From a distance.

The tide of illness ebbs and flows. One moment the sky falls on your head - a mugginess descends on your thoughts so that listening to others is a chore and constructing a sentence  needs a bulldozer; then there is a cloud break and thoughts bask down on the barren mind. This post is not going to be about illness, but it may help to explain the variations in quality.

I'm illustrating the words of someone else at the moment, and it's fun because I get to look from the outside in. I've enjoyed the character design and the creation of the landscape, but what I'm loving most is the potential of perspective. Playing with distance and the viewer's point of view can make even the simplistic scene more dynamic and interesting. Of course it can also make it a bitch to draw! This is not just about identifying the vanishing point, but about how placing the viewer just off centre can give the still image a sense of movement and dynamism - an almost filmic quality, which I love to see as it makes the page jump out at you. 

The power of perspective was brought home to me in Rome in the church of Saint Ignatious of Loyola. This is a church built for the Jesuit order - a fairly... fundamental branch of the Catholic Church. Now any self respecting religious order in Rome needs a building to match their ambition, but the Jesuits are big on abstinence and live austere lives and all that - plus they lacked the cash for a huge basilica, so what did they do?

Well the roof of the church is flat, but as you look up you see the heavens spiraling away to the figures of God with Christ by his side at the apex. It's pretty dramatic, and frightening! You are completely overwhelmed by the power and majesty of heaven and feel just a little bit terrified. Oh, and FYI, this is God who smiteth and drowneth and Burneth, not a benevolent old grandad distantly realated to Santa Claus.

Even knowing about it beforehand I couldn't see the flatness of the ceiling when I looked up, and I think I stood there for about five minutes - until a small child walked into my open mouth. I have problems with the Jesuits - historically, philosophically and you know there's the whole does God exist thing, but as theatre and spectacle and making the most of your money goes, you've got to give 'em credit.

Anyway it brought home to me how powerful, and how much fun perspective can be. Though I guess it does all depend on your point of view.