Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Picture Plane

 

    Driving for long stretches is a chance to contemplate the horizon line.  I watch I-80 narrow as it snakes into the distance, but never to a perfect vanishing point because I am changing direction, and the road is hilly and winding.   The dashed lines between lanes diminish in size at a geometric rate, and they are mostly lost to the sheen of the asphalt. When I draw the highway from memory, it is easy to forget that only two or three of the dashes appear discretely before they blur into one line.  I think about where I am in relationship to the things I am seeing.  The Surrealists are known for placing the horizon line high in the picture plane, therefore contributing to a slightly off-kilter optical effect which suits their investigation of the psyche.  When we watch a movie on a screen, that screen becomes the picture plane, and we are watching through the camera's eyes, and everything is much smaller than it is in real life.  When I first created storyboards, the most difficult adjustment was how small everybody is compared to the rest of the window.  Years of working as a caricature artist has handicapped me in such a way that now I am forever erasing heads to make them smaller.  So I am trying to break many habits, and my New Year’s resolution is to make smaller heads.




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