Seeing  (part 2)

In part 1 we learned how memory takeover could cause  us to distort a drawing we were trying to make of an actual 3D scene.  Next, let’s examine the way in which an untrained person looks at the world so that we can better understand why it is so easy for memory takeover to occur and how we can deal with it.

B.  Regular old looking

The human eye has a cone of focus of only about 6 degrees.  This means that when you fix your gaze on something, you can only focus your eyes on objects within a range of three degrees on either side of the centerline of your visual field ( a wedge whose horizontal diameter is only about a twentieth of your approximately 120-degree total field of vision).  Within that range, there is a very limited depth of field for human eyesight.  So, using example_5  let’s suppose you are looking out of your window.

 

                                                            

As you look past the praying mantis on the drapes you notice a squirrel stealing seed from the bird feeder in your yard, and just beyond the squirrel, still within your sightline, is the chimney of the house across the street, and beyond that are the distant mountain peaks.  If you move your sight line of vision, to focus your attention on the praying mantis (it looks like it’s going to jump on your sleeve!)  (See example 5A) you will notice that all other elements in your six degree field (squirrel, chimney, mountains) have gone out of focus.  As you refocus on each of these 4 elements in turn (examples 5 B, C and D ) each of the other three go out of focus.  If your line of vision drifts right or left (or up or down), you will notice that each of the aforementioned objects goes out of focus as you zero in on something else.  Notice also that objects within our cone of focus but separated significantly in depth are also out of focus when we hone in on one object.  Yet except for the times when we’re doing exercises like this, we never notice how much of our world is out of focus at any one time; Nineteen twentieths to be more precise.  This is because we construct, in our mind’s eye, an in-focus universe by letting our eyes continuously dart around, focusing on everything of importance that we encounter.  This is regular old looking.

One of the dominant left--side brain functions I mentioned earlier was stepwise logical progression.  For example as a math student you would logically progress from simple arithmetic to geometry, trigonometry, algebra, differential equations and then calculus and beyond.  As a child learning to read you would start by learning the alphabet then progress to simple word/object associations and from there to simple sentences, grammar and so on.  The ability to understand logical progression is obviously a valuable one for humans but it can be an impediment when it comes to rendering an object accurately from life (when seen in three dimensions), especially when we use regular old looking to do it.

An example of the problems inherent in regular old looking is in order.  Let us suppose that you are going to draw a group of objects scattered about on a tabletop.  (See example-6.)

 

Because of your eye’s narrow cone of focus, you will tend to focus on each object individually, and the left side of your brain will want to process information from one object to the next in a logical progression.  The result will be that you draw each object in turn moving from the Basket, to the wine bottle, and then to the file box (or in some similar fashion).  But soon you will be running into trouble, because in your drawing, the objects don’t want to line up the same way they do on the tabletop, and some even seem to be the wrong size when compared to one another on your paper, the spacing is all wrong and, besides that, the cylindrical objects and boxes look distorted.  This happens because when you see and draw the objects individually (cone of focus; regular old looking), you’re not paying attention to how they relate to one another with respect to either size or position.   This is the most common issue with learning to draw from life: loving details applied to improperly sized and incorrectly located pieces of the whole, whether it’s a still life, a landscape or the human figure. 

What if there was a way to get everything properly sized and in its correct relative position before drawing the details?

The “logical” approach of drawing objects one after another does not work because when you focus on each object separately, without consideration for the objects around it, you build in errors of both size and relative position.  Don’t get me wrong, there is a logical approach, it’s just not the one based on focusing on individual objects and drawing them piecemeal. 

The reason so many beginning drawings have these distortions is again, because as you focus in, the dominant left-brain wants to take over the drawing, imposing your currently held mental construct in place of what you are actually seeing and, treating each object or part as if it were separate!  

In other words, the left brain doesn’t perceive objects, in a way that is conducive to helping you draw, until you teach it a new logical progression.

 

Relationships

 

Let’s take this still life example (example 6) and see if we can’t approach it using artist’s vision.  In Examples 7 and 8 (compare to Example 6), we see how focusing on individual objects causes the overall scene to be distorted.  

Now try this: Look in the direction of the still life objects of  (example 6 again), but don’t focus on any specific item.  Your visual picture will be something like Example 9. 

 

 

You can’t see the details of any of the objects, but what you can see is their relationships to one another (see example 10).  Using this information you can then “block in” that is, you can locate and estimate the correct size of all the objects Then using very light pencil lines, you can just put down estimates of where everything is going to be positioned in the scene. 

 

So

 

Blocking In refers to the process of annotating on your page the major elements of your drawing with their correct location and size, and using very faintly drawn basic shapes to set up the composition

 

At this point, you could, for example, hold up your paper and compare your light, “blocked in” sketch with the actual scene---that’s why they invented the easel.  Squint if you must, to soften the focus of the three-dimensional scene so you can make the comparison.   (see Example 11).  The method of seeing everything as a first step is the reason that experienced artists always seem to have all of the objects in their scenes in the correct positions with the relative sizes correct.  Once you have established the positions and sizes of the objects, then proceed to work on the individual parts just like the pros do. 

A little practice seeing the three D space flat and blocking in basic shapes will almost immediately begin to improve your drawings.

So, adding the narrow cone of focus stuff to step wise progression gives us “Regular old looking”, which along with “Memory takeover” make up the two main impediments to seeing correctly.  In the next installment we will look at the ways to prevent or override the Left-brain tendency to interrupt and distort our attempts at accurately depicting what we see. 

 

 

 

 

Seeing (part 1)

“Learning To Draw:  Seeing and the Three Kinds of Memory”.  It has become apparent to me during my years of teaching, that by naming and examining each element that goes into improving drawing skill, I could make the undertaking less mysterious and more logically accessible.   

In my view (no pun intended), accurate Seeing must be understood before the various memory elements the student needs to acquire can be absorbed most effectively.   We must describe each of the three areas of memory briefly, because, one of the three, in particular, directly affect Seeing (artistic seeing).

The Three Kinds of Memory

1.      Memory knowledge of what things look like.  I refer to this type of memory as a Mental construct.

2.      Technique.  This is acquired knowledge and memorized processes which enable the artist to enhance the believability and reality of a drawn object or scene 

   

Both of these types of memories reside in the Left-brain memory storage bank.

 

3.       Muscle memory.  This is the kind of physical memory you acquire by repeating a physical process over and over.  Think doing a one and a half flip off the high board, tying your shoe or simply dashing off your signature. 

4.       

Seeing (artistically) goes way beyond the optical component of looking at things.  Of even greater importance is how the brain processes that visual input.  And, it is the functioning of our memories (Mental Constructs), that is so crucial to the Seeing process

 

Often, even drawing something again (and again) doesn’t achieve the desired result.  This is because something happens when, as untrained artists, we try to draw something accurately.  It is at this stage that many people, who want to learn to draw, become discouraged, assuming that they do not possess the requisite “talent”.  But the problem is not with drawing ability; it is with “seeing” ability. If you separate out the act of “seeing correctly,” and learn and understand its several basic precepts, then your development of drawing skills and abilities proceeds at a much faster pace.  A corollary is that those who try to bypass the seeing step or don’t fully integrate it into their approach improve at a much slower rate.  I have encountered many people who, having not absorbed this fairly simple concept, have wasted years, changed the course of careers even, to hide or compensate for that fact.  Proportional and angular measuring ability, for example, is one of the major processes that form the basis for artistic seeing yet I have had students who felt measuring (see Chapter 2) wasn’t “artistic.” that it seemed too mechanical or slowed them down.; but nothing is further from the truth.  After a very short learning period, measuring becomes a natural even instinctive aid to seeing which expands your artistic capabilities. We’ll cover measuring, in more detail, later.

Seeing an object, the way an accomplished artist would see it is a skill that most of us must learn, and it is not so much an extended learning process as just changing your notion of how to look at things.  This can take as little as five minutes (for the student who is already aware of the seeing problem or 6 months for the student who can’t seem to pry himself loose from old habits.  Some students figure it out on their own -- these are the advanced students in every class.  Yet, for most of us, artistic seeing ability is annoyingly elusive.  To understand it we must first talk about human brain function and how perfectly legitimate habits we develop for one kind of activity can thwart or hinder or ability to undertake a different sort of activity.

 

 Psychological research into brain function has created a whole new understanding of our thought process.  Art educators and in particular, Artist/writer Betty Edwards, in her book Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain, have made it common parlance to talk about the human brain and thought process in terms of right-brain and left-brain.   Memory, stepwise logic, math and language skills, and digging an existing hole deeper (getting a PhD for example) are all predominantly left-brain functions, while perceiving relationships and spatiality, proportional measuring, and digging several other holes in different locations (that is, exploring seemingly unrelated options) are predominantly controlled by the right hemisphere.

  How can we tell that there are distinctly different thought processes which act in different but harmonious and integrated ways to help us navigate through our days?

  Two examples come to mind:

n When you are driving, have you ever been so lost in thought (left brain function) that you have driven for two or three miles before realizing that you weren’t paying attention to what you were doing?  If you have had that experience, and survived, what was it that prevented you from crashing into a tree or rear-ending the car in front of you?  Answer: the right side of your brain, which deals primarily with spatial relationships.  While you were on autopilot, daydreaming, your right brain was doing the steering, adjusting your foot on the gas, and so on.

 

n Another example is the venerable vase face optical illusion.  Most people who have taken an art course have run across this example; however, what’s really happening in the drawing of the vase face isn’t always fully explained beyond the gee-whiz effect of its visual ambiguity. But, it is an excellent tool for explaining the separation of brain function. 

 

In the exercise, the student is asked to draw the silhouette of a face (Example - 1), and then to draw an opposing silhouette facing the original.  Horizontal lines are added to the top and bottom to complete the vase illusion (Example 2).  The crux of the exercise is that the first silhouette is drawn from memory (left-brain), while the facing silhouette requires the student to measure distances and try to match the shapes in reverse while at the same time positioning it in opposition to the first (right-brain).  Try drawing a couple of these and attempt to get a feel for the two different brain functions at work.  The two parts of the vase-face drawing exercise rely on totally different brain processes; one memory, the other spatial organization. Keep in mind how much easier it was to draw the one from memory (utilizing your pre-existing mental construct for the silhouette of a face).   If you are still not totally convinced, I have another example coming up that should help.  

                 

 

Having established that there are two interdependent brain functions that, work in concert to govern our day-to-day activities, let’s see what effect that knowledge has on our ability to draw. 

 

For the most part, our bifurcated, or split brain works exceedingly well; after all, it has evolved over countless centuries to allow us to cope with an increasingly complex world.  In recent times, due to the emphasis placed on left-brain functions by our modern educational system, the left side of our brains gets much more attention than the right.  In our Western culture, as we get beyond second or third grade, right side brain activities often take a backseat to left side ones in the public education system.  Thus, instead of emphasizing subjects like drawing, music, and art we require math, foreign language, writing, sciences and other subjects that rely heavily upon logic and memorization.  Because of this, most people, as they enter adolescence lose or begin to ignore right-brain functions that seem irrelevant to us when we contemplate the likelihood of a career tied to our skill at using our left brain.

 

So, if we assume the Left side of the brain tends to be dominant, why is this a problem?

A.  Memory takeover

As a child you probably did a lot of drawing. Then, at about age 10 or 11, art (that is, drawing), took a back seat as you began to concentrate on learning math, English, history and other left-brain dominant subjects.  If you even  had an art teacher at that age, it would have been unusual if he or she were into teaching fundamental drawing skills.  Art classes you had would probably have been of the more general all-purpose variety, with exercises in color, craft projects, or perhaps computer graphics. Eventually, you either quit drawing all together or if you wanted to persist, you started your own program of self-study that, perhaps, involved copying comics, or some other pop culture imagery. 

You may possess only the technical skills and knowledge of a ten-year-old or you may have been memorizing Anime imagery or copying Lord of the Rings fantasy drawings, but it is important to understand, that whatever skill level you have attained, the left side of your brain, specifically, the part that keeps track of visual memory, will be part of the mix when you attempt to draw a 3D subject from life.  We rely on memory; it is, in fact, a large part of why we improve in our ability to depict something.  Each time we carefully draw a subject we accumulate more visual data which then informs our next rendition of that subject or other similar subjects

The difficulty arises when we or any individual, at any skill level, relies too heavily on current memory to deal with a new subject.  Someone who has not drawn since the age of ten, trying to draw a real 3D house, will dredge up their “ten-year old’s mental image” of a house (because it is easier!) with predictable results.  A more advanced student, who learned to draw by copying fantasy characters, will have a better idea for drawing the house (they’re stored memory will be better) but they will still embellish with the stylistic conventions of the memorized imagery. 

The single biggest impediment to being able to draw what you see accurately is the tendency of your left-brain (the dominant half) to interfere with or take over the drawing function.

 

Left-brain takeover is what happens when a drawing you’ve started, suddenly begins to go wrong.  Remember the vase face and how much easier it was to draw the profile from memory than it was to draw the second, opposing profile?  Your brain’s dominant half wants to take over the function of drawing for the same reason: because it is easier.  Whenever you draw something, your left brain will try to impose its memory of that object, no matter how imperfect that memory is.   So, right in the middle of your drawing, without realizing it, you allow your remembered concept of the object to take over and distort the actual rendition you are attempting. 

Object memories can be child-like symbol memories that you developed early in life, (like a football with a circle in the middle for an eye) but did not flesh-out because you weren’t “into” art. Or they can be the more elaborate memories of the stylized work you copied from during a later stage of your development.   The result is that rather than drawing an accurate rendition of what you are seeing, you draw an approximation of what you see because you lack a tactic to help you draw it accurately, and it’s easier just to revert to stored memory

You need an “approach” to drawing from life that doesn’t rely on currently held memories.  

 

Next we’ll look at strategies you can learn that will allow you to resolve perception issues that create distortions and that will help you build better memories (more accurate mental Constructs).

 

 

 About 10 or 12 years ago, I started work on a book that was meant to help beginning students to overcome common difficulties they were apt to encounter when learning to  draw.  For various reasons I never finished the book but, with a few updates, I do think the information could be of value.  In that spirit I plan to post excerpts from the book while emending and enhancing some of the ideas along the way, which will lead to slight disparities between posts.  This shouldn't interfere with understanding the  main concepts presented.  

The initial text was titled Drawing: A Quick Approach to Gaining Professional Level Skill.  As I continued teaching ,learning and ruminating on the drawing process, it occurred to me that a new way of ordering the information I was presenting might give fresh insight.  So, in that spirit (again), I retitled the book:  "Learning to Draw; Seeing and the Three Kinds of Memory".  This didn't require me to drastically change the information I was presenting, only to reorder it in what I think, is a more logical sequence.  By posting This material on the Blog I am hopping not only to offer new insights, but to illicit feedback about the overall concept and the usefulness of the ideas. 

I'll start by posting my initial Introduction and then add subsequent chapters, in the coming weeks.  I will be adding visual examples, many from my classes but some from other (I assume)  copywrite free sources.  

Introduction 

Why another book about drawing?  It’s a legitimate question, since there are already hundreds of worthy books on the subject. Yet, in my experience of 35 years as a professional artist and teacher, I have encountered too many talented, even gifted, drawers/sketchers/artists who have struggled on as draftsmen despite having read these books and having taken countless courses, seminars and workshops. There are some very good books out there, of course; I have read many of them myself and have even used some of their advice in my drawing classes over the years.  But, these books generally take many things about new students for granted.  They assume that the readers have already acquired basic ways of looking at the world around them, and that drawing is a straightforward matter of transferring what they see to paper.

 

What is missing from most of the books out there is an explanation of why the drawings you make don’t look like the author’s examples.  Some books do give advice on how to overcome common problems that are encountered, but the advice merely suggests approaches but doesn’t explain why doing these things is essential.  They give advice that is either incomplete or so expansive as to lose focus on the main issues.

 

I wrote this book to help demystify and explain the initial stages of the drawing process so your drawings will look like the examples.  Comprehending the artist’s approach to seeing and organizing space is crucial to making rapid progress as a draftsman. Once the drawing student has mastered the basic seeing skills, other areas like learning style and development of hand skills, will improve rapidly. As the student becomes convinced that he (or she) is on the right track, he will become doubly committed to mastering technique and will then begin to advance even more quickly.

 

Teaching students to see has become a primary goal of my teaching. The students I work with must prepare for careers in applied art fields by developing professional-level drawing skills within two short years, often while carrying a full course load. Although this book was inspired by my work with these students, the approaches and methods I explain here are applicable to anyone.

 

No book can teach you how to draw. Not even this one.  What this book can do, however, is give you a set of tips and instructions to follow (along with a little inspiration) so that you can teach yourself. The actual learning process, its progress, rapidity and extent depend upon your own will and commitment.  If you are among the fortunate few who were born with a pencil grafted to their arm, then no prompting by a book or instructor is needed. However, if you are like most of us, and you have some basic talent but know that you need to work on it, then a book like this one is a good next {first} step. 

 

The first four chapters of this manual deal with seeing, developing essential memories, improving eye/hand skills, and an approach to learning so that your speed of progress is maximized. This part of the book specifically describes the “seeing issue” and shows you a proven set of strategies to overcome the mental conflicts that cause so much frustration for students.  Once you’ve mastered the seeing correctly,  you will learn ways to speed up the acquisition of the other skills you’ll need. The last few chapters offer information to help you with specific drawing issues, like the rules of light and shading technique-- ideas to accelerate your progress toward developing a personal style. Many of the thoughts on style are my personal observations, and students are referred to other volumes, which I have listed in Appendix B, to further expand their knowledge of the subject.

 

So, this is a short book and one that I hope is the book you were looking for, the book that tells you straight what you need to know to teach yourself. It is the book I looked for in vain when I was struggling as a young artist, which is why I decided to write it.