Dear Gunnar and all
I get my students to start work in schema. That is drawings that have the
right parts but only roughly in the right place and in only roughly in the
right proportions. Quick surveys of the room after initial drawings
demonstrate that everyone understands what the drawings are in spite of
these inaccuracies.
We then go on to try breaking our drawings. For example, a face should
have two eyes a nose and a mouth in a particular configuration. Students
redraw a face over and over, each time moving the component parts about
until it becomes a non-face configuration. They soon learn that you can go
pretty crazy before faceı is no longer being communicated. Likewise with
where knees and elbows should beı. As we move on to other objects
students begin to learn that drawings can be extremely elastic and still
communicate their intention. At the same time theyıre getting a feel for
certain schematic operations that suit them in particular. For those that
go on to be illustrators, this can be the basis of a styleı.
Psychologists of vision tell us the eyes and brain have two major tasks to
perform as we navigate the world. Categorization: is that a tree or a
truck Iım looking at (for which, rough schema are more than adequate and
may in fact communicate more effectively than photos or accurate line
drawings); and Identification: which particular kind of tree am I looking
at (for which the more realistic drawing matters).
Interestingly, for the identification purpose, realism or accuracy is
still not necessarily the best mode. Caricature (the exaggeration of the
features that make that thing unique in its class and different to the
normı of that class) may be a more communicative mode. To this end, any
object (not just the human face) can be caricatured as long as the student
can conceive of a norm for that class of objects. Movement (using
animation or extreme gesture in a drawing) and color can be caricatured
too.
I think too much emphasis is placed on accuracy and realism. On the one
hand this is kind of reductive as it shuts down possibilities. On the
other hand it doesnıt reflect all the ways the brain works with images.
Iıd be keen to know if anyone else tries to explain drawing from these
points of view, or has a more refined take on it?
Stuart
Dr Stuart Medley
Senior Lecturer
Coordinator Graphic Design
Rm 5.123
School of Communications and Arts
Edith Cowan University
Bradford St, Mt Lawley WA 6050
Australia
Tel: +61 8 9370 6709
Author of The Picture In Design
http://www.bookdepository.com/Picture-Design-Stuart-Medley/9781612291468
Illustration: http://stuartmedley.com <http://stuartmedley.com/>Blog:
http://whydraw.tumblr.com/
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