THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE

THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE 71

Angela brew

is the role of the eye, to capture information. My
drawing instruction attempts to use the eye in a
radically different way, sidelining visual capture and
using the eye to draw the line.
Van Sommers’ (1984) statement below about
copying (the first step in learning to draw) resonates
with Merleau-Ponty’s description of the artist’s way
of looking:

The fact is that copying, like imitation in

language, is not a matter of item-by-item

matching of perception to action, but a

translation process, extracting relation-

ships and using available skills to recon-

struct them.

My instruction looks for direct and appropri-
ate translation skills, entertaining a more fluid and
integrated view of the play between senses and per-
ception and between the eye and the hand. Does the
hand see?

Without practice this kind of sensation is

rather confused and dim; but if you take

men born blind, who have made use of

such sensations all their life, you will find

that they feel things with such perfect

exactness that one might also say that they

see with their hands

(Descartes, 1637, Dioptrics)

Descartes’ insight about touch is beginning to be
supported by scientific research of sensory substitu-
tion. The hand can anchor perception, and teach
the eye; they can search together and instruct one
another. Bridget Riley (2009) writes of drawing “It
is as though there is an eye at the end of my pencil,
which tries, independently of my personal general-
purpose eye, to penetrate a kind of obscuring veil or
thickness.”
The aim of interdisciplinary research is to con-
tribute by linking theory and understanding from
domains of research – in the same way that the
drawer tries to attend to and relate the parts and the
whole in order to articulate a new idea, an innova-
tive approach and new knowledge. My view, from
in between domains, is that scientific research has
developed some useful provisional models of the
physics and cognition of observational drawing.
These need further elaboration and testing, includ-
ing longitudinal study of drawing students and

micro-level studies of brain activity. This will sig-

nificantly contribute to research of brain plasticity

and learning, and, through our interdisciplinary

collaborations and communication, to the practi-

cal educational application of new knowledge about

drawing and cognition.

Playing in an orchestra requires constant

awareness of all the other voices, express-

ing one’s own while listening to the other.

Daniel Barenboim (2007:133)

Everything is Connected.

References

Brew, A. & Fava, M. (2011). Eye-tracking eight kinds

of drawing, film. Shown at Macy Gallery, Teach-

ers College, Columbia University during the

Thinking through Drawing exhibition, October

2011.

Barenboim, D. (2007). Everything is Connected: The

Power of Music. London: Weidenfeld and Nicol-

son.

Coen-Cagli, R, Coraggio, P., Boccignone, G., Napo-

letano, P. (2007). The Bayesian Draughtsman: A

Model For Visuomotor Coordination In Draw-

ing. In Advances in Brain Vision and Artificial

Intelligence, Proceedings of BVAI 2007. LNCS

4729.

Cohen, D. J. (2005). Look little, look often: The in-

fluence of gaze frequency on drawing accuracy.

Perception Psychophysics, 67, 997–1009.

Edwards, B. (2001). Drawing on the Right Side of the

Brain. London: Harper Collins Publishers.

Edwards, Drawing Courses info. Available from:

http://www.drawright.com/drsb.htm (Accessed

20th April 2009)

Gregory, R., (1997). Eye and Brain, 5th ed, Princ-

eton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Gregory, R., (1997) Knowledge in perception and

illusion Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 352, 1121–

1128

Jacob, P., & Jeannerod, M. (2003). Ways of seeing –

The scope and limits of visual cognition. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Kozbelt, A. (2001). Artists as experts in visual cogni-

tion. Visual Cognition, 8, 705–723.

Merleau-Ponty, M. ed Lefort, C. (1973), trans.