POV : Human sensory system

WHAT TO UNDERSTAND FROM IT AND HOW IT WILL HELP YOUR DRAWING PROCESS

You propably have herd the fraze from fellow artists million times already but here it comes again : Don´t start your drawing by refining or creating accurate forms.

But why you shouldn´t do that? And when is the time to start doing it ?

Let´s start with the first one. Why you shouldn´t do that. When we have a blank piece of paper that is white, what we in reality have, is one absolute intensity of the brightest value = maximum exposure level. When we start adding material to it, we are not really able to measure how the value will eventually appear as the work progresses. If we look at the first image with the white background, the line appears very dark, the same line will look completely different when we place it against a darker value in the second image. And in the image below them - it will appear to be different again as it is placed on background that is somewhere between the first two.

Our experience of the value changes constantly as we add different values around it. They all effect each other and the way they appear to us. Optical illusions - that`s what we call them. But they are more of a side product of our visual system. Let´s dig in deeper.

Our eyes are one part of the human sensory system, which includes all of our senses, touch, hearing, taste, smell and visuals. This sensory system is adaptive, and differs a little bit with each sense. What this means is that it cannot respond simultaneously to all levels of intensities, so it adapts in relation with the intensity of the stimulation.

Let´s make this more understandable. If you watched the movie - Batman The Dark Knight, there is a scene where Batman interrogates Joker. He starts by slamming Jokers head to the table, and Joker replies; - Never start with the head, the victim gets all fuzzy and can`t feel the next… Batman interrupts, hitting him in the hand, Joker replies; - See. Indicating that the pain of the head is so intense that the pain in the hand can´t overcome it, in other words, he can´t feel the pain in the hand. So this is kind of what we are talking about here, sensory system cannot respond to all levels of different intensities simultaneously.

In the 1800´s Ernst Weber studied this in Leipzig University and thru different experiments discovered, that our senses adapt in relation with different levels of stimulation intensities. One of the experiments was how we feel weights, if you hold 100 gram object in your hand, and take another object in your other hand, that object would need to weigh at least 108 grams before you can feel the difference and which one is heavier. He described this as “ just noticeable difference “.

Now that we understand the principle of our topic, we can try to understand this in our visual system.

Our eyes are lenses, in a very simplified way how they function, is that our pupil is a hole that allows light to enter our eye. When it gets dark, our pupil gets bigger so more light can pass thru. When it is bright, our pupil gets smaller and less light goes in, avoiding over exposure. This function is part of mechanism known as brightness adaptation. There are receptors inside our eyes that detect and react to the amount of light entering our eye, and then ganglion cells take that information gathered by the receptors to our brains. These cells prioritize different information and transfer it in different speeds also. In a more simple way to put it, our eyes adjust to the intensity levels of light that are detected.

Why you should not start a drawing by evaluating everything you put on the paper? It is a waste of time and only complicates your process since the values will appear different with the progress you make.

When is the time to start evaluating?

It might sound frustrating to think about the process of starting a drawing, there are all sorts of insecurities, like the ones that what if I make things wrong at this stage and can´t correct them later or perhaps just afraid that you are not paying enough attention to correct values etc. I would say that most of these fears come from the fact that we are simply taught that the beginning is the most important thing. There is too much value put in these early stages and I disagree alot with that point of view. The truth is, that it´s more important how you finish the work than how you start it. This type of approach was holding me back for years, instead of making me a better artist.

One has several options to deal with these problems, propably the most fastest and succesfull is to learn a new method to approach the early stages. That´s what methods are developed for, you learn to trust a process that kind of guides you thru these early stages towards the desired result. But that´s not what I´m here to talk about. Another way, that was for me, much more valuable, was to write down what I considered to be the most important things in drawing , fundamentals if you like to call them. All the things I learned from art books, courses and other artists. I then started to go thru my list to see how correct they were, and guess what, scientifically speaking many of the things were false. The greatest thing in our times is that we have access to information 24/7. And more than that, fields that work with visuals have expanded into so wide fields that the information required is often cases packed or at least it will lead you in the right direction. If we think about 3D scuplting, the renderings follow the same rules as does our physical reality. So if theres enough time to spend, you can learn how the visual phenomenons happen and find a way to reconstruct and create them on paper or canvas.

Ultimately, we are just watching shapes with different meanings that create a subjective experience to us.

In a physical form, shapes are appearance of value in the structure - value and structure on the other hand is just light interaction with the environment, and that is much easier to comprehend, you might wanna check my article about it here.

But let´s jump on to what all my years in drawing has led me into. All the techniques that we have can more or less be simplified as a procedure of adding material or removing material. If you are familiar with how light interacts with matter, adding/removing material on medium is simply an act of absorbing or reflecting light. If we understand this, we can ignore most of the early steps that we are use to in starting a drawing, and take a shortcut to focus only on recreating shapes. Laying shapes as direct and fast as we can, helps out enormously to find the structure and where everything belongs in it. It is easier to measure, when there is something to measure from.

Filled abstract shape can be very quickly transformed into more accurate form and presentation of realistic form simply by removing material from it. Eraser is a tool and you can draw fairly easy with it.

The problem with most beginners, is the fact that they ignore eraser as a tool to make progression. We have a deeply built-in negative relation with it. It is quite understandable, from the early years in school, we are taught that eraser is a tool to be used when correcting mistakes, it has become profoundly a part of our nature to avoid using it.

The most simple way to approach a drawing is to think of your foundation as a blurred out of focus photograph, create the beginning stage like that. Below is the image of Lemmy, it shows the early steps.

This creates conditions of appearance, where you are able to see and evaluate are things correct and what needs to be adjusted. So here is the answer for the second question, when is the time to start evaluating - from here on. Correcting values is much easier when they are in the context, same goes for the location of eyes, nose etc. It´s not really about seeing them correct, but more about being able to see if they are incorrect. That is much easier.

And guess what else this allows you to do? You are free to choose what kind of meaning you give to all these shapes involved. Looking at the second image of Lemmy - we can see how the work progressed.

I gave some shapes a meaning of realistic form, which means that I just reconstructed the image following the rules how light and material interact in reality, and for the other shapes I gave abstract meaning, which is completely up to me to decide without any rules, working strictly with my instinct on how it appears appealing to me. And nothing has to be perfect, since the image is always viewed as whole composed work. You can get away with all sorts of mistakes and that is the beauty of it, because they don´t necessarily play a huge role in the final composure.As a matter of fact, they might even be better with them. This type of process will allow you to make progress and focus on the things that matter… to you.

After all, it is your art, your expression, your choices in good and bad. Have fun with it.

Sincerely

Mikko