THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE

THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE 57

Aaron Kozbelt

Such heterochronies can be implemented both to
alter aspects of the usual hierarchical organization
of artists’ means and ends, as well as to change their
usual temporal ordering. Finally, because emerging
artworks may fluctuate wildly in both appearance
and quality (see Kozbelt, 2006)—unlike ontoge-
netic development in biology, in which an organism
must be viable throughout—artists can potentially
introduce a very wide range of heterochronies into
a single work.
The potential power of the mechanism of onto-
genetic heterochrony as a means of creating novelty
rests on the generative potential of timing-depen-
dent changes to the depictive process. This claim
presupposes a strongly non-deterministic dynamic
whereby, for instance, an artist’s action A followed
by action B followed by action C would not yield
the same result as that artist’s action C followed by
action B followed by action A. In other words, the
mark-making moves of an artist are non-indepen-
dent, and this is probably true at all levels of the
control structure hierarchy of an artist’s schema. At
the relatively local level, even if an artist attempts
to program and execute an identical mark-making
movement multiple times, the results will differ
(Gombrich, 1991, p. 101); this is likely to be exacer-
bated if the existing context for the executed move
has changed due to the presence of other marks.
At higher levels of an artist’s organizational hier-
archy, the presence of certain kinds of marks in an
emerging depiction will influence an artist’s choice
of subsequent marks—their position, salience, and
so forth—as a means of bringing the work to a sat-
isfactory (if not entirely predictable) conclusion. In
this context, I also note that some artistic media are
probably more likely to contribute to this variability
than others—particularly media that are somewhat
volatile and difficult to control under any circum-
stances, but also media in which marks are more or
less irrevocable and do not allow for easy correc-
tion, erasure, or undoing.
In considering this framework, it is useful to
consider what the state of affairs would have to
be like in order for changes in the timing of vari-
ous depictive actions not to have an impact on the
resulting rendering. If each action that an artist
made was completely independent of other actions,
and the artistic medium used was completely
reversible in terms of error correction and also not
sensitive to ordering effects, then the order in which
a standard set of marks were made in the render-

ing of an image would have absolutely no effect. In

that case, there would be a negligible role for cer-

tain categories of changes of timing, specifically

those involving a reordering of a set of actions. I

note, however, that even under such conditions,

heterochronies involving the truncation of a stan-

dard depictive action or subroutine (say, filling in

an outlined shape) or the greater elaboration of the

level of detail of part of a depiction (say, a careful

and uniform detailing of the texture of an object in

an image), would still be means of generating varia-

tion, and thus potential novelty. Generally speaking,

this framework suggests numerous empirical ques-

tions on the extent to which variability in finished

renderings emerges from various categories of

heterochronies, in different drawing contexts and

media, at various stages of the drawing process, and

at different levels of the organizational structure of

artists’ schemata—as well as the extent to which

heterochronies are amenable to overt experimental

manipulation in a laboratory setting.

Ontogenetic heterochrony and art history

Even without considering heterochronies, estab-

lishing a rich descriptive baseline in which artists’

schemata are unpacked hierarchically and tem-

porally would be highly informative. For instance,

grounding Western artistic practice between 1300

and 1900 in a dynamically-oriented version of sche-

mata à la Gombrich (1960), informed by constraints

from various artistic media and contemporary

research on perception, action, and goal-directed

problem solving, would yield a rich detailing of the

evolution of particular aspects of rendering within

the Western realistic tradition. As schemata evolve

over time, some heterochronies may be absorbed

into artists’ standard working methods. This may

be particularly pertinent when new artistic media,

which constrain the structure to the creative pro-

cess in a different way, are introduced into a tradi-

tion. For instance, the introduction of oil painting

enabled different visual effects, greater possibilities

for layering, and a longer timescale for revision and

reworking, compared to the faster-drying tempera

and fresco media that were previously characteristic

of European wall and easel painting.

Links between ontogenetic heterochrony and art

history can also take the form of systematic relations

between an artist’s approach to rendering and the

overall arc of his or her career. Great artists in the

Western tradition show considerable variety in the