Themes > Arts > Painting > Painting Principles and Techniques > Depth or Distance Cues

In trying to depict depth, there are several restrictions on the techniques that an artist can use. First, paintings and drawings are two-dimensional. There is no actual depth in the artwork so the artist must understand, at least intuitively, what information is in the environment that allow us to perceive depth. These sources of information are commonly called depth or distance cues. A consequence of the two-dimensional nature of painting and drawing is that we lose all the depth information that comes from the fact that we have two eyes.

copyrightkrantzj@hanover.edu    John H. Krantz, Ph.D. Information provided by: http://krantzj.hanover.edu