10 steps to Learning to See

I developed and occasionally teach a class I call “Learning to See.” This is my “beginning drawing” class, and I like to emphasize that this is NOT a class about learning to draw.

Huh? A beginning drawing class that’s not about learning to draw?

Yes, that’s right. Because I *can* teach you to see properly but I *cannot* teach you to draw properly. Seeing involves training your eye to look critically and to avoid what you brain is trying to decipher at about 100 billion cycles per second, vs. what’s really there. Drawing involves teaching your muscles and nerves to move your hand properly to make the mark.

To wit, the “art” is the thing in your head, not the thing on the paper. A million child prodigies in art don’t impress me. A genius that is struggling to get the ideas out onto paper does impress me – but even moreso if the stuff that hits the paper is actually good. The reason is that one is the savant, blindly putting things on paper with little intent, is akin to a photocopy machine. I’ve seen lots of kids that can whip out a fairly realistic likeness in no time flat. So what? Where’s the spirit? Where’s the candor? Where’s the insight? What are you trying to say? You can be a realist and still be expressive.

Okay, back to the steps to learning to see (not necessarily in order):

1. Tell your brain to shut up. Really. It sits up there, all cocky and arrogant, saying, “hey, I know what an eye looks like, buddy!” and other such nonsense. Don’t listen.
2. Nothing is real; the sooner you get over that, the sooner you can move on to Zen-like knowing that you don’t know, drawing by not drawing, and seeing by not seeing. I’m not saying that you have to bust out the Bodhi tree or anything, just accept some things. Richard Bach’s Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah is a good read if you’re struggling here.
3. Lines do not exist. That’s right, they don’t. Edges don’t exist, either. All you really have are optical illusions brought about by shaped objects extending into perspective.
4. Your eye, like your brain, will try to fool you. Ever seen those optical illusions where the room gets smaller and the man standing there appears to get taller, but he’s really the same size? Similarly, perspective doesn’t really “exist,” it’s just the way we see the world. Objects that are far away are not really smaller than close up objects (well, not necessarily). All that one-point, two-point, and three-point perspective stuff from high school art class is just a good way to represent the way our eyes see the world. Think about this: you have 2 eyes merging 1 vision, upside down, reflecting on a curved inner surface of your eye (sphere), trying to interpret a curved outer world (sphere of the earth). It’s amazing we get around at all!
5. Now that we’re past the tough stuff, what you have to do is train your eye to move with your hand. That’s right, for every millimeter your eye moves over the surface of an object, your hand should do the same. This is why those “silly” scribble drawings a la The Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study by Nicolaides and Drawing on the right side of the Brain by Betty Edwards are routinely prescribed. It’s been called many things, but “learning to see” is what I call it. You can also call it “muscle memory.”
6. When you’ve graduated from those blind, modified-blind, and pure contour drawings, it’s time to move on up. Now you need to learn to see what most people call “form.” Form is simply a 2D representation of a 3D object, drawn to resemble the 3D object. You might know it as shading. The Renaissance artists used something they call “chiaroscuro,” which is just a fancy name for light and dark. Traditional chiaroscuro has five points that you should learn to recognize on objects: highlight, half tone, turning, reflected light, and cast shadow. I’ll cover these in a future post.
7. Negative spaces are the area between things, not necessarily the object itself. Sometimes it’s easier to draw that weird horse-head shape formed by the arm of the chair and the seat of the chair than it is to try to get the curve of the wood just so. Either way, you can catch yourself making big mistakes if you pay attention to what you’re NOT drawing – specifically by drawing what you’re not drawing so your drawing comes out better. That’s a mouthful but it makes sense. Negatives will definitely save you in portraiture – you can find all kinds of negatives on a face, like around eyes, between bone structures, in the hair, etc.
8. Measure twice, cut once. Or so say most carpenters and handymen that I know. And it’s sage advice, coming from years of experience. Now, in portraiture, you’re not going to have an expensive scrap of walnut if you make a mistake, but it’s good to get it done right by measuring because sometimes you just can’t seem to erase something fully. This means comparing, comparing, comparing. See my previous post about tuning a guitar to itself. You can measure relative distances, relative heights, relative widths, or relative angles. Or any combination therein. It’s up to you. Just keep your arm at a full arm’s length, not bent at all. Don’t forget to do that silly artist’s squint thing, too. It’s fun and people look at you funny.
9. Color is always a challenge for artists new to portraiture. I can’t tell you how many glowing orange portraits I’ve seen with bright white eyes and teeth. Yikes, that’s not good unless you’re trying to write a new comic book about some sort of irradiated super hero. Use a viewfinder for colors – a little piece of cardboard with a small hole cut in it. Isolate a color and figure out that color. It’ll be tedious at first but your eye will get better and better at it. Pinky promise. An alternative is to digitize your picture and use the “eye dropper” tool (you can do this right in Firefox or use a free image editor like The GIMP) and then paint a large area with that color. Wow, you’ll wonder where that color came from and you’ll remember that you made the mistake of believing your eye and picked pink instead of that muddy mauve color for the lips. Remember, humans are really a semi-transparent yellowish bag wrapped around reddish muscles, with blue and red blood flowing through our bodies. Those colors mix together distinctly for flesh and transparent layers are the best way to get “glowing” skin.
10. Lather, rinse, repeat

Stay tuned as I elaborate on these topics (with image goodness) in future posts.