A further complication
One further complication of seeing needs mentioning. The eyes gather visual information by constantly scanning the environment. But visual data from out there, gathered by sight, is not the end of the story. At least part, and perhaps much of what we see is changed, interpreted, or conceptualized in ways that depend on a person's training, mind-set, and past experiences. We tend to see what we expect to see or what we decide we have seen. This expectation or decision, however, often is not a...
Vases and faces An exercise for the double brain
A puzzle If one picture is worth a thousand words, can a thousand words explicate one picture A Transformational Theory of Aesthetics, London Routledge, 1990 The exercises that follow are specifically designed to help you understand the shift from dominant left-hemisphere mode to subdominant R-mode. I could go on describing the process over and over in words, but only you can experience for yourself this cognitive shift, this slight change in subjective state. As Fats Waller once said, If you...
The mystery of the choppedoff skull
Most people find it quite difficult to perceive the relative proportions of the features and the skull. In this introduction to profile-portrait drawing, I'll concentrate on two critical relationships that are persistently difficult for beginning drawing students to correctly perceive the location of eye level in relation to the length of the whole head and the location of the ear in the profile view. I believe these are two examples of perceptual errors caused by the brain's propensity to...
Showing of profile portraits
Study the drawings on the following pages. Notice the variations in styles of drawing. Check the proportions by measuring with your pencil. In the next chapter, you will learn the fourth skill of drawing, the perception of lights and shadows. The main exercise will be a fully modeled, tonal, volumetric self-portrait and will bring us full-circle to your Before Instruction self-portrait for comparison. Your After Instruction self-portrait will be either a three-quarter view or a full-face view....
Using the negative spaces of handwriting
In Japanese as well as in European American calligraphy, the negative spaces of the letters are as important as the lines we generally think of as constituting the letters. Examine the alphabets, first for enclosed, rounded negative spaces a, b, d, 1. Practice these rounded negative spaces. Try not to think that you are drawing the letter o, for example. Think decide that you are drawing the space inside and that it is a beautiful shape, embraced by the line with its precise closure. Write your...
Drawing materials
The materials list for the first two editions was very simple some inexpensive bond typing paper or a pad of inexpensive drawing paper, a pencil, and an eraser. I mentioned that a 4B drawing pencil is pleasant to use, as the lead is smooth and makes a clear, dark line, but an ordinary number 2 writing pencil is nearly as good. For this edition, you still need these basic materials, but I wish to suggest a few additional aids that will help you learn to draw quickly. You will need a piece of...
Crosshatching a lighter shadow
Before we advance to the next drawing, your self-portrait, I want to show you how to crosshatch. This is a technical term for creating a variety of tones or values in a drawing by laying down a sort of carpet of pencil strokes, often crossing the strokes at angles. Figure 10-14 is an example of a tonal drawing built almost entirely of crosshatches. I'll also review the proportions of the head in frontal view and in three-quarter view. In former years, I thought that crosshatching was a natural...
Placing color in the brain
Given sufficient light to perceive colors, scientists also tell us that the brain's reaction to colors seems to depend on the differences in thinking modes of the various sections of the brain. Very bright, intense colors and colors that shine and glitter draw a response from the so-called primitive brain, the limbic system. This response is an emotional one, perhaps connected to our biological heritage of color as communication. For example, many people say, When I get mad, I see red The...
A warmup exercise A copy of the Courbet selfportrait
Imagine that you are honored by a visit from the nineteenth-century French artist, Gustave Courbet pronounced goos-tav koor-bay , and that he has agreed to sit for a portrait drawing, wearing his jaunty hat and smoking his pipe. The artist is in a rather serious mood, quiet and thoughtful. See Figure. 10-3, page 197. Imagine further that you have arranged a spotlight so that it shines from above and in front of Courbet, illuminating the top of his face but leaving the eyes and much of the face...
Before and after A personal comparison
Your recent R-mode drawings, on the other hand, are more complex, more linked to actual perceptual information from out there, drawn from the present moment, not from memorized symbols of the past. These drawings are therefore more realistic. A friend might remark upon looking at your drawings that you had uncovered a hidden talent. In a way, I believe this is true, although I am convinced that this talent is not confined to a few, but instead is as widespread as, say, talent for reading. Your...
Taking the next step
I'm sure you are aware that we have moved from seeing and drawing every detailed edge, as in Pure Contour Drawing, to precisely seeing and drawing negative space, to seeing exact proportional relationships, to accurately seeing and drawing the large and small shapes of lights and shadows. As you continue to draw after completing these lessons, you will begin to find your own unique style of using these fundamental components. Your personal style may evolve into a rapid, vigorous calligraphy as...
The importance of composing within the format
In Chapter Five, we saw that young children have a strong grasp of the importance of the format. Children's consciousness of the bounding edges of the format controls the way they distribute the Fig. 7-3. Joan Miro, Personages with Star 1933 . Courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago. Fig. 7-3. Joan Miro, Personages with Star 1933 . Courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago. forms and spaces, and young children often produce nearly flawless compositions. The composition by a six-year-old in...
Formal perspective versus informal perspective
But the system of formal perspective is not without problems. Followed to the letter, strictly applied perspective rules can result in rather dry and rigid drawings. Perhaps the most serious problem with the formal perspective system is that it is so left-brained. It employs the style of left-hemisphere processing analysis, sequential logical cogitation, and mental calculations within a pre-prescribed system. There are vanishing points, horizon lines, perspective of circles and ellipses, and so...
Half a brain is better than none A whole brain would be better
With their sequenced verbal and numerical classes, the schools you and I attended were not equipped to teach the right-hemisphere mode. The right hemisphere is not, after all, under very The nineteenth-century mathematician Henri Poincare described a sudden intuition that gave him the solution to a difficult problem One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and could not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable...
A review of Rmode
It might be helpful to review what R-mode feels like. Think back. You have made the shift several times now slightly, perhaps, while doing the Vase Faces drawings and more intensely just now while drawing the Stravinsky. In the R-mode state, did you notice that you were somewhat unaware of the passage of time that the time you spent drawing may have been long or short, but you couldn't have known until you checked it afterward If there were people near, did you notice that you couldn't listen...
What are negative spaces and positive forms
Two terms traditionally used in art are negative spaces and positive forms. In the drawings of the bighorn sheep, for example, the sheep is the positive form and the sky behind and ground below the animal are the negative spaces. The word negative in negative spaces is a bit unfortunate because it carries, well, a negative connotation. I have searched in vain for a better term, so we'll stick with this one. The terms negative spaces and positive forms have the advantage of being easy to...
Handedness left or right
Students ask many questions about left- and right-handedness. This is a good place to address the subject, before we begin instruction in the basic skills of drawing. I will attempt to clarify only a few points, because the extensive research on handedness is difficult and complicated. First, classifying people as strictly left-handed or right-handed is not quite accurate. People range from being completely left-handed or completely right-handed to being completely ambidextrous that is, able to...
Recalling the art of your childhood
In the next chapter we'll review your childhood development as an artist. The developmental sequence of children's art is linked to development changes in the brain. In the early stages, infants' brain hemispheres are not clearly specialized for separate functions. Lateralization the consolidation of specific functions into one hemisphere or the other progresses gradually through the childhood years, paralleling the acquisition of language skills and the symbols of childhood art. Lateralization...
Drawing as a mirror and metaphor for the artist
The object of drawing is not only to show what you are trying to portray, but also to show you. To illustrate how much personal style is embedded in drawings, I wish to show you two drawings on page 24, done at the same time by two different people myself and artist teacher Brian Bomeisler. We sat on either side of our model, Heather Allan. We were demonstrating how to draw a profile portrait for a group of students, the same profile portrait you will learn to do in Chapter Nine. The materials...
The role of Rmode in perceiving shadows
In the same curious way that L-mode apparently will pay almost no attention to negative space or upside-down information, it seems also to ignore lights and shadows. L-mode, after all, may be unaware that R-mode perceptions help with naming and categorizing. You will therefore need to learn to see lights and shadows at a conscious level. To illustrate for yourself how we interpret rather than see lights and shadows, turn this book upside down and look at Gustave Courbet's Self-portrait, Figure...
Using Pure Contour Drawing to bypass your symbol system
In my classes, I demonstrate Pure Contour Drawing, describing how to use the method as I draw if I can manage to keep talking an L-mode function while I'm drawing. Usually, I start out all right but begin trailing off in mid-sentence after a minute or so. By that time, however, my students have the idea. Following the demonstration, I show examples of previous students' Pure Contour Drawings. See examples of students' drawings on page 95. Several pieces of drawing paper. You will draw on the...
The importance of proportion in portrait drawing
All drawing involves proportion, whether the subject is still life, landscape, figure drawing, or portrait drawing. Proportion is important whether an artwork's style is realistic, abstract, or completely nonobjective that is, without recognizable forms from the external world . Realistic drawing in particular depends heavily on proportional correctness. Therefore, realistic drawing is especially effective in training the eye to see the thing-as-it-is in its relational proportions. Individuals...
The three basic portrait poses
In portrait drawing, artists have traditionally posed their models or themselves in self-portraits in one of three views Full face The model faces the artist directly with both sides of the model's face fully visible to the artist. Profile The view you drew in the last exercises. The model faces toward the artist's left or right and only one side one half of the model's face is visible to the artist. Three-quarter view The model makes a half-turn toward the artist's left or right, making...
A warmup exercise
To illuminate for yourself the connection of edges, spaces, and relationships in portrait drawing, I suggest that you copy make a drawing of John Singer Sargent's beautiful profile portrait of Mme. Pierre Gautreau, which Sargent drew in 1883 Figure 9-23 . You may wish turn it upside down. For the past forty years or so, most art teachers have not recommended copying masterworks as an aid to learning to draw. With the advent of modern art, many art schools rejected traditional teaching methods...
Irrefutable evidence that the top of the head is important after all
First, I have drawn the lower part of the faces of two models, one in profile and one in three-quarter view see Figure 9-13 . Contrary to what one would expect, most students have few serious problems in learning to see and draw the features. The problem is not the features it's in perceiving the skull that things go wrong. What I want to demonstrate is how important it is to provide the full skull for the features not to cut off the top of the head because your brain is less interested and...
Pressing on to a pastel world
Your next purchase should be a set of pastels, which are pure pigments pressed into round or square chalks sometimes called pastel crayons using a minimum of binder. You can buy a basic set of twelve chalks ten hues plus black and white or a larger set of up to one hundred hues. But be assured that the small basic set is sufficient for these first exercises. I must warn you that pastels have some serious drawbacks. They are quite soft and break easily. They rub off on your hands and clothes,...
Defining perspective
The term perspective comes from the Latin word prospectus, meaning to look forward. Linear perspective, the system most familiar to us, was perfected during the Renaissance by European artists. Linear perspective enabled artists to reproduce visual changes of lines and forms as they appear in three-dimensional space. Various cultures have developed different conventions or perspective systems. Egyptian and Oriental artists, for example, developed a kind of stair-step or tiered perspective, in...
Placing the ear in a profile portrait
The next measurement is extremely important in helping you perceive correctly the placement of the ear, which in turn will help you perceive correctly the width of the head in profile and prevent chopping off the back of the skull. On almost every head, the position of the ear doesn't vary much. On your own face, use your pencil again to measure the length from the inside corner of your eye to the bottom of your chin Figure 9-18 . Now, holding that measurement, lay the pencil horizontally along...
Drawing another blank and getting a line on the profile
Draw another blank now, this time for a profile. The profile blank is a somewhat different shape like an oddly shaped egg. This is because the human skull Figure 9-17 , seen from the side, is a different shape than the skull seen from the front. It's easier to Fig. 9-15. Vincent Van Gogh, Woman Mourning 1882 . Courtesy of Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, Otterlo. Fig. 9-16. Albrecht Durer, Four Heads 1513 or 1515 . Courtesy of The Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum. Kansas City, Missouri Nelson Fund are...