Seeing as drawing: Drawing as seeing

The fusion of hand, face and puppet: A materialist thought

The image above is from a sketchbook, one of many I use to record ideas as they emerge from my head as I draw. I am though also aware as an image emerges, that I remember how other things look as I struggle with what I am trying to visually invent. I have 'seen' things in the past, similar to what I think I'm now in effect, drawing out of the paper before me. For instance as I drew the small Sooty figures that move around the hem or base of the human headed puppet above, I was aware of seeing similar shapes in the past; perhaps not an actual border of small Sooty puppets, but things not too dissimilar to the one coming into being. Tapping into visual memories helped my drawing mind make decisions about how these forms could convincingly be arranged. 

Seeing, or the act of visual perceiving, can be thought of as the product of "intermediate level representations in the visual system" or what has been called by David Marr, (1982), "the 2 1/2-D sketch" He argued that we cant see the totality of the visual information surrounding us, and that instead we construct an idea of the three dimensionality of our surrounds in our mind. The first stage of this representation is interestingly called by Marr 'the raw primal sketch'. Edges, tonal values etc. i.e. things similar to those a drawer is centred on when making a representation of the world, are orientated upon a visual map that reflects the orientation and disposition of surfaces in the world, in relation to the observer's viewpoint. The 'sketch' is though, a 'neural rendering' rather than a pen and ink drawing of what we see. I.e. the 2 1/2 D mind sketch is a 'representation' of how things look. As Alva Noë puts it, (2023, p.35) "It is not a representation of things themselves, or of how things, in any perception-independent way, actually are. It is a mere picture." But when ever has a picture ever been 'mere'? Several writers on vision (Prinz, Riley, Noë, Jackendorf) have highlighted the fact that when looked at this way, how we see the world is very similar to how we construct a drawing of the world. The main difference being that a drawing is where perceived information is processed, coupled with raw materials and then perceived again and therefore must always be a second order body of information. You could easily argue that how a drawing works as an operational model, is virtually exactly the same as the internal model that we use to 'see' the world. The drawing in our mind, like any observational drawing made from physical drawing materials, is an image that is made of selected elements taken from whatever is out there and will have more or less information within it depending on amount of time available to see what's there; lighting conditions, previous understanding of the type of situation etc. etc. Except of course the mind drawing has no actual existence, it is a cognitive mapping, therefore an active complex of neural networks in flow and never a static object that can be pointed to. However the close similarity between how we read a drawing and how visual thinking itself operates, means that a physical drawing can be regarded as a sort of analogy that stands for what is actually going on in the mind. 

The aspect that then becomes even more interesting, (well it does for myself), is then to follow what happens as the activities of drawing and painting expand their use value and move from documentation stemming from observation, on to ideas based on the observations made, and then even further to ideas based on possibilities that stem as much from the material implications of drawing itself, as from the images made possible out of recombinations of memories of previously seen, drawn or painted experiences. I.e. the processes of imagination. If the making of drawings and paintings can be thought of as the materialisation of an extended mind, then each approach to problem solving in image making, could also be regarded as an analogy that could stand for different ways of thinking. In visual languages the move from observation to imagination, is rather akin in verbal languages to a move from a description of events, to the creation of a work of fiction. The recomposing of live experience as imaginative futures, is actually at the core of the way we read every complex of incoming perceptions as a possibility. This means that as we react to experiences, we make images of positive pathways that can be followed for day to day living. Fight or flight being just two very basic directional responses to the possibility any one set of perceptions offers. 

My recent work has been an attempt to represent an older more animist way of thinking, using a avatar based on visual memories of a Sooty puppet that I used to have when I was a child in the 1950s. The drawings, paintings and ceramic sculptures that I have made, respond to the memory of an object and how it operated for myself as a child, as a 'transitional object', or buffer between myself and reality. This idea relates to a materialisation of what I now, looking back through an animist lens, see as a fetish. However it is a concept that has been emerging for a while. I have been trying to visualise a more animist engagement with the world around me for some time. For instance, I have been seeking to make connections with plant life. I spent many hours drawing, trying to form a connection with the vegetation that surrounded me and I still try to do this. My recent training as a permaculture designer being just another attempt to find a way to foster that connection. So let's look at some flower images.

I am trying to build an argument that there is a seamless movement between drawing as perceptual description, to drawing as fictional invention. I believe that it begins as soon as we see something, because we are already inventing as we see. If I take some drawings and compare them it is perhaps easier to understand what I'm getting at. 

Dandelion studies

The drawing above is from an old sketchbook and it documents a time when I was interested in what a dandelion looks like. On the left a seed head and next to it two studies of dandelion flower heads. At first glance they look as if they are accurate records or documentary drawings of things looked at closely, but in fact all three images are fictions based on perceptions. My eyesight isn't as good as it used to be, therefore each image has to be an impression, or a simplification. The drawings are in pen and ink, so they are very much to do with pen and ink possibilities; for instance the line flows as only a line drawn in ink can flow. My focus was on the flower-heads, so nothing else is recorded and therefore the degree of selection and editing is enormous. Above all I was looking at these things with an inner eye, one that was looking for idea potential in the forms of nature. However the drawing is based on experience. I did look at the dandelions in my garden. I picked them and held them up to look at them. There was an exchange of some sort made, between myself and these dandelions and the exchange changed me, by adding to thousands of neural pathway movements, in such a way that the experience was made available for recall.

Detail of flower sculpture made for an installation

I had made a series of sculptures for various exhibitions based on flowers. These sculptures were 'invented' out of clay. However their invention relied a lot on my previous observational drawings of plants. 

The three drawings immediately below are from pages in a sketchbook where I'm playing with ideas that relate to flower heads. The one with a rabbit form beginning to emerge from a flower was drawn as an idea, just as much as the ones further below.

The flower hosting an animal

Thinking of a vessel / closed flower head

Study for a ceramic flower form

The transition from observation to invention is seamless, there being as much invention in an observational drawing of a flower, as there are visual memories of observations made of flowers, and other things, embedded into the invention needed for the making of constructed fictions. 

Drawn from life

An idea emerges of a bird's head from a flower head

Flower bird clay study

One of the several flower hybrids that were installed in Harlow Carr Gardens

Once again I'm reminded of 'disegno', a term involving both the ability to make a drawing and the intellectual capacity to invent a design or visualise an idea. Some of the skills needed in order to draw are developed by constant drawing from observation, and then the skills that have been acquired are used to invent and to visualise possibilities. By practicing these skills, these in turn become more refined and focused on the realisation and visualisation of invented form.

A sharp eyed hunter is 'sharp eyed' because he or she is always looking and noticing things that help in the understanding of possible future scenarios. This is perhaps a form of drawing without needing to draw. 

 

Drawing can be seen as a model for the act of looking itself, therefore it can also be thought of as an analogy for looking. This implies that aesthetics ought to be regarded as being at the forefront of philosophical thinking. How a drawing looks being a model for how a thought is seen. 

References 

Jackendorf, R. (1987) Consciousness and the Computational Mind Cambridge: MIT Press

Marr, D. (1982) Vision San Francisco: W. H. Freeman

Noë, A. (2023) The Entanglement: How art and philosophy make us what we are Oxford: Princeton

Prinz, J. (2012) The Conscious Brain: How attention engenders consciousness Oxford: OUP

Riley, H., (2021). A contemporary pedagogy of drawing. Journal of Visual Art Practice, 20(4), pp.323-349.

See also:

From perception to concept: Why draw

Drawings as aesthetic transducers 

Visualising energy flow

Drawing and philosophy 

Drawing at art school a symposium 

More on perception and research