A high eye level in perspective drawing focuses more attention on the middle and distant areas of a picture.

You have a restricted view of objects that are close as you are essentially looking down upon them.

This is not such a suitable viewpoint for our illustration of ancient ruins, as the foreground objects move outside the picture plane and large areas of the background are empty.

The eye is naturally pulled towards the horizon as it forms a strong line across the picture. This also distracts the viewer from the objects in the foreground.

If you mouse-over the image to view the coloured version, this imbalance in the composition has been corrected with the use of landscape elements in the background. The hills are used to break up the horizon and link the background with the foreground.

A high eye level is the ideal arrangement for painting panoramic landscapes. The paintings of the American artist, Grant Wood, perfectly demonstrate this compositional device.

It is also ideally suited to epic figure compositions, offering the artist a wide physical space to portray several narrative scenes within the one picture. Pieter Bruegel was arguably the greatest master of this technique.

Grant Wood (1892-1942)

'Young Corn' (1931)
Ceder Rapids Museum of Art

This work is typical of the landscapes painted by the American artist, Grant Wood. They often use high eye levels to display the gentle patterns, textures and forms of the rolling landscape. His wonderful images have a silent, dream-like clarity and are a product of the artist's imagination and childhood memories. They are idealised and nostalgic views which look back with a sense of loss, to an age before industrialisation. Today, and as time progresses, that sense of loss continues to increase, and consequently amplifies the power of his work.

Pieter Bruegel (1525-69)

'Children's Games' (1560)
Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna

This painting by Pieter Bruegel uses a high eye level to view the scene from above. This allows the artist to arrange the numerous figures into smaller groups which may be viewed separately without much overlapping. The viewer can then clearly identify all the activities in the picture. A high eye level is the ideal compositional device for portraying complex narrative subjects.

You can read a more detailed evaluation of 'Children's Games' on the next page.