![]() We’d probably do better if we followed a saccadic pattern more like the ones we use when we’re not drawing! Testing the theory They don’t compare, they don’t move across the object to check the area we’re drawing against the whole. Now think again about the paths of our eyes when we draw. ![]() If they’re wrong, so will your drawing be. Having trouble with your still life of flowers in a vase? Chances are some of your flowers, however well they may be drawn in detail, are the wrong size when compared to the bouquet as a whole. But there’s a strong tendency when we’re drawing to place them higher up and stick them in the middle of the forehead. Usually, a person’s eyes are positioned somewhere around half way between the top of their head and the bottom of their chin. A very common mistake in portraits is to place the eyes too high in the head. Have you ever got the shape of a head wrong? You probably weren’t relating the part of the outline you were drawing correctly to the whole. Specifically, it’s about being able to relate the part of the drawing we’re concentrating on to the whole. Relating the parts to the wholeĭrawing accurately is about relationships. That’s what makes drawing accurately so hard. But instead of our eyes flicking all around the object we’re drawing, a typical zigzag pattern, they creep around the outline a bit at a time, pausing as they go. We still look in patterns of saccades – fixating on a particular area before moving on. The pattern our eyes take follows the pattern our hand will take when it draws the outline. The pattern our eyes take when we’re drawing something is sequential. There doesn’t seem to be any particular area of focus, since no part of the shape is psychologically important to us.īut when we decide we’re going to do a drawing of that thing, the pattern of saccades is very different. It turns out that we use a similar pattern of saccades, our eyes flicking around the shape and gathering information. That’s just what the scientists tested in the paper. ![]() It’s good advice. So what about when we’re looking at something more abstract, like a random shape? Notice how much time the eye spends on psychologically important elements, like the eyes, nose and mouth – especially the eyes (the window of the soul).Īdvice we often hear about drawing accurately is to see the subject as shape, to try to disengage it from its psychological connection. You can almost feel the brain picking up the bits of information it needs to gain a general picture of what that face looks like, what its most important characteristics are. The pattern of saccades when we’re just looking at (not drawing) a picture of a face might be something like this:Īs you can see, the focus of attention is flicking around. The path our eyes take across an object, or a picture, is a pattern of saccades.Įye-tracking technology allows to see much more clearly now what our eyes do when we look at things. The movement of our focus from one part to another is called a saccade (a French word meaning jerk, pronounced “sakahd”). We fixate on an area for a short time, then our eyes flick to another area, and rest on that part for a short time, before flicking on. Usually, when we’re looking at an object, our eyes flick around it, pausing for short intervals at particular points that we think are important or interesting. Because when we draw, we look at things very differently. We direct our attention in a very different way. You might think that when you’re just looking at something that you look at it in a similar way to when you’re drawing.Īh, but you’d be wrong. It surprised me, and I think it might surprise you, too. Something that is absolutely key to why drawing accurately is so hard. The other day, whilst searching for information about how we see on google, I stumbled across a scientific paper that explains something about how we look. With time, and a lot of practice, I learned enough measuring and comparing techniques and developed my drawing skills enough to be able to draw reasonably accurately. I just couldn’t understand why I was finding it so difficult. When I returned to drawing, a few years ago now, after a long gap, it was single biggest thing I struggled with. The hand looks more like a jellyfish.ĭrawing accurately mystified me for a long time. The portrait looks like a different person. No matter how you try, your drawing just doesn’t look like your subject. When you’re starting out learning to draw – and actually, even when you’ve been going for a while – drawing even halfway accurately can seem incredibly difficult.
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