How far away should you be from the painting? How to analyze a picture? The strange action of a magnifying glass

Just as important, the second rule is to keep the shot at the proper distance from the eye; otherwise, the correct perspective is violated.

What should this distance be? To obtain a complete impression, one must consider the picture from the same angle of view from which the lens of the apparatus “saw” the image on the ground glass of the camera, or, which is the same, from which it “saw” the objects being shot (Fig. 58). It follows that the picture should be brought closer to the eye at a distance that is as many times less than the distance of the object from the lens, how many times the image of the object is less natural size. In other words, you need to keep the picture from the eye at a distance that is approximately equal to the focal length of the lens.

Rice. 58. In a photographic camera, angle 1 equal to the angle 2

If we take into account that in most amateur devices the focal length is 12-15 cm, then we realize that we never view such images at the correct distance from the eye: the distance of best vision for a normal eye (25 cm) is almost twice as much as indicated. The photographs hanging on the wall also seem flat - they are viewed from an even greater distance.

Only near-sighted people, with a short distance of better vision (as well as children who can see at close range), can take pleasure in admiring the effect that an ordinary picture gives when viewed correctly (with one eye). Holding the photograph at a distance of 12-15 cm from the eye, they see in front of them not a flat picture, but a relief image in which the foreground is separated from the background almost like in a stereoscope.

The reader, I hope, will now agree that in most cases it is only through our own ignorance that we do not get from photographic images the full extent of the pleasure that they can give, and often complain in vain about their lifelessness. The whole point is that we do not place our eye at the proper point in relation to the picture and look with two eyes at an image intended only for one.

When you have furnished the room with basic furniture, it's time to choose original accessories and other decorative items. One of the most popular details that make the interior stylish are posters and photographs. As a rule, they store images of the most pleasant and significant moments in the life of their owners. But no matter how beautiful the pictures or other illustrations are, without proper placement on the wall, they can disrupt the harmony of the entire interior.

We hang pictures on the wall: basic rules

A room with well-hung paintings immediately acquires individuality and its own unique style. And placing them is not difficult at all - the main thing is to learn a few laws of proportion and symmetry.

Choosing the location of the painting

When you are going to hang a picture or a group of pictures on the wall, you will need to determine in advance at what distance from the ceiling, walls and floor they will hang. Designers advise you to place the picture at the level of your natural eye - high-hanging canvases are uncomfortable to look at, and low-lying images create the effect of heaviness. If you plan to hang only one frame over any piece of furniture, it is advisable that its width does not exceed 75 - 90% of the width of the sofa, bed or desk.

Symmetry

Those who want to hang on the wall not one canvas, but several illustrations, must adhere to simple rules symmetry. To do this, you need to pick up several paintings or photographs that are the same not only in size, but also in the location of the image - horizontal or vertical. Frames of identical parameters will be a big plus - they will give the composition stylistic unity and a sense of completeness. Depending on how many frames you will hang - even or odd - the starting points for hanging are determined. For an odd number of paintings on the wall, the middle is measured - it is along it that the center of the original canvas must pass. The rest are placed from him to equal distances. With an even number of canvases, the middle of the wall is also located - the first two samples are hung on both sides of it - the rest are parallel to them through the same gap.

How to hang pictures of the same size?

Identical in terms of parameters, square and rectangular images are always a win-win option for placement on the wall. The main thing here is to accurately determine the center of the wall. And from it you can already set any direction - hang pictures in one horizontal line, place them in a square - for example 2x2 or 3x3 (depending on the evenness of the frames). Pictures of the same size give a wide field for creativity. Here you can experiment and even place canvases at different levels.

central object

It is easiest to hang pictures when they are the same size. But what if all the posters or photos have a different scale? In order to cope with this task, it is necessary to choose the most big illustration. She will become the main element of the composition. It can be placed both in the immediate center on the wall and on the side. The remaining canvases - smaller - are hung around the central one. The most impressive pictures in such a composition look if you choose frames of a similar size and design for them.

round picture

If for artists a round picture is called a “tondo”, then for lovers of home design it can be called a “test”. Because it requires a good eye and knowledge of the laws of symmetry to correctly include a round frame in the overall wall composition. If you need to place several objects on the wall in a round frame, choose, as in the previous case, the largest image. This rule also applies when you have paintings or photographs in both round and rectangular frames in your arsenal.

Non-standard accommodation

For lovers of everything original, traditional methods of arranging paintings may seem too banal. Such lovers of beauty can try to place images on the wall in non-standard forms - for example, in the shape of a heart, tree, cloud - the number of options for creative people may be inexhaustible. Such a composition will immediately become a bright accent in the overall interior and emphasize its individuality.

If you feel sorry for the wall

Very often, apartment owners do not want to violate the integrity of the walls to decorate them with posters and photographs. In this case, small wall shelves will be a great alternative. You can place the desired images on them. To make them look especially advantageous, you first need to arrange the largest images, then arrange smaller photos in front of them. The main thing is that the illustrations do not overlap each other and are clearly visible from different viewpoints.

Paintings along the stairs

One of the most effective solutions for decorating the interior of a room with paintings is placing them along the stairs. In case you decide to decorate the space of the room in this way, you can choose a popular layout method. According to him, the first picture or photograph should be located at the very high point stairs, and each subsequent image should be placed just below the previous one. Ideally, you should get a line that runs parallel to the stair railing. In this case, you can also use the rules described above - determine the center, choose the largest picture, or select posters or photographs of the same size and shape.

By following these tips, you can create a truly stylish and cozy element in the interior of your home. Before hanging pictures or photographs on the walls, try to arrange them in the above compositions on the floor and take a picture. Photos will help you more objectively evaluate the most advantageous option for placing images in your room.

And we advise you to buy beautiful paintings for your interior in our online store!

Natalia Petrovskaya

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Have you ever wondered how and where to hang a picture? The question is not idle. To keep the artist's idea and get the most out of the picture's plot, you need to look at it from the right angle. This recommendation is suitable for art lovers, but it can also be taken into account for those who decide to do their own decorating their home with the help of paintings. Let's find out what options for placing pictures and posters will help make the room more comfortable.

Spectacular, colorful images with large elements should be hung at eye level or higher, but not lower. Small paintings and posters (landscapes with a distant perspective, still lifes with small flowers, various abstractions) will look ridiculous at high altitude: placing them above eye level, you risk losing half of the plot, most time contented with the contemplation of the frame.

Hang large canvases with a vertical orientation as high as possible: this will make the room seem taller and more spacious. The same paintings, placed on the floor with the help of special stands, “ground” the room. This will be true for rooms that are too large, where there is not enough comfort and a sense of security.

Harmonious arrangement of paintings in height

Even chaos has its own certain harmony. Therefore, even if you do not plan to make out of the premises art gallery, nevertheless it is worth subordinating the composition certain rules. We offer you several options for placing paintings, depending on the chosen landmark.

Painting at the level of a window or door

This refers to the alignment of the upper edge of the canvas along the upper horizontal line door, window frame or cornice. Important: large paintings should touch the bottom edge of the middle of the wall, but small ones should be completely excluded, because the height distorts visual perception, and in general the wall will look awkward.

Alignment along the lower edge of the window frame also takes place, but small canvases will look more harmonious here. Large elements will only make the interior heavier.

Alignment to the top edge of cabinets

If the cabinet is large and tall, use large paintings, preferably with a vertical orientation. If you took small hanging modules or shelves as a guide, choose small paintings or series and hang them in a row.

How to hang pictures at eye level

This seemingly simple landmark is not as simple as it seems. If you hang multiple pictures different sizes on different walls, make sure that the bottom edges of the frames follow the same line. The upper bounds may not match. If you do otherwise, you will get a visual imbalance, and it will definitely not add harmony to the room.

Hang pictures and posters on the walls good way diversify the interior. When choosing them, try to follow color scheme and the theme of the room. Successfully hanging beautiful picture, you can give the room the missing comfort and that zest that often eludes seemingly full-fledged and independent interiors, especially after renovation.

When choosing the most successful point of view for drawing from nature, it should be remembered that the depicted objects look different, depending on the distance from which they are viewed. It is useful to observe and sketch a group of several objects at a relatively close distance, and then at a distance. Comparing these two drawings, we clearly see the difference in their perspective images. Beginning artists often make the mistake of choosing too close a point of view when drawing from life or composing, which leads to a distorted image of objects.

On ill. 85 shows images of the same room when the points of view were taken at the same height, but at different distances. The first drawing shows the room as seen from a close distance equal to half the diagonal of the picture plane. On the second - the same room from a distance equal to the size of the diagonal of the picture. In the third drawing, the distance from the viewer to the picture was increased to two, and in the fourth to three diagonals. Comparing these drawings, we notice that the same room in the first drawing seems to be much deeper than in the second and third, and especially in the fourth. At very close distances, significant perspective distortion is obtained, especially at the edges of the image. This is analogous to those photographs that are taken too close and therefore have ugly elongated proportions of subjects. So, for example, the side walls in the first drawing seem too long, the foreground figure is much larger than the others. Below the drawing of the room is placed its plan and shows the distance to the point of view. Looking at the plan, we see that the depth of the room is only four meters, but the visual impression is completely different, that is, a false depth is obtained in the figure. This is especially noticeable when we compare the first drawing with the second, which shows the room from a distance equal to the diagonal of the picture. The wall in depth in this picture appears to be much larger than the one shown in the previous one. The perspective reductions of the figures as they are removed are not so noticeable. From this we can conclude that the closer the point of view, the sharper the perspective cuts.

Moving away from the picture plane, we get a smaller scale difference between objects at different depths in the figure.

If you move a distance equal to two diagonals of the picture, then the same room will get a completely different look. The area of ​​the floor in the third drawing seems to be much narrower than in the second and especially in the first. A wall parallel to the picture plane appears to be much larger in area.

In the fourth figure, the distance from the viewer to the picture plane is equal to three diagonals of the picture. We see that with such a large distance, the depth of the room is little expressed. The side walls seem excessively narrow, and the wall in the depth is almost not removed, the figures of people located at different distances have the same height, and the whole image seems flat.

This impression arises if the artist is far from nature; in these cases, we perceive poorly the volume of objects, their location in space.
All four drawings have the same dimensions, depict a room whose floor is 5 m wide and 4 m deep, and the positions of the figures of people are not changed, but we get a completely different impression from these drawings.

This example shows that one should avoid choosing a viewpoint that is too close or too far away. The first and fourth drawings raise doubts about the correctness of the image of the room, although there the perspective building was done in accordance with all the rules.

Most often, artists depict nature, being at a distance equal to one and a half or two diagonals of the picture plane, that is, the angle of view is chosen equal to 28 ° or 37 °. A close point of view produces sharp perspective distortions. So, for example, if you draw a figure of a person lying in a perspective perspective from a very close distance, then the feet will appear several times larger than the head, and the fingers of the hand extended towards the viewer will be much larger than those of the other hand, moved into the depths of the picture. .
Using the above rules of perspective, draw from conception and from nature drawings of a part of a room with the simplest pieces of furniture, visible in the frontal position, as well as at any angle to the picture plane. We advise you to make a number of drawings with a horizon line and vanishing points, depicting the simplest architectural structures or their fragments (a barn, a porch, a corner of a house, a half-open door, a window with a closed and open sash, etc.).

From the above, we learned that the shapes of the objects around us and their sizes visually change depending on the position in space and the distance from the viewer. These changes in form and size occur according to certain laws, which are outlined in the course of linear perspective. Knowledge of the laws of linear perspective helps the artist when drawing from nature, from imagination and from memory; it is also necessary when working on compositions. This article provides only some initial information on linear perspective, based on which it is necessary to perform training drawings. We draw objects as we see them and on the basis of knowledge about them. The rules of perspective construction allow, where necessary, not to take into account some visual distortions. So, for example, high vertical lines may visually appear directed to the vanishing point to the zenith, which is not taken into account in the figure; the photographed building, stretched horizontally and visible in the frontal position, will turn out with a curved line of the horizontal cornice, but the artists do not depict this.

Frequent visitors to cinemas have probably noticed that some of the paintings are distinguished by unusual relief: the figures are separated from the background and are so convex that you even forget about the existence of the canvas and see, as it were, a genuine landscape or live artists on stage.

Such relief of images does not depend on the properties of the tape itself, as is often thought, but on the place where the viewer is placed. Cinematic shots, although produced with very short-focus cameras; but they are projected onto the screen in a greatly enlarged form - times a hundred - so that they can be viewed with two eyes from a great distance (10 cm x 100 \u003d 10 m). The greatest relief is observed when we look at the pictures from the same angle at which the apparatus "looked" at its nature when shooting. Then we will have a natural perspective.

How to find the distance corresponding to such a most advantageous angle of view? To do this, you need to choose a place; firstly, against the middle of the picture, and secondly, at such a distance from the screen that is as many times greater than the width of the picture as the focal length of the lens is greater than the width of the film strip. So, in order to find at what distance it is necessary to sit down from the screen in this case, it is enough to increase the width of the picture by about 3 times. If the width of the cinematic image is 6 steps, then best places for viewing these frames are located 18 steps from the screen.

This circumstance should not be overlooked when testing various proposals aimed at making motion pictures stereoscopic: it is easy to attribute to the tested invention what is due to the indicated reasons.

Reproductions of photographs in books and magazines, of course, have the same properties as original photographs: they also become more prominent when viewed with one eye and from the proper distance. Since different pictures are taken by cameras with different focal lengths, then it is a test to find the proper viewing distances. With one eye closed, hold the illustration on an outstretched hand so that its plane is perpendicular to the line of sight, and your open eye was against the middle of the picture. Now gradually zoom in on the picture, without ceasing to peer into it; you can easily catch the moment when it acquires the greatest relief.

Many photographs, fuzzy and flat when viewed normally, gain depth and clarity when viewed in the manner described. Often, when viewed in this way, the glint of water becomes noticeable in other purely stereoscopic effects.

One must be surprised that so simple facts little known, although almost everything reported here was expounded in popular books in the last century. In The Foundations of the Physiology of the Mind by W. Carpenter, a book published in Russian translation in 1877, we read the following about looking at photographs:

“It is remarkable that the effect of this method of viewing photographic paintings (with one eye) does not limit the selection of features of the main thing. This applies mainly to the image of stagnant water - the most weak side photographic paintings under normal conditions. Namely, if you look at such an image of water with both eyes, the surface seems to be waxy, but if you look at it with one eye, you can often notice amazing transparency and depth in it. The same can be said about the various properties of surfaces that reflect light, such as bronze and ivory. The material from which the object depicted in the photograph is made is much more recognizable when viewed with one eye, and not with two.

Let's pay attention to one more circumstance. If photographs, when enlarged, gain in vitality, then when reduced, they, on the contrary, lose in this respect. Reduced photos come out, however, sharper and more distinct, but they are flat, do not give the impression of depth and relief. The reason, after all that has been said, should be clear: as the photographs get smaller, the corresponding “perspective distance” also decreases, which is usually too small anyway.

looking at pictures

What we said about photography before to some extent this also applies to pictures created by the artist's hand: they are best viewed also from a proper distance. Only under this condition will you feel the perspective and the picture will seem not flat, but deep and embossed. It is also useful to look with one rather than two eyes, especially at small paintings.

“It has long been known,” the English psychologist W. Carpenter wrote about this in the above-mentioned essay, “that when you carefully examine a picture where perspective conditions, light, shadows and the general arrangement of details strictly correspond to the reality depicted, the impression made is much more vivid if you look at it with one eye , and not both, the effect is enhanced when we look through a tube that excludes all extraneous surroundings of the picture. This fact was explained before completely falsely. “We see better with one eye than with two,” says Bacon, “because the vital spirits are concentrated in one place and act with greater force.”

In reality, however, the point here is that when we look with both eyes at a picture at a moderate distance, we are forced to recognize it as a flat surface; when we look with only one eye, our mind can more easily succumb to the impression of perspective, light, shadows, etc. Hence, when we peer intently, the picture soon acquires relief and can even reach the physicality of a real landscape. The completeness of the illusion will mainly depend on the fidelity with which the actual projection of objects on the plane is reproduced in the picture ... The advantage of seeing with one eye depends in these cases on the fact that the mind is free to interpret the picture at its own discretion, when nothing forces it to see in it flat picture.

Thumbnails from large paintings often give a more complete illusion of relief than the originals. You will understand why this happens if you remember that when the picture is reduced, it is usually reduced long distance from which you want to view the image, so the picture becomes embossed already at a close distance.