It's a matter of perspective

When I was in art school in college I was filled with great desire and ambition to paint BIG!  By this I mean....BIG CANVAS.  I had no idea what life was ahead of me.  All I knew was that I had this raging passion to create LARGE works of art that completely engulfed your perspective.  That when you stood in front of the art it would surround you completely.  I used to think 'how cool would it be to create art that was on every wall, floor and ceiling of a room when you entered it.'  Like I said; I had no idea of trompe-l'oeil or mural art...all I knew was what I felt in my heart and I just stumbled along with my desire to paint and learn and somehow my career found me.

In 1982 while I was a student at SIU-Carbondale (Southern Illinois University), I was commissioned to paint an illusion of a 5-story high donut factory run by elves.  In truth; the exterior of the building was a two story old wooden house and the owner had 4x8' sheets of wood nailed to the exterior surface so I had something to paint on.

I did a rough layout presentation and then divided the exterior wall space into 5 distinct floors all connected with conveyor belts where the donuts would flow in some sort of Rube-Goldberg configuration as they went from the raw materials to beautiful pastries.  Each floor was wood planked and large wooden beams with wrought iron joists created the 5 story bakery.  Elves of every sort were busy doing all sorts of odd things in the production line.  It was creative fun.
I had an issue with perspective though.  How can I create depth on such a large surface so that the art work would appear to be three dimensional?  Sure, I knew about vanishing points and horizon lines and one and two point perspectives but...this was an immense surface and I was dumbfounded as to how to keep all of the elements in line and perfect point.

I remember working one day with a large 4' ruler...extending my vanishing points out as long as possible trying to keep all of my perspectives in perfect alignment.  I'm not sure when I did this but it just made sense.  I anchored my vanishing point with a push-pin into the wall and from it I had tied a piece of string that went outward the entire length of the wall surface.  From this tool I was able to achieve perfect perspective. I thought I had reinvented the wheel.  I ran to my Professor in Art School...so proud of my new technique.  He told me that artists have been doing this exact same thing for centuries.  But it was the thought process I went through to figure this all out that was the important lesson.

I still use this method and remember that mural I created on the donut shop store 'John Dough's Doughnuts in Carbondale, Illinois in the summer of 1982.  It made the local press several times (Daily Egyptian Press) and I would often work in the warm summer night hours and became conversation to the late night partiers who stumbled back to their dorm rooms after binge drinking.


I've enhanced the technique slightly to adjust for perfect perspective on taller vertical artworks...where a floor has to be aligned correctly and higher up...columns must align, etc.,  You cannot have ONE vanishing point and I have seen way to many professional artists create works today where they have not had the 'light bulb' moment I had in my early years.

Perspective is a tricky technique to master and it is the essential aspect of decent trompe-l'oeil.  It's what separates professionals from amateurs.  I encourage everyone to practice, read as much as you can and paint, paint, paint!
I also remember I got all of the free donuts I wanted.