THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE 67
In The Prose of the World Merleau-Ponty (1973,
p. 88) eloquently articulates the extraordinary per-
ceptual approach required for observational draw-
ing. The drawer takes time to weave a web between
themselves, the object and the evolving drawing.
How does the drawer learn to look for the “agile
body” of an object? A crucial element of observa-
tional drawing is learning to pause. The pause offers
a space, temporal and spatial, to reflect and to pre-
pare your next move.
In this paper I briefly present findings from
the Drawing and Cognition Project and from my
PhD case studies, relating to the role of the pause
in observational drawing. I observed, filmed and
interviewed students on Betty Edwards’ 5-day
drawing course—and also took the course myself.
Van Sommers (1984), Tchalenko (2009), Miall
(2009), Kozbelt (2001), Cohen (2005) and Coen-
Cagli (2007) offer scientific findings relating to nov-
ice, intermediate and expert drawers’ behaviour and
perception. However to date there is, to my knowl-
edge, no longitudinal study of drawing students
undergoing drawing training. I set out to explore
transformations from beginner towards experi-
enced drawer. I based my hypotheses on Tchalenko’s
(2009) comparisons of novice and expert behaviour.
In the second part of the paper I describe a cog-
nitively informed drawing instruction that I have
developed and explored. The instruction hinges on
the idea that during drawing there may be phases
when the eye communicates with the hand spatially
rather than using any form of visual memory. There
occurs a physical translation rather than a percep-
tion-to-action or visual to motor encoding.
My research is practice-based, meaning that I
have spent a lot of time drawing, as a way to think
through drawing, both to think about the draw-
ing process and using drawing to think, with the
paper acting as a place to hold and play with ideas.
This entailed taking findings from Tchalenko’s lab
and testing them within drawing instructions. The
instruction I developed aims to utilize our natural
proprioceptive skills to synchronize eye and hand
movement, and to explicitly focus on segmenting
the process, both into small segments of line and
into short episodes of time. This raises questions
about how new scientific findings might better
inform teaching practice.
I conclude with the proposition that the art-Learning to Pause
Angela Brew
The Drawing Centre
Camberwell College of Art, University of the Arts London
...the painter throws away the fish and keeps the net. His look appropriates correspondences,
questions, and answers which, in the world, are revealed only inaudibly and always smothered in
the stupor of objects. He strips them, frees them, and looks for a more agile body for them.
Figure 1. Betty Edwards’ drawing students, learning
a new way of looking at things