Throw Back Thursday - A Hamburger's Perspective, 2004

So this was a quick pencil drawing assignment for one of my freshman year foundation art classes in college. The assignment was on perspective, and about choosing a unique perspective from which to draw. I must have been hungry–which makes sense because these classes were always 4 hours long and this particular one was from 8am-noon–because I chose to draw from the perspective of a hamburger on a picnic table.

I always want to refer to this one as "From an Ant's Perspective" because the hamburger is nowhere to be seen. In fact, you may never have guessed it was a hamburger and not a sandwich or french fries had I not told you. But alas, the hamburger was the intended subject, so any other speculation stops here. I'm reminded of my art history classes and how often I asked myself, "Apart from the artist actually writing down all this information, how can we know his intent here?"

I remember the hardest thing about this drawing was deciding how to draw the Coca Cola cup. The perspective for a normal cylindrical object in one point perspective is relatively simple–the contour lines extend out to the vanishing point. Even the salt shaker that tapers at the top was easy–just slightly exaggerate the angles of a normal cylinder and you've got it. But a cup that tapers at the bottom, set at perspective in the opposite direction just looks wrong. The cup is larger at the top, closer to the hamburger and taller than the ketchup bottle. So this perspective makes sense theoretically, but in implementation, it still seems wrong. It just goes to show you how differently hamburgers see things than we do. Perspective makes all the difference. That is today's life lesson, folks.

I hope you enjoy this silly drawing as much as I enjoyed thinking of the concept.