Years ago there was a thread like this one, and people suggested "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", just like they do here. So I tried that. Here's my account; I hope it will be useful to whoever reads it now that the topic has fallen off of the front page.
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I worked through all the exercises in the book, and to be honest it was elevating: in a few (two?) weeks I was able to draw still life in a way I never thought I could, and the trick of looking at objects and imagining them flattened on paper burned into my mind so much that I was catching myself randomly doing it in the middle of my day (I still do it sometimes).
Then in a month or so I signed up for actual drawing classes. On the first meeting I told my teacher about the book and showed some of my drawings. Here's how I remember the conversation that followed.
- Does that book also teach composition?
- A bit I guess, but not particularly.
- For example if you draw a sphere, where should you place it in the picture, and how should you orient the frame?
- In the middle I guess? I don't know?
He sketched a few spheres, and it turned out that portrait frame placement combined with the sphere being slightly elevated from the center ("on a pedestal") looked the best. At this point I realized that the pictures I brought had their objects scattered randomly, as I paid no attention to their placement.
- Does it also teach the laws of perspective?
- It teaches to use your eyes, so perspective is achieved automatically.
So he placed a small cube onto a table and had me draw it. It came out a bit uneven, but I thought it was OK. Then he pointed out that I did not abide by the perspective laws, and actually inverted the perspective on the top face. He corrected a few lines, and the the cube magically became much more believable. I though I used my eyes well -- I did apply all my effort -- but apparently without knowing what to look for I missed an important relation, and my cube looked like it widened toward the far end of it.
- What about shading?
- The book says to use your eyes. Maybe squint a bit to help see the values.
So he had me fill in the cube. It was obvious to me that the darkest spot on the cube was its bottom part where the shadow fell, so I shaded that part extra dark. The teacher told me to walk away for a bit, and come back and look at my drawing. Sure enough the extra dark part was the first thing that popped into me eyes when I looked at it -- but looking at the actual object it was the front edge that attracted attention the most. There was a discrepancy. And yet, in my mind the values were correct: I copied them the way I thought I saw them. The teacher explained that the biggest contrast on paper attracts the most attention -- unlike the 3d space.
Then he had me half-erase the bottom part and outer edges until they almost faded into the background, and add contrast to the front edge -- darken the shadow and brighten the light just around the edge area -- much more than there was on the object, maybe even contrary to the physics itself. I then walked away, came back, looked at the drawing again: now my attention was dead on the front edge -- just like with the 3d object. Logically I thought the tones were all wrong, but it sure looked much better.
Although the teacher didn't explain it in these words, but I gathered that he never concentrated on reproducing the exact tones he saw, but rather on recreating the feeling of looking at the object -- the tones are then all made up to implement this feeling.
- Do you know how to sharpen a pencil?
- What do you mean? Who doesn't?
- Show me.
Folks, it turned out I didn't even know that. The actual technique for drawing is to sharpen a pencil to a needle and expose 5-10mm of its graphite: this makes it easier to shade, and (more importantly) forces you to grip it far away from the tip (as you would a fencing foil, rather than a pen), which makes it possible to stand further back when drawing, and keep the whole picture in the field of view instead of the particular detail you're working on, which is then needed to implement the intended whole-image feeling, and prevents from getting lost in the details.
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My conclusion, if any, is this: there is so much more to drawing than just using your eyes. There are very basic techniques, used by painters daily, that improve the quality of their work beyond that of blind copying -- at a fraction of the effort. I am very grateful to "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" for persuading me that I can learn to draw (anyone can), but make no mistake: it did not teach me the techniques a novice should learn.