The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [51]
To sum up this concept: In drawing, an edge is always a shared boundary.
Fig. 6-2.
A good definition of “picture plane” from The Art Pack, Key Definitions/Key Styles, 1992.
“Picture plane: Often used—erroneously—to describe the physical surface of a painting, the picture plane is in fact a mental construct—like an imaginary plane of glass . . . Alberti (the Italian Renaissance artist) called it a ‘window’ separating the viewer from the picture itself . . . ”
John Elsum, in his 1704 book The Art of Painting After the Italian Manner, gave instructions for making “a handy device”:
“Take a Square Frame of Wood about one foot large, and on this make a little grate [grid] of Threads, so that crossing one another they may fall into perfect Squares about a Dozen at least, then place [it] between your Eye and the Object, and by this grate imitate upon your Table [drawing surface] the true Posture it keeps, and this will prevent you from running into Errors. The more Work is to be [fore]shortened the smaller are to be the Squares.”
Quoted in A Miscellany of Artists’ Wisdom, compiled by Diana Craig, Philadelphia: Running Press, 1993, p. 79.
The child’s jigsaw puzzle, Figure 6-2, illustrates this important point. The edge of the boat is shared with the water. The edge of the sail is shared with the sky and the water. Put another way, the water stop where the boat begins—a shared edge. The water and the sky stop where the sail begins—shared edges.
Note also that the outer edge of the puzzle—its frame or format, meaning the bounding edge of the composition—is also the outer edge of the sky-shape, the land-shapes, and the water-shape.
A quick review of the five perceptual skills of drawing
In this lesson, we are working on the perception of edges as one of the component skills of drawing. Recall that there are four others and together these five components make up the whole skill of drawing:
1. The perception of edges (the “shared” edges of contour drawing).
2. The perception of spaces (in drawing called negative spaces).
3. The perception of relationships (known as perspective and proportion).
4. The perception of lights and shadows (often called “shading”).
5. The perception of the whole (the gestalt, the “thingness” of the thing).
Modified Contour Drawing: First, drawing on the picture plane
What you’ll need:
• Your clear plastic Picture Plane
• Your felt-tip marker
• Both of your viewfinders
Before you begin: Please read through all of the instructions before starting your drawing. In the next section I will define and fully explain the Picture Plane. For now, you will be simply using it. Just follow the instructions.
What you’ll do:
1. Rest your hand on a desk or table in front of you (the left hand if you are right-handed, and the right, if you are left-handed) with the fingers and thumb curved upward, pointing toward your face. This is a foreshortened view of your hand. Imagine now that you are about to draw that foreshortened form.
If you are like most of my students, you would simply not know how to go about doing that. It seems far too difficult to draw this three-dimensional form, with its parts moving toward you in space. You would hardly know where to start. The viewfinders and plastic Picture Plane will help you get started.
2. Try out each of the Viewfinders to decide which size fits most comfortably over your hand, which you should be holding in a foreshortened position with the fingers coming toward you. Men often need the larger, women the smaller-sized Viewfinder. Choose one or the other.
3. Clip the Viewfinder you have chosen on top of your clear-plastic Picture Plane.
4. Use your felt-tip marker to draw a “format” line on the plastic Picture Plane, running your marker around the inside of the opening of the Viewfinder.