How you feel about David Chelsea's book Perspective in Action, is a matter of...perspective. And my perspective is that of an amateur artist who's always had a little bit of difficulty with perspective and proportion. If you're coming from a similar perspective, this book is not for you. This book is highly technical.
(https://www.amazon.com/Perspective-Action-Exercises-Representation-Renaissance/dp/1607749467)
It went over my head. I should have been a little bit clued in by the tagline on the cover "Creative exercises depicting spatial representation from the Renaissance to the Digital Age.", but I wasn't. I figured by "exercises" it meant fifteen - forty-five minute drawing exercises meant to hone one's skills and help improve one's understanding of perspective. This is not the case. This book is for hardcore prospective perspective acolytes. This book is for people who's careers depend on their perspective ;)
Here's one of the suggestions I decided not to follow through on:
"If you would like the sharpest possible image, follow the equation below to determine the best diameter pinhole for the distance between pinhole and wall surface. Since my bathroom is 6 feet deep, the optimum pinhole width is approximately 1.5 mm."
...actually, I'm going to have to stop with that example, because I can't figure out how to blog the equation. Meh. Suffice it to say, it was higher math and I wasn't interested.
So in the end, I wasn't actually qualified to review this book. Overall impressions: Highly techinical, and if you actually took the time to do the exercises described you would be spending an enormous amount of time and effort on it, and I think maybe the real purpose is for the perspective buffs out there to follow along philosophically speaking, nodding their heads and murmuring, "I see..." The author occasionally made remarks I found humorous. On two occasions the artist used nude illustrations to demonstrate a point that seemed more naked than nude - there was no point to the illustration choice, any other image would have done, so I wasn't a fan of that.
Maybe this is a really great book, but I'm never going to know. I do have a lot of respect for the technical skill and knowledge that went into this.
I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for my review. This is my honest opinion about the book.
