The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [79]
The reason for this misperception of proportionate size probably derives from our past knowledge and experience of the effect of distance on the apparent size of forms: Given two objects of the same size, one nearby and one at a distance away, the distant object will appear to be smaller. If they look the same size, the far object must be a great deal larger than the near object. This makes sense, and we don’t quarrel with the concept. But coming back to the drawing, apparently the brain enlarges the far object to make the concept truer than true. This is overdoing it! And this is precisely the kind of overdoing—of overlaying memorized verbal concepts onto visual perceptions—that causes problems with proportion for beginning drawing students.
Even after we have measured the men in the drawing and have determined with irrefutable evidence that they are the same size, we still wrongly see the right-hand man as being larger than the left. On the other hand, if you turn this book upside down and view the drawing in the inverted orientation that the verbal, conceptual mode apparently rejects, you will find that you can more easily see that the two men are the same size. The same visual information triggers a different response. The brain, apparently now less influenced by the verbal concept of diminishing size in distant forms, allows us to see the proportion correctly.
For an even more striking example of perceptual illusion, look at the drawing of two tables, Figure 9-4. Will you believe me that the two tabletops are exactly the same shape and size? You may have to use your plastic Picture Plane and trace one of the tabletops, then slide the Plane over the other tabletop to believe this. This wonderfully original illusion drawing is by Roger N. Shepard, a renowned psychologist of perception and cognition.
On not believing what you see
One more example: Stand in front of a mirror at about arm’s distance away. How large would you say is the image of your head in the mirror? About the same size as your head? Using a felt-tip pen or a crayon, extend your arm and make two marks on the mirror—one at the top of the reflected image (the outside contour of your head) and one at the bottom contour of your chin (Figure 9-5). Step to one side to see how long the image is in inches. You’ll find it’s about four and one half to five inches, or one-half the true size of your head. Yet, when you remove the marks and look again at yourself in the mirror, it seems that the image must be life-size! Again, you are seeing what you believe, not believing what you see.
Fig. 9-4. From Mind Sights by Roger N. Shepard, 1990. Reproduced by permission of the author.
Fig. 9-5.
Drawing closer to reality
Once we have accepted that the brain is changing information and not telling us that it has done so, some of the problems of drawing become clearer, and learning to see what is actually “out there” in the real world becomes very interesting. Note that this perceptual phenomenon is probably essential to ordinary life. It reduces the complexity of incoming data and enables us to have stable concepts. The problems start when we try to see what is really “out there,” for purposes of checking reality, solving real problems, or drawing realistically. To accomplish that, we shall try to prove in a logical way that certain proportions are what they are.
The mystery of the chopped-off skull
Most people find it quite difficult to perceive the relative proportions of the features and the skull.
In this introduction to profile-portrait drawing, I’ll concentrate on two critical relationships that are persistently difficult for beginning drawing students to correctly perceive: the location of eye level in relation to the length of the whole head; and the location of the ear in the profile view. I believe these are two examples