16 May 2009
Shared horizons : edgy life drawing session
Looks like Bill Brody has started something with his blog about foveal vision.It’s really got me thinking because it’s counter-intuitive. Most of what we call looking actually takes place after we have looked.
The brain joins together all of those quick glances, those foveal spot-scans into a composite idea of what is there. Forget rectangular frames and bits of paper - our field of view is broadly circular. Forget trying to make a drawing from a single look or photograph. Also, because foveal sounds like a soya based meat substitute I’m going to call foveal looking spot vision and peripheral looking edge vision.
The edge is much more interesting than the spot.
I dropped this whole confusing thing into a studio session at Colchester yesterday and the students came up with some really interesting work ! Teaching is truly amazing when you see ideas get up on their own legs because they’ve been invited in by a group of students. I asked them to do a life drawing where they only look with the edge of their eyes. The model moved across their field of view but their spot vision stayed in the same place. The drawings were wonderful. I only realised how difficult it was when I tried to do one of my own - 
I noted two spots on an easel a metre and a half from the model and marked them on the paper, then kept my spot vision only on them to both look and draw. It’s virtually impossible ! I had to keep wrestling my spot vision away from the model and even more difficult away from the drawing of the model when I looked at the paper. Also it was impossible to respect the rectangle of paper or board, which is why I started drawing on the floor.
It’s quite good for teachers to be occasionally subjected to their own daft ideas.
(1) 16 May 2009 at 2:59 pm
Sheila
that was a very interesting lesson, it was probably one of the hardest drawing tasks i have ever been given, it really made me think.
it is virtually impossible to look at something you are not looking at, when i was trying to draw Marilyn (life model) i recognized her and her shape, but when i tried drawing her i found myself naturally drawing what i should be seeing, when i know i didn’t see that, its weird how the brain makes judgements for you to enable you to make sense of things.
(2) 16 May 2009 at 7:35 pm
Maddy
I agree it was a really interesting session and has really got me thinking about my own work as I have recently been looking into the theories of Kant surrounding the aesthetic sublime, e.g. when in the presence of a mountain range for example you cannot see around it or even take the whole thing in leaving the viewer in awe of what is in front of them. Friday’s session was a bit like that as all of a sudden we had to try and draw what was in front of us and what we could see in our peripheral vision without scanning round the scene, very difficult to train yourself not to look to the left or right but very interesting results. I notice that the marks on the paper showing the peripheral vision are automatically more relaxed. A programmed response almost!
(3) 17 May 2009 at 12:13 pm
doug
Hi Sheila and Maddy - really pleased that you are getting involved with this thread,and thanks for the pictures. I can’t wait for some proper time to devote to edgy drawing. Let’s do edge drawing for The Big Draw in October ! http://www.thebigdraw.org.uk/home/index.aspx