Edwards Betty. The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

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and slide projector. In Figure 7-16, the first drawing, the student

had great difficulty reconciling his stored knowledge of what the

objects were "supposed to look like" with what he saw. Notice in

the drawing that the legs of the cart are all the same length, and a

symbol is used for the wheels. When he shifted to using a viewfin-

der and drawing only the shapes of the negative spaces, he was far

more successful (Figure 7-17). The visual information apparently

came through clearly; the drawing looks confident and as though

it were done with ease. And, in fact, it was done with ease,

because using negative space enables one to escape the mental

crunch that occurs when perceptions don't match conceptions.

It's not that the visual information gathered by regarding

spaces rather than objects is really less complex or is in any way

easier to draw. The spaces, after all, share edges with the form.

But by looking at the spaces, we free R-mode from the domina-

tion of L-mode. Put another way, by focusing on information that

does not suit the style of the verbal system, we cause the job to be

shifted to the mode appropriate for drawing. Thus, the conflict

ends, and in R-mode, the brain processes spatial, relational infor-

mation with ease.

Showing all manner of negative spaces

These drawings are intriguingly pleasurable to look at, even

when the positive forms are as mundane as schoolroom chairs.

One could speculate that the reason is that the method of draw-

ing raises to a conscious level the unity of positive and negative

shapes and spaces. Another reason may be that the technique

results in excellent compositions with particularly interesting

divisions of shapes and spaces within the format.

Learning to see clearly through drawing can surely enhance

your capacity to take a clear look at problems and to be better

able to see things in perspective. In the next chapter, we'll take up

the perception of relationships, a skill you can put to use in as

many directions as your mind can take you.

Fig. 7-16.

Fig. 7-17.

PERCEIVING THE SHAPE OF A SPACE: THE POSITIVE ASPECTS OF NEGATIVE SPACE 133

Demonstration drawing by

instructor Lisbeth Firmin.

Demonstration drawing by the

author.

Demonstration drawing by the

author.

Student drawing.

Student drawing by Sandy DePhillippo.

134 THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Child Seated in a Wicker

Chair (1874). Courtesy of the Sterling and Francine

Clark Art Institute.

Observe how Winslow Homer used negative space in

his drawing of a child in a chair. Try copying this

drawing.

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). Studies of Arms and Legs.

Courtesy of Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen,

Rotterdam.

Copy this drawing. Turn the original upside down and

draw the negative spaces. Then turn the drawing right

side up and complete the details inside the forms. These

"difficult" foreshortened forms become easy to draw if

attention is focused on the spaces around the forms.

PERCEIVING THE SHAPE OF A SPACE: THE POSITIVE ASPECTS OF NEGATIVE SPACE

Relationships

in a New Mode:

Putting Sighting

in Perspective

Lupe Ramirez.

n this chapter, you will learn the third basic skill of drawing,

how to see and draw relationships. You will learn how to

draw "in perspective" and "in proportion." Another term for

acquiring this skill is "learning how to sight."

Learning this skill is perhaps comparable to learning the

rules of grammar in reading and writing. Just as good grammar

causes words and phrases to hang together logically and to com-

municate ideas clearly, skillful sighting of proportions and per-

spective causes edges, spaces, relationships, lights and shadows to

come together with visual logic. Clear perception of relation-

ships enables us to depict on a flat surface the world we see

around us. Moreover, just as learning how to use grammar skill-

fully gives us power with words, learning how to draw in perspec-

tive and in proportion will give your drawings power through the

illusion of space.

In speaking of grammar, I am referring to the mechanics of

language, not the tedious naming of the parts of speech. By

mechanics, I mean getting the subject and verb to agree, using the

rules of word order and sentence structure, and so on. I couldn't

parse a complicated sentence today if I tried my best (which prob-

ably indicates its usefulness or lack thereof), but I've learned and

practiced the mechanics of language for so long they are on auto-

matic. This is what we are aiming for in this chapter: You will learn

to use perspective and proportion in your drawing. You will not

learn tedious and cumbersome terminology of vanishing points,

converging parallel lines, and perspective of ellipses. You will

learn the mechanics of sighting, which is what most artists use.

Some of my students, nevertheless, still complain that learn-

ing to sight seems so "left-brained" after the R-mode joy of draw-

ing edges and negative spaces. Indeed, there are lots of little steps

and instructions in the beginning. But almost every skill requires

a component similar to sighting in drawing. For example, learn-

ing to drive a car requires that at some point you learn the rules of

the road. Tedious? Yes, but without them, you are very likely to

be arrested or to have an accident. Significantly, once these rules

are learned and "on automatic," you drive a car by the rules with-

out even thinking of them.

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

138

It is the same with drawing. Once you have worked your way

through the next exercise, you will have learned the "rules of the

road" of drawing. With a bit of practice, sighting goes on auto-

matic and you will hardly be aware of taking sights and compar-

ing proportions. Best of all, you will have achieved the power to

depict three-dimensional space in your drawings.

Students of drawing who learn everything except how to

sight relationships greatly handicap their drawing and find them-

selves constantly making baffling mistakes in proportion and per-

spective. This problem plagues students new to drawing and, I

might add, some rather advanced students as well.

Why does this skill seem so difficult? First, it is a two-part

skill. The first part is sighting angles relative to vertical and hori-

zontal, and the second part is sighting proportions relative to each

other. In addition, the skill requires that one deal with ratios and

comparisons that seem quite "left-brained." And, finally, it

requires that one confronts and deals with paradoxes. For exam-

ple, we can know that a ceiling is flat and the corner is a right

angle. But on the picture plane, the edges of the ceiling are not

horizontal and the corner angles are not right angles at all. They

are oblique angles. As you can imagine, we'll have to carefully

outmaneuver your L-mode, which will soon be saying, "This

doesn't make sense!" Or, "This is too complicated! I'll never get

it!" Or, "This stuff is stupid!"

On my word, learning how to sight relationships is not bor-

ing; it is powerful—it unlocks space. I agree, the skill is compli-

cated, but you've learned other complicated things before

this—how to read and write, for example. And sighting is

definitely not stupid; it is intellectually fascinating—witness the

many great thinkers of the Renaissance who grappled with the

problem of how to depict space on a flat surface.

Once L-mode complaints are set aside, I believe you will

actually enjoy learning this skill. I'm sure you can see the connec-

tion between learning to see and draw what is right there in front

of your eyes and learning to be a more "clear-sighted" person,

able to deal with contradictory information and the many para-

doxes of our world. Be prepared for all of the objections. Your

Demonstration drawing

by Grace Kennedy.

Demonstration drawing

by the author.

RELATIONSHIPS IN A NEW MODE: PUTTING SIGHTING IN PERSPECTIVE

139

Fig. 8-1. Roll up a tube of paper and

check the relationship of sizes of a

nearby object (someone's head, for

example) and a similar object far-

ther away. You will be surprised at

the apparent change in size.

Fig. 8-2. Laurie Kuroyama.

Notice the great change in head

size from near to far.

Fig. 8-3.

L-mode will have a field day, but stay with me! I'll try to be as

clear as possible.

On dealing with the two-part skill of sighting angles

and proportions

The term sighting really means seeing, but seeing in the artist's

special way—seeing relationships on the picture plane (See Fig-

ures 8-1 and 8-2). All of sighting is comparison: What is this angle

compared to vertical? How big is the apple compared to the

melon? How wide is the table compared to its length? All com-

parisons are made relative to constants: Angles are compared to

the constants vertical and horizontal. Sizes (proportions) are also

compared to a constant—our Basic Unit.

On dealing with ratios: The root of the word "relationship" is

ratio. In mathematics, ratios are expressed as numbers—1:2 means

one of this to two of that. Ratios seem like a left-brained concept

because they are strongly connected in our minds with mathe-

matics. But we use ratios in many ordinary activities. In cooking,

for example, candy is one part liquid to two parts sugar—that is,

1:2. In map reading, city X is three times as far as city Y—the ratio

is 3:1. In drawing, ratios become handy tags to assess proportional

relationships among the parts of a composition. The artist

chooses something to be "One," our Basic Unit, and that unit is

rationalized or proportionalized with all other parts.

To illustrate, the width of a window can be called "One," the

Basic Unit. In comparison, let's say that the window is twice as

long as it is wide. The ratio is 1:2. The artist draws the width, calls

it "One," measures it as "One" and then measures off two Basic

Units, counting "One to one, two." The ratio is 1:2. It's an easy way

to tag and remember a proportion long enough to transfer it into

your drawing.

On dealing with paradox: Seen flattened on the plane, a table

may appear (by taking a sight) to be narrower than you know it to

be (see Figure 8-3). The sighted ratio might be 1:8, for example.

You must learn to "swallow" this visual paradox and draw what

you have seen on the plane. Only then will the table, in your

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

140

Sighting can be used to determine

the relationship of lengths and

widths of forms. When drawing a

table viewed from an oblique

angle, for example, an artist first

determines angles of the edges rel-

ative to horizontal and vertical by

sighting, as in Figure 8-4.

The next perception required is

how wide the table is (from this

viewpoint) in relation to its length.

This apparent width relative to

length will vary from viewpoint to

viewpoint, depending on where the

viewer's eye level happens to be.

1. Holding the pencil on a plane

parallel to your eyes and at arm's

length, with the elbow locked to

keep the scale constant, measure

the width of the table. Place the

eraser of the pencil so it coincides

with one corner of the table and

place your thumb at the other cor-

ner. This is your Basic Unit (Figure

8-5).

2. Still keeping your elbow locked

and with the pencil still parallel to

your eyes, carry that measurement

to the long side of the table (Figure

8-5). How long is the table, relative

to its width? In this instance, the

ratio is one to one and a half (1:1+1/2)

(Figure 8-6).

3. Next, you will take a sight on the

table legs by holding your pencil

vertically, taking note of the angle

of one leg relative to vertical. Are

the table legs perfectly vertical or

are they at an angle? Draw the leg

closest to you. You can take a sight

on the length of the leg relative

(again) to the width, your Basic

Unit (Figure 8-7).

Fig. 8-6.

RELATIONSHIPS IN A NEW MODE: PUTTING SIGHTING IN PERSPECTIVE

Fig. 8-4.

141

"Point of view is worth eighty points

— Alan Kay, computer

scientist and Disney

Fellow

drawing appear, paradoxically, to be the size and shape you know-

it to be. Moreover, the angles of the tabletop may appear to be

different from what you know to be right angles. You must "swal-

low" this paradox as well.

Perspective and proportion

Learning to draw in perspective requires that we see things as

they are out there in the external world. We must put aside our

prejudgments, our stored and memorized stereotypes and habits

of thinking. We must overcome false interpretations, which are

often based on what we think must be out there even though we

may never have taken a really clear look at what is right in front

of our eyes.

I'm sure you can see the connection to problem solving. One

of the first steps in solving problems is to scan the relevant factors

and to put things "into perspective" and "into proportion." This

process requires the capacity to see the various parts of a problem

in their true relationship.

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 which

placement from bottom to top of the format indicated position in

space. In this system, which is often used intuitively by children,

the forms at the very top of the page—regardless of size—are

considered to be the farthest away. More recently, artists have

rebelled against rigid conventions of perspective and have

invented new systems employing abstract spatial qualities of col-

ors, textures, lines, and shapes.

142

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OK THE BRAIN

Traditional Renaissance perspective conforms most closely

to the way people in our Western culture perceive objects in

space. In our perceptions, parallel lines appear to converge at

vanishing points on a horizon line (the viewer's eye level) and

forms appear to become smaller as distance from the viewer

increases. For this reason, realistic drawing depends heavily on

these principles. The Dürer etching (Figure 8-8) illustrates this

perceptual system.

Dürer's device

The great sixteenth-century Renaissance artist, Albrecht Dürer,

invented a device to help him draw in proportion and in perspec-

tive. Your plastic Picture Plane is a simplified version of Dürer's

device. Let's look at the artist's depiction of his device in Figure

8-8. Dürer's draughtsman, holding his head in a stationary posi-

tion (note the vertical marker for his viewpoint), looks through an

upright wire grid. The artist peers at his model from a viewpoint

that foreshortens his visual image of the model—that is, a view-

point in which the main axis of the woman's figure from head to

foot coincides with the artist's line of sight. This view causes the

more distant parts of the figure (the head and shoulders) to

appear to be smaller than they actually are, and the nearby parts

(the knees and lower legs) to appear to be larger.

Fig. 8-8. Albrecht Dürer, Draughts-

man Making a Perspective Drawing

of a Woman (1525). Courtesy of

The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

New York. Gift of Felix M.

Warburg, 1918.

RELATIONSHIPS IN A NEW MODE: PUTTING SIGHTING IN PERSPECTIVE

143