3 Ways to Create Dimension in Your Work with Debbie Miller
Ep.45 guest, Debbie Miller likes to play with depth in her work. This means in some places she will create a lot of depth while in other places she will flatten her painting down.
In “Coffee Break” she has created a sense of dimension in three ways, and you can take these same ideas for your own work.
First, her coffee cup and saucer follows perspective. You can tell that the vantage point of this painting is looking down and the way ellipses in the cup and saucer both relate accordingly.
Second, her polka dots change size and shapes as they move back in picture space. The circles in the front are larger and more circular than the polka dots in the back.
Third, realistic shadows give a sense of depth and form. The cherries and cup both have form shadows and objects all have cast shadows. This pushes the painting more towards a realistic sense of dimension.
Put it to Practice:
If you are new to creating depth in your work, a great place to start is with shadows.
Even by using your imagination to place a shadow on your three dimensional objects and on the table under your objects, you will begin to create depth.
Better yet, set up objects so you can see how the shadows work in life and follow them the best you can.
If your subject has any sort of pattern in it, you can exaggerate how much it changes foreground to background to create more of a sense of depth.
Remember, you decide how much or how little depth you have in your paintings. Play around with different ways to create depth. Some you’ll find really intuitive and some will take a little more brian work. But all are great tools in designing your 3 dimensional space on a 2 dimensional surface.