The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [19]
Let’s look at the second Luther Gibson in the margin.
Now, look at the third signature. How would you describe him?
And another, the fourth signature.
And the last signature? How would you read that?
Now regard your own signature and respond to the nonverbal message of its line. Write your name in three different ways, each time responding to the message. Next, think back on how you responded differently to each of these signatures; recall that the name that was formed by the “drawings” did not change. What, then, were you responding to?
You were seeing and responding to the felt, individual qualities of each “drawn” line or set of lines. You responded to the felt speed of the line, the size and spacing of the marks, the muscle tension or lack of tension. All of that is precisely communicated by the line, the directional pattern or lack of pattern—in other words, by the whole signatures and all of their parts at once. A person’s signature is an individual expression so unique to the writer that it is identified legally as being “owned” by that single person and none other.
Your signature, however, does more than identify you. It also expresses you and your individuality, your creativity. Your signature is true to yourself. In this sense, you already speak the nonverbal language of art: You are using the basic element of drawing, line, in an expressive way, unique to yourself.
In the chapters to follow, therefore, we won’t dwell on what you can do already. Instead, the aim is to teach you how to see so that you can use your expressive, individual line to draw your perceptions.
Drawing as a mirror and metaphor for the artist
The object of drawing is not only to show what you are trying to portray, but also to show you. To illustrate how much personal style is embedded in drawings, I wish to show you two drawings on page 24, done at the same time by two different people—myself and artist/teacher Brian Bomeisler. We sat on either side of our model, Heather Allan. We were demonstrating how to draw a profile portrait for a group of students, the same profile portrait you will learn to do in Chapter Nine. The materials we used were identical, and we both drew for the same length of time—30 to 40 minutes. A viewer immediately sees that the model is the same—that is, both drawings achieve a likeness of Heather. But Brian’s portrayal expresses his response to Heather in his more “painterly” style (meaning emphasis on shapes), and my portrayal expresses my response in my more “linear” style (emphasis on line). By looking at my portrait of Heather, the viewer catches sight of me, and Brian’s drawing provides an insight into him. Thus, paradoxically, the more clearly you can perceive and draw what you see in the external world, the more clearly the viewer can see you, and the more you can know about yourself. Drawing becomes a metaphor for the artist.
Torii Kiyotada (active 1723-1750), Actor Dancing, and Torii Kiyonobu I (1664-1729), Woman Dancer (c. 1708). Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1949.
Line expresses two different kinds of dances in the two Japanese prints. Try to visualize each dance. Can you hear the music in your imagination? Try to see how the character of the line controls your response to the drawing.
Heather by instructor Brian Bomeisler.
Heather by the author.
Because the exercises in this book focus on expanding your perceptual powers, not on techniques of drawing, your individual style—your unique and valuable manner of drawing—will emerge intact. This is true even though the exercises concentrate on realistic drawings, which tend to “look alike” in a large sense. (This probably is true only for this century, because we are used to seeing radically different