SIX POINT PERSPECTIVE ISN’T JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT,
IT’S IN THE REAL WORLD ALSO

By Dick Termes 10-06-06
My thesis is that spherical paintings are closer to reality than flat paintings.

Any painter should be aware that if you are true to the reality of what we see, all paintings, including flat ones, are a piece of the whole visual sphere around you. If you don’t think the visual world is a sphere around you, take another look. The image in front of you is attached to more and more image until it comes right back to the original image, any direction you might want to go. This is a sphere. Six point perspective is the order this world around you can be organized to. Six point perspective especially works well if the environment around you is a cubical environment.

To help explain the statement above, think about this: Imagine being inside a transparent ball that you have put six equal distant dots on. With the transparent ball on your head, move inside a cubical building. Look through the transparent ball at the building’s three sets of parallel lines. They run north/south, east/west and up and down. The rule in traditional perspective is all parallel lines go to the same vanishing point. In my system of six point perspective on the sphere, all parallel lines go to two vanishing points, north/south, east/west and up/down. These points will be opposite poles on the ball.

As you look through your transparent ball, make sure one of the dots on the transparent ball is directly above your head. Keep your eyes in the center of the ball when observing all of this. Now, look at the outside building and look where one of the vanishing points would be located. Remember, all parallel lines go to the same vanishing point. When you have located one of the vanishing point of your building, line up this vanishing point with a dot on the ball. After you have overlapped this vanishing point with the dot on the ball, keep the ball stable. Now rotate your eyes within the ball and notice all the other lines of the outside building will project to the other dots on the ball. If the first set of lines you worked with run to the north direction then they will also run across the ball to the south direction. Turning your eyes now within this stable ball notice the next dot to the east will also line up with the dot on the ball. Those lines that aim at the east vanishing point (and dot also) will swing across the ball in greater circles to the west vanishing point which is also another dot on the ball. You don’t have to be in the center of the cubical room for this to happen, it will happen no matter where you are located within the cubical building.

So, my thesis is that these six equal distant points are in the world around us all the time. This isn’t something I came up with just to make the spheres look good, it is real.

The Termesphere is not just a fun technique, in my mind, it is closer to how things are than any flat surface can be. It is the way we see--that whole picture is always there. All we have to do is turn and look.

Seeing is a spherical idea just like the Earth is a spherical idea. Both are distorted when seen on the flat. Both read correctly when seen on the sphere. The same problems and the same solutions can be used for trying to get them to the flat. All of these have distortion. Polyhedra can be used but they have distortion. Different kinds of projections also can be used. One through Five Point Perspective is our attempts to get this spherical information onto the flat surface.

Why is this important? This visual sphere is with us every second of our lives. It is always around us. I think it is important to understand something we have to live with so closely.