Why do old paintings look so weird? | Art 101: Linear Perspective?

Old paintings look weird because they don’t use linear perspective, a trick that makes things look realistic, like how we see them in real life.

Imagine you're looking at a street with houses getting smaller as they go into the distance. In old paintings, everything is the same size, so it feels flat and strange, like someone drew a toy box from above without looking through the window.

Back then, artists didn’t know linear perspective yet, it’s like having a special tool to make drawings look 3D. It was discovered later, kind of like when you learn how to draw using a ruler and some math!

Think about drawing with your eyes closed. When you open them, everything seems smaller the farther away it is. Artists started using lines that meet at a point in the distance, called the vanishing point, so things look like they're going far away, just like when you stare out a car window on a long trip.

Without this trick, old paintings feel like they’re from a dream, fun and strange! Old paintings look weird because they don’t use linear perspective, a trick that makes things look realistic, like how we see them in real life.

Imagine you're looking at a street with houses getting smaller as they go into the distance. In old paintings, everything is the same size, so it feels flat and strange, like someone drew a toy box from above without looking through the window.

Back then, artists didn’t know linear perspective yet, it’s like having a special tool to make drawings look 3D. It was discovered later, kind of like when you learn how to draw using a ruler and some math!