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.