every beginner should see this video. when i first started learning about Perspective i ran into this problem about horizon being the eye level even though its not, there should be more videos like this on youtube.
Polishing up on my understanding on perspective with Scott Robertsons books, this was very helpful! While the books are an excellent source, I did find myself having many questions and this has helped me, thank you!
Many thanks for you.. totally agree ..always not convinced with using the two terminologies ..as most mistakely mention that " high eye level means high horizon level , low eye level means ..low horizon level " ..but infact real horizon line just appears like that because changing of the angle we see ..upwards or downwards while eye level itself still fixed ...putting camera right on the ground and just tilting it one or two degrees forward makes horizon line very high or even out of frame .....
Just found you. Subscribed. Yea you are correct. I get asked this question all the time about why the horizon is lower than eye level hehe. Keep the good work up
Stephen, love your videos! Very well done and informative and I'm inspired to put down the stylus in favor of ink! I do have one minor point to quibble here, despite the number of words appearing to suggest a major quibble, but am open to being convinced otherwise. And I must point out that this is only the first quibble after watching more than a dozen of your videos! In truth, it may simply be that you and I define "horizon" differently. Your sketch towards the end leads me to believe this might be the case. And that's ok! If so, however, I think "line of sight" might be a better term than "horizon" though. But let's see! Learning perspective decades ago I was taught that "horizon" is the limit of unobstructed sight based mostly on eye level. It is of course most apparent looking out over the ocean or extremely flat landscape. Due to Earth's curvature you'd have to get thousands of feet in the air for your eye level to start to get above the horizon and that "horizon" and "eye level" were basically interchangeable terms in most earthbound situations even if the horizon were not actually visible (such as an interior scene). I wholeheartedly agree that "Eye Level" is generally a more useful term than "Horizon", especially to beginners, and there are instances where they are not the same. But particularly in the Montmartre scene (6:17) you've determined eye level a bit too high in my opinion. It shouldn't matter that you were standing on stairs high above that street or even if you were standing on top of one of those buildings. Your Eye Level and true horizon would be the same. It would just be that much higher in the scene than if you were down on the street. Those heights are not near enough to cause a separation of Eye level and horizon. I think we would all agree that if I stand on high balcony of a seaside hotel the horizon line is much farther out to sea than it would be for my friend standing at the water's edge. One reason why there were sailors with telescopes perched in crow's nests on tall sailing ships. From up there you could see land (or another ship) before those on standing below on the deck. Two different eye levels creates two different horizons. Adding visual obstructions like buildings, trees, or a chain of tropical volcanic islands for our sailing friends does not change the location of the horizon. It can definitely changes line of sight though. It's admittedly a little tricky to find the true horizon line in that Montmartre scene as it's probably obscured a bit by distant atmosphere/smog plus the wonky lines of those old buildings due to construction and/or years of settling (especially in the foreground building on the right). Not to mention there seems to be lens distortion happening in the picture toward the edges of the scene. Either that or that building in the right foreground is leaning away from us to the right. Run vertical lines straight up those window openings. The diagram you sketch starting at 10:07 also appears to me to misidentify what I would consider "horizon". It would not be the top of the little mountain. It would be way off the page to the right at the limit of visibility based on our eye level while standing on that higher mountain. We may or may not see it because that little mountain could block our line of sight, but that doesn't make the top of the small mountain the actual horizon anymore than the tops of a row of trees or buildings obscuring an ocean view would. If we were standing among buildings on the smaller mountain looking in the direction of the larger one we would not say the horizon line started at the top of the larger mountain. We would say that the horizon was well beyond and simply obscured by the higher mountain. But we could still determine eye level from surrounding buildings and, thus, more or less the location of the obscured horizon. All that being said, you provide very useful information regarding how to determine out the Eye Level in a scene That's spot on how you go about it and, in truth, depending on materials/drawing style, determining its precise location may or may not even be necessary Keep up the great work!!
We can often have a mountain behind our subject that is higher than we are, in which case, horizon is a very unhelpful term to use. But eye level is not affected in this way. 😀
I can totally agree with that. I think the only case where that wont be exactly true will be if we are traveling to space and we start to see the planet curving.
I got the photo and traced few of the buildings back to the horizont to find their vanishing points. Seems like all of them tend to match at the horziont. There is a bit of fog to the horizont so thats why it seems the horizont is ending under the eye level. However as mentioned in my comment above, even if you are on Everest, you'll still have eye level and horizont matched. And regarding not having visible horizont, well one can imagine a horizontal slice through all the trees and mountains from his eye level. if you remove the top part of the trees and mountains you'll see the horizont.
thank you for your videos! a lot of valuable information! What I often see in different paintings - people standing on the beach with their heads way above horizon line. I consider it is wrong as if i stand on the beach taking picture of people standing in front of me by the sea on a flat ground, their heads should be on horizon line, which is eye level line in this case. Am I right?
Eye level and horizon would be quite different for an airline pilot - or an astronaut. I live in the mountains, so the true horizon is almost never visible. When I try to guess when the sun will go down, I estimate how long it will take to reach my eye level, as that should be close to the horizon. Not perfect, but OK for guesswork.
Hmmh... Of course teminology is not about absolute truth but about usefullness in practice. Now "horizon" has proved to be a very useful term ( see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon). And where the horizon for a given observer is, depends on the position ("eye level") of the observer. Ok, when you draw in a city your horizon will most often be obstructed. Therefore I fully understand that you find "eye level" to be more useful. But the eye level can never be above (or below) a visible horizon line. This is where you are wrong.
It depends on how horizon is understood, or if a particular Geographical context creates a misleading physical edge between land and sky which does not align with the conceptual one. The term eye level avoids all the ambiguities. I dont draw ocean or desert scenes so the horizon line you are talking about almost never exists for me in drawing.
every beginner should see this video. when i first started learning about Perspective i ran into this problem about horizon being the eye level even though its not, there should be more videos like this on youtube.
Thank you. Very encouraging to hear 😀
Polishing up on my understanding on perspective with Scott Robertsons books, this was very helpful! While the books are an excellent source, I did find myself having many questions and this has helped me, thank you!
Great to hear, thank you for sharing
Many thanks for you.. totally agree ..always not convinced with using the two terminologies ..as most mistakely mention that " high eye level means high horizon level , low eye level means ..low horizon level " ..but infact real horizon line just appears like that because changing of the angle we see ..upwards or downwards while eye level itself still fixed ...putting camera right on the ground and just tilting it one or two degrees forward makes horizon line very high or even out of frame .....
Yep, sounds like we totally agree on this. Thanks for sharing Mahmoud. 😀
Viewing angle doesn’t change my eye level! Well at least it brought me to your channel! Great stuff!
Welcome. I have a number of perspective playlists you might find helpful as well 😀
I shall now use "eye level."
Haha. Excellent! I think eye level is the most important element of perspective to understand. All the best. 😀
I agree. Love your channel!
That’s great. Thanks Cindy. 😀
Just found you. Subscribed. Yea you are correct. I get asked this question all the time about why the horizon is lower than eye level hehe. Keep the good work up
Welcome!😀
Next time you fly in a plane notice how the horizon line stays equal to eye level.
Thank you for this!
Hope the distinction is helpful for you. 😀
amazing video. just had this same confusion stepping out from a tutorial. Super helpful thx!
Always great to hear a video has been helpful. thanks
Thank you so much , finally I’m not confused anymore 😁
You’re welcome 😊
great video. the different usages of these 2 terms has always confused me.
Great to hear v😀
Stephen, love your videos! Very well done and informative and I'm inspired to put down the stylus in favor of ink!
I do have one minor point to quibble here, despite the number of words appearing to suggest a major quibble, but am open to being convinced otherwise. And I must point out that this is only the first quibble after watching more than a dozen of your videos!
In truth, it may simply be that you and I define "horizon" differently. Your sketch towards the end leads me to believe this might be the case.
And that's ok! If so, however, I think "line of sight" might be a better term than "horizon" though.
But let's see!
Learning perspective decades ago I was taught that "horizon" is the limit of unobstructed sight based mostly on eye level. It is of course most apparent looking out over the ocean or extremely flat landscape. Due to Earth's curvature you'd have to get thousands of feet in the air for your eye level to start to get above the horizon and that "horizon" and "eye level" were basically interchangeable terms in most earthbound situations even if the horizon were not actually visible (such as an interior scene).
I wholeheartedly agree that "Eye Level" is generally a more useful term than "Horizon", especially to beginners, and there are instances where they are not the same. But particularly in the Montmartre scene (6:17) you've determined eye level a bit too high in my opinion. It shouldn't matter that you were standing on stairs high above that street or even if you were standing on top of one of those buildings. Your Eye Level and true horizon would be the same. It would just be that much higher in the scene than if you were down on the street. Those heights are not near enough to cause a separation of Eye level and horizon.
I think we would all agree that if I stand on high balcony of a seaside hotel the horizon line is much farther out to sea than it would be for my friend standing at the water's edge. One reason why there were sailors with telescopes perched in crow's nests on tall sailing ships. From up there you could see land (or another ship) before those on standing below on the deck. Two different eye levels creates two different horizons. Adding visual obstructions like buildings, trees, or a chain of tropical volcanic islands for our sailing friends does not change the location of the horizon. It can definitely changes line of sight though.
It's admittedly a little tricky to find the true horizon line in that Montmartre scene as it's probably obscured a bit by distant atmosphere/smog plus the wonky lines of those old buildings due to construction and/or years of settling (especially in the foreground building on the right). Not to mention there seems to be lens distortion happening in the picture toward the edges of the scene. Either that or that building in the right foreground is leaning away from us to the right. Run vertical lines straight up those window openings.
The diagram you sketch starting at 10:07 also appears to me to misidentify what I would consider "horizon". It would not be the top of the little mountain. It would be way off the page to the right at the limit of visibility based on our eye level while standing on that higher mountain. We may or may not see it because that little mountain could block our line of sight, but that doesn't make the top of the small mountain the actual horizon anymore than the tops of a row of trees or buildings obscuring an ocean view would.
If we were standing among buildings on the smaller mountain looking in the direction of the larger one we would not say the horizon line started at the top of the larger mountain. We would say that the horizon was well beyond and simply obscured by the higher mountain. But we could still determine eye level from surrounding buildings and, thus, more or less the location of the obscured horizon.
All that being said, you provide very useful information regarding how to determine out the Eye Level in a scene That's spot on how you go about it and, in truth, depending on materials/drawing style, determining its precise location may or may not even be necessary
Keep up the great work!!
The horizon is literally always eye level.
We can often have a mountain behind our subject that is higher than we are, in which case, horizon is a very unhelpful term to use. But eye level is not affected in this way. 😀
I can totally agree with that. I think the only case where that wont be exactly true will be if we are traveling to space and we start to see the planet curving.
I got the photo and traced few of the buildings back to the horizont to find their vanishing points. Seems like all of them tend to match at the horziont. There is a bit of fog to the horizont so thats why it seems the horizont is ending under the eye level. However as mentioned in my comment above, even if you are on Everest, you'll still have eye level and horizont matched.
And regarding not having visible horizont, well one can imagine a horizontal slice through all the trees and mountains from his eye level. if you remove the top part of the trees and mountains you'll see the horizont.
So I has to be with sea lvl? @@simeontodorov8657
thank you for your videos! a lot of valuable information!
What I often see in different paintings - people standing on the beach with their heads way above horizon line. I consider it is wrong as if i stand on the beach taking picture of people standing in front of me by the sea on a flat ground, their heads should be on horizon line, which is eye level line in this case. Am I right?
The ground usually slopes down to the sea. This, and people being different heights will affect head alignment 😀
Very useful, thanks
My pleasure Rayito😀
Hi!!! Very useful indeed!! Many thanks!! ☺️🙌🏼🙌🏼🇧🇷
Great to hear Deborah. I have some perspective playlists if you interested in more. 😀
@@stephentraversart thank you! I have been watching some of them! 🙌🏼🤗
Thank you so much ❤
You're welcome 😊
This was really helpful. Thank you
Great to hear Lyna. Thanks 😀
Eye level and horizon would be quite different for an airline pilot - or an astronaut.
I live in the mountains, so the true horizon is almost never visible. When I try to guess when the sun will go down, I estimate how long it will take to reach my eye level, as that should be close to the horizon.
Not perfect, but OK for guesswork.
Yes, it’s an extreme, but excellent example of how the perspective eye level is not the same as the landscape horizon. 😀
What do you mean under "true horizont" ?
wait i'm still very confused on how the eye level and horizon line are not the same thing.
Hmmh... Of course teminology is not about absolute truth but about usefullness in practice. Now "horizon" has proved to be a very useful term ( see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon). And where the horizon for a given observer is, depends on the position ("eye level") of the observer. Ok, when you draw in a city your horizon will most often be obstructed. Therefore I fully understand that you find "eye level" to be more useful. But the eye level can never be above (or below) a visible horizon line. This is where you are wrong.
It depends on how horizon is understood, or if a particular Geographical context creates a misleading physical edge between land and sky which does not align with the conceptual one. The term eye level avoids all the ambiguities. I dont draw ocean or desert scenes so the horizon line you are talking about almost never exists for me in drawing.