detail to draw the viewer’s eye through a scene, presenting multiple points of focus where required.
The more time we spend drawing a particular part of a subject, the harder we look at it and the more detail we tend to see, while the areas where our hand and eye rest more lightly remain generalised or hastily rendered.
So, detail can simultaneously be an indicator of depth, a device for drawing the attention of a viewer, and an indicator of where the artist chose to dwell.