1	Perception, Part 3 But first, a vehicle that stimulates the visual cortex in a neuroanatomy-based car ad ??!
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4	Perception and Drawing Power of lines Types of drawing Drawing exercises
5	The Power of a Line “Every endeavor of the human mind, including the most abstract ones such as poetry and philosophy, has made use of drawings…This has been true in every culture throughout time.” [Massironi 2001 p.2] Cave art ~30,000BC First writing ~3000BC Basic components of drawing unchanged for thousands of year Viewpoint (location and distance) [not always a factor] Style (from projection/perspective to abstraction)
6	Range of Representations Lines (e.g., in pen&ink illustrations) can represent Objects Edges (contours, silhouettes, etc.) Cracks Textures
7	Types of Drawing Illustrative Fine Art Operational Taxonometric Graphics, Diagrams, Graphs, Maps
8	Perception and Drawing How can a simple line represent almost anything we can see or think of? Because linear elements and shaded areas trigger the perceptual “rules” we just studied Most preconscious—don’t have to think about “what things looks like” We experience “wholes” before parts, making parts more difficult to attend to Can learn to focus on detail and visual structure but brain helping you by not requiring this Learning to draw consists in part of Bringing some preconscious operations into consciousness (e.g., seeing a line, not the edge of a 3D form) Halting the process of object recognition and categorization
9	But, Can’t Learn How to Draw by Reading/Thinking About It Information from this class and other courses can help guide you and provide insights, but to increase your drawing skill, you need to make drawings. Often fear, nervousness, frustration, and disappoint keep people from learning how to draw Need to disengage judging, anxiety-ridden part of brain…
10	Drawing on Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards Verbal knowledge (left brain) gets in the way of visual knowledge (right brain). To draw, need to “see” only one view, not canonical, not whole category “Visual agnostics” (patients who can see but not name things) copy images very well!) [Palmer 1999] p432
11	Edwards’ Five Aspects of Drawing Related to the perceptual stages of vision
12	Exercises Pre-instruction drawing of hand >> Line styles >> Upside-down drawing >> Non-dominant hand drawing >> Rapid drawing >> Blind contour drawing >> Negative space drawing >> Post-instruction hand drawing >>
13	1. Pre-instruction drawing of hand 5 min >> Draw your non-dominant hand as realistically as possible in 5 minutes. This drawing is simply a benchmark and is not assessed.
14	2. Line styles 3 min >> Line quality in drawings, just as in one's signature, is very personal and can often distinguished one artist from another. The ability to create different line styles is also an ongoing area of interest in computer graphics. Work in the handout's rectangular areas, experimenting and practicing different line qualities. Vary pressure (shading) line direction (crosshatching) line form (line thickness) speed (gesture) Do not draw anything recognizable, simply focus on the abstract line qualities. Try to keep the variables as separate as possible (i.e., not varying several of them at once).
15	3. Upside-down drawing 8 min >> Painter Malcom Morely used this technique to blur the distinction between realism and abstraction. Copy the upside-down drawing on the worksheet in the rectangle to the right. Try not to let any names of parts or the whole enter your thinking. For even more accurate reproduction, draw a regular grid in both rectangles and copy square by square from upper left to lower right. Finally, Turn paper right side-up and assess similarity of copy to original.
16	4. Non-dominant hand drawing, 4 min >> Draw your dominant hand using your non-dominant hand as realistically as possible in 5 minutes.
17	5. Rapid drawing (2 min) >> Draw Dega's ballerina on the worksheet three times, taking appr. 20 seconds seconds per drawing. Follow the ordering 1-3 of the outlines spaces. Try to capture the overall gesture rather than any specific details.
18	6. Blind contour drawing, 8 min >> Draw your hand again (as in pre-instruction drawing) but do NOT look at your paper at all while drawing. Start anywhere on your "hand" and keep the pencil down until the 5 minutes are up. Draw only lines--do not try to shade in areas. Your pencil trail is like that of an ant crawling over your had. Don't "go" anywhere without leaving a trace. Short pauses (once or twice during the 5 minute period) may be used to look at the paper and reposition the pencil. The goal is to two-fold: disengage the judgmental tendency of the mind by preventing access to the drawing in progress. This relieves stress and lets one focus on drawing, not self-commentary. record the act of seeing and control what is seen and when by exploring a complex form sequentially with a simple line. Notice how your line is used to "see" the edges of a form as well as the internal wrinkles and other shifts in surface angle.
19	7. Negative space drawing, 8 min >> Virtually all successful representational (and much abstract) artwork has strong "negative spaces." Draw the designated chair at the front of the room (or side) using only "negative space" Negative space is the space that IS NOT the chair. Why draw negative space? While your brain knows a lot about chairs, it doesn't know much about randomly shaped blobs of space between chairs. Drawing that space, which conveniently defines the chair, prevents your knowledge of chairs from interfering with your reporting of this particular chair and the view you have of it. If the negative space is drawn carefully, the chair should pop into being. Although lacking in any internal detail or shading it will look like the chair you are viewing/drawing.
20	8. Post-instruction hand drawing, 5 min >> Draw your non-dominant hand as realistically as possible in 5 minutes. Compare it to the pre-instruction hand drawing.
21	Exercises Test yourself. Some classic illusions http://www.wilderdom.com/games/descriptions/Illusions.html and separate answer sheet
22	References [Gibson 1987] The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception James J. Gibson, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987 [Hoffman 1998] Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See Donald D. Hoffman, W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/%7Eddhoff/illusions.html [Pinker 1999] How the Mind Works Steven Pinker, W.W. Norton & Company, 1999 [Massironi 2001] The Psychology of Graphic Images: Seeing, Drawing, Communicating Manfredo Massironi, translated by Nicola Bruno, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001 [Palmer 1999] Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology Stephen E. Palmer, Bradford Books, 1999 [Friedhoff and Peercy 2000] Richard Mark Friedhoff and Mark S. Peercy. Visual Computing. W H Freeman & Co., ISBN: 0716750597. James Elkins. Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction. Routledge, ISBN: 0415966817. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain books, Betty Edwards [being added to bibliography] Web Sites Illusion Works pages: http://psylux.psych.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/index.html Great explanations and interactive or at least animated examples http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/sen_tut.html Amazing applets. With questions! http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/personnel/hoffman/Applets/index.html http://www.visionweb.com/content/consumers/dev_consumerarticles.jsp?RID=36 Neurophysiology of eye for laypeople. Cog Sci/Perception links from Rice http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pomeran/AlumniCollege2004Imagelist.htm