Julian Beever, 3d paintings are great but I would also like to give mention to, Kurt Wenner, Edgar Müller,  who are three artists known for doing modern anamorphic perspective 3d paintings, 3d street art and these three artists give us some proof that there is more to looking than just pointing your eyes in the direction of an object.

Everybody and the dog will tell you drawing is about looking and do you know what, all of them are right but do you want to know something else, very few of them actually explain what they mean, do they?

How important is it to understand some basic principles about looking, when trying to understand Julian Beever, 3d paintings better?

I don’t know about you but I see so much I cannot possibly take it all in, we live in a very visually informative world 80% of all the information we receive is visual any way. So we are literally being bombarded with it, saturated with it, we even see things in our sleep or at least we think we do.

But we actually see very little because it doesn’t register we are not really looking we are just seeing, browsing you might say but if you are going to learn to draw then you need to look with reason.

Here are some obvious points that weren’t so obvious to me once upon a time; I used to lie on the bed as a kid and draw but no matter how hard I tried my pictures never looked right.

When I used to draw at the kitchen table they always turned out much better and it was because of the angel I was drawing at if you try to draw at an angle lying down then you will usually end up with a distorted image. If you only look at this image from the angle at which it was drawn it will look more accurate than if you hold it up squarely in front of your eyes to view.

This information is very useful when you look at the fantastic work created by chalk sidewalk artist’s, Kurt Wenner, Julian Beever and Edgar Müller these are modern day artist’s doing chalk 3d art that completely turns this whole problem to an advantage, not only do they make this a unique selling point but they also make it their trade mark.

Before Julian Beever, 3d paintings, there was Andrea Pozzo.

There is a name for this type of art it is called anamorphic perspective and the earliest examples of this are by Leonardo Da Vinci and Andrea Pozzo.

Some examples of this early work can be seen in Andrea Pozzo’s work on the ceilings of the Jesuit, St Ignatius’ Church, Rome, 1685 – 1694, this masterpiece is a fabulous example of illusory perspectives and the dome being of particular importance.

Sant Ignazio ceiling.

Sant Ignazio ceiling further away.

The dome is not real either and from a certain point marked with a brass plate on the floor you find it very difficult to see that it isn’t.

Kurt Wenner, Julian Beever and Edgar Müller, these guys do this on the street and also create fabulous examples of illusory perspectives so the question for me is how they do these illusions.

Julian Beever, Edgar Müller and Kurt Wenner.

Julian Beever, 3d paintings.

Kurt Wenner, 3d paintings.

Edgar Müller, 3d paintings.

Edgar Müller uses the computer to digitally render the work, concepts, ideas, if you can use computer photo editing software then this is the way to go.

Looking at the way Edgar constructs his drawings shows that he uses what looks like masking tape to get parts of his street paintings accurate it also looks like he takes an approach similar to that used in Julian Beever, 3d paintings.

Here are just a couple of ideas I tried after looking at work done by these other guys but mostly I used Edgar Müller for inspiration and I was pleasantly surprised.

Image done with photo editing software to give an example of Edgar Muller type theme.

Another image done with photo editing software to give an example of Edgar Muller, Jillian Beaver , Kurt Wenner 3d street art type illusions.

Julian Beever explains that he is not a mathematician and has no mathematical skills to speak of; he says that he uses the good old grid method in order to construct his drawings. He also uses a camera on a tripod as a viewer which enables him to use the fixed position of the camera to always be able to identify the exact position to view the street painting accurately.

A statement made by Kurt Wenner that explains how he approaches his work “Artistic geometry was the most fascinating subject” this could be mathematics in another name exactly the opposite to Julian Beever.

If I was going to create the illusion above then I would do it like this, first of all I would do a scaled painting on paper of the above image that would be four times bigger than the original image which is A4 so my preparation painting would be A2 in size.

This will give me a greater understanding of how to construct the drawing and mix the colours it will give me a feeling for the picture plus it is a desirable image in it’s own right. This would also give me two images to work from and a more informed understanding of what I would be attempting to create.

I would find the farthest point from my camera tripod, yes I would use a camera because after carrying out some experiments I found it to be very helpful for viewing not just this type of work either, so thanks to Julian Beever.

I also realised that these illusions don’t have the same impact to the naked eye and after reading extensively about these artists I find that they also hint at this.

From the farthest point I would run a tape like Edgar Müller does, to use this as an anchor point for the rest of the picture. Then using identifiable points in the drawing space, environment, with this actually being the street I would construct my drawing outline from reference points identified when doing the preparation painting.

A plan showing how elements in the picture can be used to mark out the drawing.

Street art construction plan with text to explain in more detail.

I would construct my outline by marking in key areas, identifying them from my original image and marking them with a chalk stick until I was confident I had enough information to create my painting. I would keep going back to the camera to view the image and check for accuracy I would basically draw it like any other drawing by using reference points from the surrounding landscape to identify reference points in the drawing/painting. This is a necessary continual and ongoing process when doing any kind of drawing but even more so when doing anamorphic perspective you need to be checking and double checking for accuracy just like Julian Beever and others, my favourites are the Julian Beever, 3d paintings.

If you would like to find out more about how to do this then follow this link to Julian Beever sidewalk art, chalk art and see some more of his work and get a better understanding of Julian Beever, 3d paintings.

Julian Beever pavement art, sidewalk art, chalk artist, has new work that can be observed in his book (Pavement Chalk Artist) 2010 it’s a lovely full colour book showing some wonderful new images and insights about how exactly he found his path to creating this popular form of street art. I loved reading through this book and attaining a glimpse into the artist himself, I purchased mine from Amazon . com also it was worth it, much better than any e-book I could down load off line and sits nicely on the shelf in my collection, begging visitors to also take a look.

Click below to obtain a price on Amazon . com.