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By Root 833 0

recently discovered that Holbein used a glass pane on which he directly drew images of his sitters for the overwhelming number of portrait drawings required of him when he lived in the English court of Henry VIII. Art historians speculate that Holbein, one of the great draughtsmen of art history, did this to save time—the overworked artist could then quickly transfer the drawing on glass to paper and get on to the next portrait.

One more important point: “Drawing” means drawing a single view.

Recall that when you drew your hand directly on the plastic Picture Plane, I asked you to keep your hand still and your head still in order to see one view only on the Picture Plane. Even a slight movement of your hand or a slight change in the position of your head will give you a different view of your hand. I some- times see students bend their heads around to see something they couldn’t see with their head in the original position. Don’t do it! If you can’t see that fourth finger, you don’t draw it. To repeat: Keep your hand and your head in an unchanged position and draw just what you see.

Professor Elliot Elgart of the University of California at Los Angeles Art Department told me in conversation that he has often observed beginning drawing students, presented for the first time with a reclining model, tilt their heads far to one side while drawing the model. Why? To see the model in the position they are used to, which is standing up!

For the same reason—to see one view only—you kept one eye closed. By closing one eye, you removed binocular vision, the slight variance in images, called “binocular disparity,” that occurs when we view an object with both eyes open.

Binocular vision allows us to see the world as three-dimensional. This ability is sometimes called “depth perception.” When you close one eye, the single image is two-dimensional—that is, it is flat, like a photograph. The paper we draw on is also two-dimensional or flat.

Seeing perspective drawing as depicting three-dimensional space is apparently a learned percept, culturally determined. Individuals from remote cultures sometimes do not decipher photographs or realistic drawings.

Here is yet another of the paradoxes of drawing:

The flat, two-dimensional image you see (with one eye closed) on the picture-plane, when copied onto your drawing paper, miraculously “looks” three-dimensional to the person who views your drawing. One necessary step in learning to draw is to believe that this miracle will happen. Often, students struggling with a drawing will ask, “How can I make this table look like it’s going back in space?” or “How do I make this arm look like it’s coming toward me?” The answer, of course, is to draw—to copy!—just what you see flattened on the picture-plane. Only then will the drawing convincingly depict these “movements” through three-dimensional space (see Figure 6-13).

You may be wondering, “Is it always necessary to close one eye while drawing?” Not always, but most artists do quite a lot of one-eye closing while drawing. The closer the viewed object, the more eye-closing. The farther away the object, the less eye closing, because the binocular disparity referred to above diminishes with distance.

In this next exercise, you will use your technical aids (your plastic Picture Plane and your Viewfinders) to enable you to do a realistic drawing of your own hand—a “real” drawing depicting a three-dimensional form on a flat sheet of paper.

Fig. 6-13. Brian Harking.

Students often become very frustrated at the start of a drawing—perhaps because the starting of a drawing is always difficult. Also I think students beginning in drawing believe that drawings just “flow out.” They don’t. You will be making numerous intense relational calculations at the start, and it’s only after the drawing is well started—in fact, nearing completion—that it begins to “flow.”

Modified Contour Drawing of your hand

What you’ll need:

• Several sheets of the smaller drawing paper

• Your graphite stick and some paper napkins or paper towels

• Your