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

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Fig. 10-13. Edward Hopper (1882-

1967), Self-Portrait, 1903. Conte

crayon on white paper. Courtesy

of the National Portrait Gallery,

Smithsonian Institution. The artist

shadowed the left side of his head

in an almost even tone. Yet the

viewer "sees" the eye that is bare-

ley suggested.

not there, and you should strive for this phenomenon. Learning

this "trick of the artist" is quite intriguing. As you are drawing,

constantly squint you eyes to see if you can yet "see" the form you

intend. And when you "see" it—that is, the envisioned image is

there—stop! So many times in workshops, watching a beginning

student draw, I find myself urgently saying, "Stop! It's there.

You've got it. Don't overwork it!" There is an amusing saying in

art circles that every artist needs someone standing right behind

with a sledgehammer to let the artist know when the artwork is

finished.

206

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

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 cre-

ating 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

activity, not requiring teaching. Apparently, this is not the case.

The technique must be taught and must be learned. In fact, I now

believe that the ability to Crosshatch is a mark of a trained artist.

If you glance through this book at the many reproductions, you

will see that almost every drawing has some area of hatching. You

will also notice that crosshatching has almost as many forms as

there are artists to use them. Each artist, it seems, develops a per-

sonal style of hatching, almost a "signature," and, very quickly, so

will you.

At this point, I will show you the technique and a few of the

traditional styles of hatching. You will need paper and a carefully

sharpened pencil.

1. Hold your pencil firmly and make a group of parallel marks,

called a "set" (shown in Figure 10-15), by placing the pencil

point down firmly, fingers extended. Swing off each mark by

moving the whole hand from the wrist. The wrist remains sta-

tionary and the fingers pull the pencil back just a bit for each

successive hatch. When you have finished one "set" of eight to

ten hatch marks, move your hand and wrist to a new position

and hatch a new set. Try swinging the mark toward you, and

also try swinging it away from you in an outward movement

to see which seems more natural for you. Try changing the

angle of the marks.

2. Practice making sets until you have found the direction, spac-

ing, and length of marks that seem right for you.

3. The next step is to make the "cross" sets. In classical hatching,

the cross set is made at an angle only slightly different from

Fig. 10-14.

THE VALUE OF LOGICAL LIGHTS AND .SHADOWS

2O7

Fig. 10-15.

Fig. 10-16.

Fig. 10-18. Some examples of various Fig. 10-19. Alphonse Legros, red chalk on paper.

styles of crosshatching. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

208

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

the original set, as shown in Figure 10-16. This slight angle

produces a very pretty moire pattern that causes a drawing to

seem to shimmer with light and air. Try this. Figure 10-17

shows how to use crosshatching to create a three-dimensional

form.

4. By increasing the angle of crossing, a different style of cross-

hatch is achieved. In Figure 10-18, see various examples of

styles of hatching: full cross (hatch marks crossing at right

angles), cross-contour (usually curved hatches), and hooked

hatches (where a slight hook inadvertently occurs at the end

of the hatch), as in the topmost example of hatching styles in

Figure 10-18. There are myriad styles of hatching.

5. To increase the darkness of tone, simply pile up one set of

hatches onto others, as shown in the left arm of the figure

drawing by Alphonse Legros, Figure 10-19.

6. Practice, practice, practice. Instead of doodling while talking

on the telephone, practice crosshatching—perhaps shading

geometric forms such as spheres, or cylinders. (See the exam-

ples in Figure 10-20.) As I mentioned, crosshatching is not a

naturally occurring skill for most individuals, but it can be

rapidly developed with practice. I assure you that skillful,

individualized use of hatching in your drawings will be grati-

fying to you and much admired by your viewers.

Shading into a continuous tone

Areas of continuous tone are created without using the separate

strokes of crosshatching. The pencil is applied in either short,

overlapping movements or in elliptical movements, going from

dark areas to light and back again, if necessary, to create a smooth

tone. Most students have little trouble with continuous tone,

although practice is usually needed for smoothly modulated

tones. Charles Sheeler's complex light/shadow drawing of the cat

sleeping on a chair (Figure 10-12) superbly illustrates this tech-

nique.

Soon you will bring together all of your new skills, the basic

component skills of drawing: perceptions of edges, spaces, and

Fig. 10-20.

THE VALUE OF LOGICAL LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

2O9

I believe that this training for pre-

cise perceptions is one of the great

bonuses of learning to draw. One

really does learn to see better

through drawing, to see with

greater precision and finer dis-

crimination. I feel sure that you

can extrapolate the importance of

this to general thinking skills. We

often describe creative intelligence

as "the ability to see things

clearly."

shapes, relationships of angles and proportions, lights and shad-

ows, the gestalt of the thing drawn, and the skills of crosshatching

and continuous tone.

Drawing on the logic of light for a fully modeled,

tonal, volumetric self-portrait

In these lessons, we began with line drawing and we end with a

fully realized drawing. The terms in the subhead above are the

technical terms that describe the drawing you will do next. From

this exercise onward, you will practice the five perceptual skills of

drawing with constantly changing subject matter. The basic skills

will soon become integrated into a global skill, and you will find

yourself "just drawing." You will shift flexibly from edges to

spaces to angles and proportions, lights and shadows. Soon, the

skills will be on automatic and someone watching you draw will

be baffled by how you do it. I feel sure that you will find yourself

seeing things differently, and I hope that, for you, as for many of

my students, life will seem much richer by having learned to see

and draw.

Before you start your drawing, we need to review briefly the

proportions of the frontal or full-face view and the three-quarter

view. You will use one of these views for your Self-Portrait.

The frontal view

Keeping this book open to the diagram on page 212, sit in front of

a mirror with the book, a piece of paper, and a pencil. You are

going to observe and diagram the relationships of various parts of

your own head, as you go step by step through the exercise.

1. First, draw a blank (an oval shape) on your paper and draw

the central axis dividing the diagram. Then, observe and

measure on your own head the eye level line. It will be

halfway. On the blank, draw in an eye level line. Be sure to

measure to make sure you make this placement accurately.

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

2IO

Fig. 10-21. Vincent Van Gogh

(etching, 1890), B-10, 283. Courtesy

of The National Gallery of Art,

Washington, D.C., Rosenwald

Collection. An interesting example

of the expressive effect of skewed

features.

Fig. 10-22.

2. Now, looking at your own face in the mirror, visualize a cen-

tral axis that divides your face and an eye level line at a right

angle to the central axis. Tip your head to one side, as in Fig-

ure 10-23. Notice that the central axis and the eye level line

remain at a right angle no matter what direction you tip your

head. (This is only logical, I know, but many beginners ignore

this fact and skew the features as in the example in Figure

10-22.)

3. Observe in the mirror: What is the width of the distance

between your eyes, compared to the width of one eye? Yes, it's

the width of one eye. Divide the eye level in fifths, as shown in

Figure 10-24. Mark the outside corners of the eyes.

4. Observe your face in the mirror. Between eye level and chin,

where is the end of the nose? This is the most variable of all

the features of the human head. You can visualize an inverted

triangle on your own face, with the wide points at the outside

corners of your eyes and the center point at the bottom edge

of your nose. This method is quite reliable. Mark the bottom

edge of your nose on the blank. See Figure 10-24.

Fig. 10-23.

THE VALUE OF LOGICAL LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

Fig. 10-24. The full-face view dia-

gram. Note that this diagram is

only a general guide to propor-

tions that vary from head to head.

The differences, however, are often

very slight and must be carefully

perceived and drawn to achieve a

likeness.

Where is the level of the centerline of the mouth? About a

third between the nose and chin. Make a mark on the blank.

Again, observe in the mirror: If you drop a straight line down

from the inside corners of your eyes, what do you come to?

The edges of your nostrils. Noses are wider than you think.

Mark the blank.

If you drop a line straight down from the center of the pupils

of your eyes, what do you come to? The outside corners of

your mouth. Mouths are wider than you think. Mark the

blank.

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THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

8. If you move your pencil along a horizontal line on the level of

your eyes, what do you come to? The tops of your ears. Mark

the blank.

9. Coming back from the bottoms of your ears, in a horizontal

line, what do you come to? In most faces, the space between

your nose and mouth. Ears are bigger than you think. Mark

the blank.

10. Feel on your own face and neck: How wide is your neck com-

pared to the width of your jaw just in front of your ears? You'll

see that your neck is almost as wide—in some men, it's as

wide or wider. Mark the blank. Note that necks are wider

than you think.

11. Now test each of your perceptions on people, photographs of

people, images of people on the television screen. Practice

often, observing—first without measuring, then if necessary

corroborating by measuring—perceiving relationships be-

tween this feature and that, perceiving the unique, minute

differences between faces; seeing, seeing, seeing. Eventually,

you will have memorized the general measurements given

above and you won't have to analyze in the left-hemisphere

mode as we have been doing. But for now it's best to practice

observing the specific proportions.

Now we'll turn to the three-quarter view

Recall our previous definition of the three-quarter view: one-half

of the head plus one-quarter. Still sitting in front of a mirror, pose

your head in this view by starting with a full, frontal view and

then turning (either left or right) so that you can only partly see

one side of your head. You are now seeing one full side plus one-

quarter—in other words a three-quarter view.

Artists of the Renaissance loved the three-quarter view, once

they had finally worked through the problems of the proportions.

I hope you will choose this view for your self-portrait. It's some-

what complicated, but fascinating to draw.

Young children rarely draw people with heads turned to the

three-quarter view. Children generally draw either profiles or the

"When drawing a face, any face, it

is as if curtain after curtain, mask

after mask, falls away... until a

final mask remains, one that can

no longer be removed, reduced.

By the time the drawing is finished,

I know a great deal about that face,

for no face can hide itself for long.

But although nothing escapes the

eye, all is forgiven beforehand.

The eye does not judge, moralize,

criticize. It accepts the masks in

gratitude as it does the long bam-

boos being long, the goldenrod

being yellow."

— Frederick Franck

The Zen of Seeing, 1973

THE VALUE OF LOGICAL LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

213

Fig. 10-25. A sketch by the author

from a three-quarter view portrait

by the German artist Lucas

Cranach (1472-1553), Head of a Youth

with a Red Cap.

full, frontal view. Around age ten or so, children begin to attempt

three-quarter view drawings, perhaps because this view can be

particularly expressive of the personality of the model. The

problems young artists encounter with this view are the same old

problems: the three-quarter view brings visual perceptions into

conflict with the symbolic forms developed throughout child-

hood for profile and full-face views, which by age ten are embed-

ded in the memory.

What are those conflicts? First, as you see in Figure 10-15,the

nose is not the same as a nose seen in profile. In three-quarter

view, you see the top and the side of the nose, making it seem

very wide. Second, the two sides of the face are different

widths—one side narrow, one side wide. Third, the eye on the

turned side is narrower and shaped differently from the other eye.

Fourth, the mouth from its center to the corner is shorter on the

turned side and shaped differently from the mouth on the other

side of the centerline. These perceptions of nonmatching fea-

tures conflict with the memorized symbols for features that are

214

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

usually more symmetrical.

The solution to the conflict is of course to draw just what you

see without questioning why it is thus or so and without changing

the perceived forms to fit with a memorized-and-stored set of

symbols for features. To see the thing-as-it-is in all of its unique

and marvelous complexity—that is always the key.

My students have found it helpful if I point out some specific-

aids to seeing the three-quarter proportions. Let me again take

you through the process step by step, giving you some methods

for keeping your perceptions clear. Again note that if I were

demonstrating the three-quarter-view drawing, I would not be

naming any of the parts, only pointing to each area. When you

are drawing, do not name the parts to yourself. In fact, try not to

talk to yourself at all while drawing.

1. Again, sit in front of a mirror with paper and a pencil. Now,

close one eye and pose in the three-quarter view so that the

tip of your nose nearly coincides with the outer contour of

the turned cheek, as in Figure 10-25. You can see that this

forms an enclosed shape (see Figure 10-26).

2. Observe your head. Perceive the central axis—that is, an

imaginary line that passes through the very center of the face.

In three-quarter view, the central axis passes through two

points: a point at the center of the bridge of the nose and a

point at the middle of the upper lip. Image this as a thin wire

that passes right through the form of the nose (Figure 10-27).

By holding your pencil vertically at arm's length toward your

reflection in the mirror, check the angle or tilt of the central

axis of your head. Each person may have a different charac-

teristic tilt to the head, or the axis may be perfectly vertical.

3. Next, observe that the eye level line is at right angles to the

central axis. This observation will help you to avoid skewing

the features as I mentioned on page 212. Next measure on

your head to observe that the eye level line is at half of the

whole form.

5. Now, practice making a line drawing of a three-quarter view

on your scratch paper. You will be using the method of

modified contour drawing: drawing slowly, directing your

Fig. 10-26. First, see this whole area

as a shape.

Fig. 10-27. Observe the tilt of the

central axis compared to vertical

(your pencil). The eye level line is

at a right angle compared to the

central axis.

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