The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [67]
Fig. 7-16.
Fig. 7-17.
Demonstration drawing by instructor Lisbeth Firmin.
Demonstration drawing by the author.
Demonstration drawing by the author.
Student drawing.
Student drawing by Sandy DePhillippo.
Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Child Seated in a Wicker Chair (1874). Courtesy of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.
Observe how Winslow Homer used negative space in his drawing of a child in a chair. Try copying this drawing.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). Studies of Arms and Legs. Courtesy of Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
Copy this drawing. Turn the original upside down and draw the negative spaces. Then turn the drawing right side up and complete the details inside the forms. These “difficult” foreshortened forms become easy to draw if attention is focused on the spaces around the forms.
8
Relationships in a New Mode: Putting Sighting in Perspective
Lupe Ramirez.
In this chapter, you will learn the third basic skill of drawing, how to see and draw relationships. You will learn how to draw “in perspective” and “in proportion.” Another term for acquiring this skill is “learning how to sight.”
Learning this skill is perhaps comparable to learning the rules of grammar in reading and writing. Just as good grammar causes words and phrases to hang together logically and to communicate ideas clearly, skillful sighting of proportions and perspective causes edges, spaces, relationships, lights and shadows to come together with visual logic. Clear perception of relationships enables us to depict on a flat surface the world we see around us. Moreover, just as learning how to use grammar skillfully gives us power with words, learning how to draw in perspective and in proportion will give your drawings power through the illusion of space.
In speaking of grammar, I am referring to the mechanics of language, not the tedious naming of the parts of speech. By mechanics, I mean getting the subject and verb to agree, using the rules of word order and sentence structure, and so on. I couldn’t parse a complicated sentence today if I tried my best (which probably indicates its usefulness or lack thereof), but I’ve learned and practiced the mechanics of language for so long they are on automatic. This is what we are aiming for in this chapter: You will learn to use perspective and proportion in your drawing. You will not learn tedious and cumbersome terminology of vanishing points, converging parallel lines, and perspective of ellipses. You will learn the mechanics of sighting, which is what most artists use.
Some of my students, nevertheless, still complain that learning to sight seems so “left-brained” after the R-mode joy of drawing edges and negative spaces. Indeed, there are lots of little steps and instructions in the beginning. But almost every skill requires a component similar to sighting in drawing. For example, learning to drive a car requires that at some point you learn the rules of the road. Tedious? Yes, but without them, you are very likely to be arrested or to have an accident. Significantly, once these rules are learned and “on automatic,” you drive a car by the rules without even thinking of them.
It is the same with drawing. Once you have worked your way through the next exercise, you will have learned the “rules of the road” of drawing. With a bit of practice, sighting goes on automatic and you will hardly be aware of taking sights and comparing proportions. Best of all, you will have achieved the power to depict three-dimensional space in your drawings.
Students of drawing who learn everything except how to sight relationships greatly handicap their drawing and find themselves constantly making baffling mistakes in proportion and perspective. This problem plagues students new to drawing