Is it because of the way the light is shining on it? What about because it looks 3-d, with shaded values? Nope! The reason why is because it is located further down on the picture. Look again - do you see that the cone, cube, and cylinder are all higher than the sphere?
In art, an artist can use PLACEMENT to show distance. Closer objects are placed lower down on the paper, and more distant objects are placed higher up on the paper.
Also, an artist can make it look like some things are in front of or behind other things. This is called OVERLAPPING. If you look at this photograph of geometric forms, it appears that the cone is overlapping the cube. The cone is covering up a little bit of the cube - we can't see the lower left hand corner because of overlapping!
If I wanted to draw a quick sketch of the geometric forms in this photo, which of these two drawings is more accurate?
A common beginner's mistake is to set up all the objects in a line, like the top drawing - it is not based on accuracy. The bottom sketch is much more accurate: it has the objects arranged as they are in space, with the sphere near the bottom and the cube closer to the top.
Can you draw objects as they appear in space? Arrange a few things in front of you on the table and try to draw them as accurately as possible.
Tomorrow, we will practice observational drawing by looking at ORGANIC forms, and later this week we will begin our own still-life drawing of objects from home.
