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By Root 892 0

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 conscious process. Instead, the brain frequently does the expecting and the deciding, without our conscious awareness, and then alters or rearranges—or even simply disregards—the raw data of vision that hits the retina. Learning perception through drawing seems to change this process and to allow a different, more direct kind of seeing. The brain’s editing is somehow put on hold, thereby permitting one to see more fully and perhaps more realistically.

This experience is often moving and deeply affecting. My students’ most frequent comments after learning to draw are “Life seems so much richer now” and “I didn’t realize how much there is to see and how beautiful things are.” This new way of seeing may alone be reason enough to learn to draw.

“The artist is the confidant of nature. Flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.”

—Auguste Rodin

1

Drawing and the Art of Bicycle Riding

DRAWING IS A CURIOUS PROCESS, so intertwined with seeing that the two can hardly be separated. Ability to draw depends on ability to see the way an artist sees, and this kind of seeing can marvelously enrich your life.

In many ways, teaching drawing is somewhat like teaching someone to ride a bicycle. It is very difficult to explain in words. In teaching someone to ride a bicycle, you might say, “Well, you just get on, push the pedals, balance yourself, and off you’ll go.”

Of course, that doesn’t explain it at all, and you are likely finally to say, “I’ll get on and show you how. Watch and see how l do it.”

And so it is with drawing. Most art teachers and drawing textbook authors exhort beginners to “change their ways of looking at things” and to “learn how to see.” The problem is that this different way of seeing is as hard to explain as how to balance a bicycle, and the teacher often ends by saying, in effect, “Look at these examples and just keep trying. If you practice a lot, eventually you may get it.” While nearly everyone learns to ride a bicycle, many individuals never solve the problems of drawing. To put it more precisely, most people never learn to see well enough to draw.

Fig. 1-1. Bellowing Bison. Paleolithic cave painting from Altamira, Spain. Drawing by Brevil. Prehistoric artists were probably thought to have magic powers.

Drawing as a magical ability

Because only a few individuals seem to possess the ability to see and draw, artists are often regarded as persons with a rare God-given talent. To many people, the process of drawing seems mysterious and somehow beyond human understanding.

Artists themselves often do little to dispel the mystery. If you ask an artist (that is, someone who draws well as a result of either long training or chance discovery of the artist’s way of seeing), “How do you draw something so that it looks real—say a portrait or a landscape?” the artist is likely to reply, “Well, I just have a gift for it, I guess,” or “I really don’t know. I just start in and work things out as I go along,” or “Well, I just look at the person (or the landscape) and I draw what I see.” The last reply seems like a logical and straightforward answer. Yet, on reflection, it clearly doesn’t explain the process at all, and the sense that the skill of drawing is a vaguely magical ability persists (Figure 1-1).

While this attitude of wonder at artistic skill causes people to appreciate artists and their work, it does little to encourage individuals to try to learn to draw, and it doesn’t help teachers explain to students the process of drawing. Often, in fact, people even feel that they shouldn’t take a drawing course because they don’t know already how to draw.