Drawing so hard
Before you continue in this book, I strongly advise you to complete a pre-instructional drawing. This is a yardstick by which you will see improvement in your skill level of drawing. As your drawing skills improve, your knowledge of drawing leaps ahead of your actual ability to draw. It is easy to become frustrated by your apparent lack of progress. Yet, in fact, your abilities have improved tremendously. Tracking progress by using pre-instructional drawings will help you see clearly what you have learned and will provide a great deal of amusement when you go back and see your original efforts.
Most people, including many artists, have trouble drawing faces. Why is this? It's because drawing is "seeing." Most people draw what they think faces look like, and the end result may not match the image in their minds. So, first I will help you discover why you have trouble seeing. Then, I will show you how artists see and what tools they use to help them translate their mental images into drawings. Finally, you will learn what to see, or how to render the facial features themselves.
Drawing things the way they really are is not a gift given to artists. You may think drawing has something to do with hand-eye coordination, but it really has everything to do with how the mind works. Your mind takes information from the surrounding environment and places it into patterns—symbols representing an idea, concept or information. This organization into understandable patterns is called perception.
There are three important points you should know about perceptions:
• Perceptions are filters through which you see the world.
• Perceptions are powerful.
• Perceptions do not change.
Perceptions are filters
Perceptions are filters through which you see the world. Your mind records and processes information through the five senses. This information, however, is not recorded like a movie camera. Instead, it's translated into an understandable form for future use.
When you first started school, you learned that the shape shown below was the letter a. Whenever you saw that shape, you knew what it meant and the sound it made. It was not necessary to relearn that shape every time you read it in a word. It could look like any of the shapes you see below, and you would still know it was the letter a and that it represented a sound. In fact, you didn't even think about the shape of the letter a after you learned it. Your mind provided the information for you. You no longer really "saw" or had to think about the letter a.
Simply stated, this is how the mind processes information. It memorizes what a shape represents, like how the letter a represents a sound, and every time you need to write that sound, your mind
No matter how you look at it, you know these are all examples of the letter a. Thanks to your mind's ability to memorize patterns, you don't have to relearn what this symbol means every time you see it. These patterns also allow you to quickly recall the sound associated with the letter.
provides this shape: a. It's important that your mind does this. Imagine what would happen if every time you came to this letter you had to relearn what it meant!
Thus, the first point you need to realize is that the untrained mind draws pictures from memorized patterns. When you draw a face, your mind provides the memorized shapes representing the eyes, nose and mouth, not the real shape of the facial features. You draw what you perceive to be real, not what is real.
Where did your mind get these shapes? Let's look at some pre-instruc-tional drawings and figure out the source of the shapes.
Memorized facial patterns These drawings are typical pre-instruc-tional drawings by nonartists. They have some rather standard patterns representing the face.
A typical pre-instruc-tional facial drawing.
Eye patterns
These eyes are part of pattern memorization for the average person.
Nose patterns
Noses offer a variety of shapes such as these.
Mouth patterns
Mouths might have a "have a nice day" smile or an upper and a lower pair of lips.
fpTF Your drawings are based on perceptions formed from pattern recognition and memorization.
Perceptions are powerful
Perceptional filters will prevent you from seeing information that is clearly before you. These filters may prevent you from drawing something accurately, even if it is right in front of you.
Perceptions do not change
Perceptions do not change unless a significant event occurs. Without instruction, you will continue to see and do things according to your understanding of them. My greatest wish is that this book will constitute a significant event and that as a result, your perceptions on drawing faces will change.
Pre-instructional drawing
This drawing is by Taylor Perkins. She was looking at her face when she drew this sketch—every detail was in front of her—yet the information was meaningless. Notice, for example, that her eyes are placed near the top of her head. Had she been able to see her face without filters, she would have noticed that her eyes are in the middle of her face.
¿.TIP To break patterns, you must first recognize that you have them.
After instruction
The photograph that Taylor was looking at provided all the information she needed to create a realistic self-portrait, as shown by this drawing she completed after a bit of instruction. The power of perceptional filters and the persistent nature of the mind to continually process information into patterns is the challenge to drawing well—but you can learn!
Taylor Perkins, Age 7, self-portrait
14" x 11" (36cm x 28cm) Collection of the Perkins Family
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