Design Nomenclature / Composition
Picture plane
This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.
The flat surface an image is constructed on — in perspective theory, the transparent plane the scene is projected onto, standing between eye and subject. Everything a composition does happens on it, and depth is only ever asserted against it. Flattening the picture plane is the modernist move of insisting it exists.
Not to be confused with
- Figure–groundThe partition of a field into a form that has shape and a ground that runs behind it. The figure owns the shared contour; the ground does not, which is why ground reads as continuous and shapeless. Small, enclosed, convex, and lower regions tend to win figure status.
- Depth cueAny feature of a flat image a viewer reads as depth: overlap, relative size, atmospheric perspective, linear perspective, texture gradient, height in the field, shadow. Pictorial cues need only a plane, which is why they are the whole toolkit in print. They accumulate, and they can be set against each other.