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Drawing a New Reality

Hyper-literal Seeing / Spinning Off / Mastering Shape / Adding On / Macro Drawing / Mirror Imaging / Obscuring / Sketching the Unusual

Imagination is tightly linked to observation — a familiarity with how something actually looks makes it possible to imagine how it could look. While it is the goal of this book to help you with drawing the world as seen through imagination, there is no better way to develop the imaginative muscles than drawing from direct observation. Every time you draw from life, you strengthen the connection between your eye and your hand. These connections can be powerfully adapted to drawing the images you see in the mind's eye.

How do you make drawings that are memorable, compelling, unusual, intense, from a reality that often seems to have none of these qualities? Our habits of seeing are necessarily lazy. As a practical matter, we simply haven't time to notice every strange play of light, every unusual juxtaposition or distorted reflection that crosses our visual field. Almost daily, clouds resembling rhinos and tubas pass overhead, but we are simply too busy to notice. These visual oddities get pushed to the periphery while our attention is directed to practical necessities: the traffic that surrounds us, the stair step in front of us, the food on our fork, the information on our computer screen. In this common habit of viewing the world, we don't really see — we use our eyes to confirm our expectations. We might call this utilitarian seeing, and we owe an ancient debt of gratitude for it — it was vital to the survival of our species and keeps us from wandering into traffic today. But it's not so good for making art.

When we get out our sketchbooks, it's time to set aside this way of looking at things. As artists, we want look at objects, even familiar objects, as if we had never seen them before. Everything is new. See the object before you not as confirmation of what you already know, but with innocent curiosity. That forkful of food coming toward your mouth has a shape. What is that shape? When you hold it in position and draw it, all of its textures, shadows and reflections come into being. The food, the fork, the hand — these everyday items have a new vividness, a new intensity. From here it's a short step to a fanciful sketch of the fork melting and the food floating off.

Hyper-Literal Seeing

Innocent seeing requires that we be hyper-literal about shapes. Everything has a shape, but we must never assume in advance that we already know what it is. Each shape is unique in a particular light and from a particular angle. When we look at things as shapes, every shape is new.

it starts with shape

Shape (along with line) is a common language used by both the eye and the hand. Beauty, interest, vivaciousness and the like can all be observed by the eye, but they do not automatically translate into something the hand can do. Shape is different. To see a shape is to be able to draw it, so the surest way to successfully draw the things you see is to learn to break them down into shapes — the overall silhouette shape, the major subordinate shapes and the detailed enrichment shapes.

For most people, even beginners, the overall shape of an object or person is pretty easy to see. But the major subordinate shapes, particularly of complex subjects, is sometimes difficult to discern.

OBSERVING AND DRAWING A PAPER BAG

Drawing a commonplace object, such as a paper bag, requires that you look at it as if you've never seen one before. This is best done by looking at the shapes and then drawing them as if they were territories on a map.

The photos below illustrate how this works.

1. Look at the overall shape.

2. Draw it lightly.

3. Next, notice the major shadow shape.

4. Draw the major shadow shape as a definite shape, even though some of its edges may be indistinct.

5. Observe the darkest shapes.

6. Again, draw these as definite shapes.

You can see this better when you squint at your subject. Squinting simplifies and unifies, merging all the insignificant details into a single shape. Seeing the major shapes in this way preserves the pattern of your drawing — even as you add all the little bends and creases that make the texture convincing.

1 Overall silhouette

2 Drawing of overall shape

3 Major subordinate shape (shadow area)

4 Drawing of major subordinate shape

5 Other subordinate shapes (darkest darks)

6 Drawing of other subordinate shapes

Hard and Soft Edges

A hard edge is crisp and sharp, while a soft edge gradually fades out. Clearly distinguishing between these two will give your shapes an authentic realism. Notice how many of the crumpled shapes in this bag have hard edges on one side and soft on the other.

add-on drawings

A drawing is different from a snapshot: Because it takes place over time, your drawing is really a time-lapse image of your subject. Add-on drawings allow the artist to build a drawing in separate stages over an extended period of time.

Sometimes you have only a narrow window of time in which to draw, so you create a fragment — an incomplete drawing that you leave for another day. When you go back to it, it might be months later. You might be in a new location, perhaps even looking at an entirely different subject. You simply add new elements to the white spaces of your earlier fragment. In this way you build the drawing in stages, adding on parts at different times.

Add-on drawings generate countless ideas. They open possibilities for imaginative work because of the time separation between the drawing stages. Your state of mind when you return to a drawing can be quite different than it was when you started it. This mix of mind-states can lead to interesting new combinations of images. It enhances fresh seeing, along with radical shifts in intentionality.

Drawing a Crowd

1 START WITH ONE

Draw one person.

2 QUICKLY ADD MORE

Add people as they move in and out of your scene. (Sketch quickly.)

3 KEEP ADDING

Keep adding people. The ones you started with will be long gone by the time you finish.

Drawing Plumbing

I like to draw pipes and plumbing fixtures. It's good training for drawing ellipses and parallel lines in perspective. And it's a natural subject for adding on, since so much actual plumbing is done that way. I drew this in a building in Seattle.

A year after the first drawing, I added more pipes and valves, this time from a building in Vermont.

Some time later, I completed this drawing with additions from yet another building.

exercise 8

Adding On

Make a line drawing of three or more unrelated objects, each drawn at a different time and in a different place. Place the first object in the foreground and the others partly behind (i.e., overlapped by) the first. Don't worry about keeping the objects in scale, but draw them accurately. Work in the medium of your choice and allow at least ten minutes per object.

crumpled, dented, crushed

Georges Clemenceau, the President of France during World War I, was once standing motionless on a hill overlooking the great city of Istanbul. After a long silence, one of his aides asked, “What are you thinking, Mr. President?” He replied solemnly, “I was thinking what beautiful ruins this place would make.”

Indeed, there is something aesthetically pleasing about the partially destroyed — especially for a draftsman. Junkyards, weathered barns, broken dolls and ripped billboards all suggest the ravages of time and hard use. Things become more abstract (and often more interesting) as they deteriorate, oering the artist rich opportunities for line, tone and texture and a great opportunity for mastering shapes.

Crumpled paper, put under a strong light, reveals dozens of small planes and edges. You can capture these in a drawing by carefully observing the shapes: rst the overall shape of the paper, then the shapes of the creases and facets. Squint often to distinguish the strong from the subtle.

MAPPING YOUR SUBJECT

Mapping the major shapes of your subject is a key rst step in drawing complex damaged objects. This makes lling in the unusual planes and shadows a manageable problem.

DENTED METAL

Drawing shiny, re ective objects like these crushed cans requires a patient rendering of shapes, as well as a clear distinction between hard and soft edges.

DRAWING A SPIN-OFF

After making a few crushed-metal drawings, you get a feel for the kinds of shapes and edges involved. This familiarity allows you to invent your own forms, as I did in this drawing.

Things get more complex, and often more fun, when you draw crumpled paper with patterns on it. These dollar bills took time and a sharp pencil, but this kind of patient work can be relaxing. And it trains the eye/hand muscles. For the engraved parts it helps to ask comparative questions about size and placement: i.e., “Which is wider, the engraved border or the white border?” or “Is the numeral‘1’ taller or shorter than the pyramid?”

Crumpled Money

.05 mechanical pencil and paper stump

THE SPIN-OFF

I set this hundred-dollar bill (in play money) on fire and then photographed it because it burned too quickly to draw from direct observation.

Money to Burn Crow quill pen and ink with ink washes

exercise 9

Creating Destruction

Make a carefully observed drawing of a crumpled object. First, using only line, accurately map the overall shape, then the secondary shapes, and finally the crumpled shapes and creases. When your map is complete, add the value tones. Pay particular attention to the difference between hard and soft edges. Use a 2B or softer pencil and a kneaded eraser to pick out highlights, and allow one to two hours.

melted and deformed

Over the years I have collected many photographs of people in crowds — marches, demonstrations and riots, as well as artists' depictions of historical battles. It's so interesting to see how the mood of a crowd shows up in its overall shape; how the individual parts, angular, jagged, energetic and clashing, can combine to create a whole with similar characteristics.

I bought a bag of plastic American Civil War soldiers and melted and fused them together to form a single writhing mass. I used an old saucepan and pair of tongs to partially melt and then fuse the hot pieces together. I then tried drawing this tangled glob under different lighting conditions.

Projects like this highlight the value of mapping. It shifts your attention to the abstract pattern rather than the individual faces, arms and weapons.

SEEING ABSTRACT SHAPES

This is the drawing that resulted from melting the plastic soldiers. Its abstract and unusual qualities required patient shape-making. Generally, I think it helps simplify the process to think of the shapes in terms of three values: dark, middle and light.

Clash 2B pencil

Here I put a strong light on the subject to reveal a bolder pattern.

Bold Soldiers

Pen and ink with black marker accents

The melted rifles add an almost comic touch.

Straight Shooters Ballpoint pen

exercise 10

Drawing Melted Plastic

Heat and soften several plastic objects (such as soldiers, toy cars or plastic utensils) and fuse them together. Make a tonal drawing of the aggregate, paying particular attention to the overall shape of the mass. Notice the small, trapped shapes (negative spaces) and draw them accurately. Put a direct light on your subject to create strong light and shadow shapes. Use a 2B pencil and allow one to two hours.

macro drawing

Enlarging an object transforms it. It reveals a level of structure and detail that is otherwise invisible to us. Macro drawing involves carefully rendering something as you look at it through a magnifying glass. This requires good lighting and careful, patient work. I've also found that the mechanics of holding the glass and drawing sometimes requires a fair amount of erasing, which is why I usually use a smooth-finish plate paper for this type of drawing. Such paper takes erasure well and allows for more fine detail. Take your time with a drawing like this — even if it means completing it over several sessions.

Drawing popcorn this closely is interesting.

It's a challenge to capture not only the complex rounded shapes of the kernel, but the softly graded shadow tones as well.

Popcorn Details 3B pencil

At this level of magnification, a grasshopper seems to have so much personality. I guess it's seeing the face up close. I was also struck by the very mechanical look of the jointed parts.

Grasshopper

Regular HB pencil and mechanical pencil

Bumblebee on a Dime Mix of HB pencil, ballpoint pen and fine-tip marker

exercise 11

Macro Drawing

Make an enlarged image of a very small object or creature. Use a good magnifying glass and a strong light (or lights) and take your time, as much as several hours. Erase as often as needed. A drawing like this is best done over several sessions. Good subjects are dead insects, spiders, watch and computer parts, peanuts, raisins, flower parts, hermit crabs and peppercorns.

distorted reflections

All drawing is distorted. The eye/mind/hand process invariably and unconsciously emphasizes some things at the expense of others. Rather than correct such distortions, we, as imaginative artists, should find ways of emphasizing them.

Here's a good way to start: Draw your own reflection in a fun-house mirror. If you can't get a fun-house mirror, a sheet of flexible, mirrored Mylar (available at many art stores) will do. The drawings on these pages were made by bending Mylar in various ways. You'll need to tape or clamp the Mylar so that the desired bend is held in place.

What's interesting about this exercise is that no matter how extreme the distortion, your image is still recognizable.

The parts are garbled, sometimes wildly, but the relationships between them are held constant. If you draw the strange reflection accurately, it still looks like you. (It's equally interesting that sometimes you can look in a regular mirror and hardly recognize yourself. Well, at least I do that.)

A project like this one can make you comfortable with distortion. Once you've done a few of these, you can elongate, compress or otherwise torture any image you see without the help of Mylar or mirrors.

SLIM

COMPRESSED

OLD HAT

This series of distorted self-portraits was done by looking into a sheet of mirrored Mylar. To do this, pin or tape the Mylar so that it bends in various ways — and hold very still as you draw. Most of these were done in vine and compressed charcoal with the help of a kneaded eraser.

FLAT HAT

ASYMMETRY

MOSAIC COWBOY

The drawing below was done from reflections in a mosaic mirror. It's easy to lose your place and forget which square you're working on in a complex image like this. I put a little dot on the mirror square that reflected the tip of my nose. I also kept one eye closed most of the time.

mirror imaging

There is something satisfying in symmetry. When you hold a slightly tilted mirror alongside an object or a person, you see the object and its reflection as a single merged shape — a shape composed of identical halves. Your mind shifts to a pattern sensing mode. With an ease that borders on magical, symmetry transforms a random fragment into an ordered design.

1 SKETCH

Sketch a subject.

2 COPY AND FLOP

Copy and flop the subject vertically by tracing it on a light table.

3 COPY AND FLOP AGAIN

Copy and repeat the pair, this time horizontally. Notice how at each stage the image becomes more of an abstract design.

SWITCHED SHIRT, BELOW

I saw this T-shirt lying on a table and wanted to draw it. I like to do cloth in pen and ink because the complex, curving folds seem to lend themselves to the wavy, hatching strokes of the pen. (See Chapter 5 for a more stylized version of this technique.)

SYMMETRY, ABOVE

I made a photocopy of the original drawing, flopped it, and slipped it under the original on a light table. I then traced the mirror image, more or less stroke for stroke. But if you look closely, you'll see subtle differences between the two halves. Turning one of these images sideways, as I've done here, can radically alter the effect. This almost looks like an abstract butterfly.

exercise 12

Mirror Imaging

On the upper half of a 14″ × 17″ (36cm × 43cm) sheet of paper, make a detailed drawing of an object that has an irregular or otherwise interesting shape (it could be a used work glove, a houseplant or a sea shell). Make a photocopy of the drawing, then place it on a light table with the photocopy underneath. The photocopy should be flopped and inverted so it looks like a mirror image of the original. It should also be aligned so that the two images are touching. Trace the photocopied image onto the original so that they make a single, symmetrical shape. Use a 2B pencil and allow one hour.

SPIN-OFF

Turned upside down, the image looked a little like two nomads in conversation, so I added these faces.

obscuring

In most pictures — just as in real life — the eye quickly settles on the center of interest and relegates everything else to the background. So what happens when you deliberately thwart this convention by placing elements in front of the center of interest to obscure or obstruct it? Challenging convention is often a starting place for imaginative work.

It just so happens that if you choose interesting foreground elements and draw them accurately, you will often create a tantalizing frame for your subject. The effect will be one of peering through the foreground. This often makes the subject intriguing, appealing.

You can also obscure your subject with a dramatic light-and-shadow pattern. Dim light often conveys mystery. Strong cast shadows reveal the forms that they fall on. The shadow side of an object often merges with the dark of the background.

For these drawings I began by sketching a burdock plant, then made photocopies of the sketch and drew different people behind the burdock. Photocopying, though unnecessary, does save time if you're doing a series like this.

exercise 13

Obscured

Make a line drawing of a tangled piece of clothesline. Make three photocopies, and on each draw a person, pet or object behind the rope. Each should have a different subject behind it, and all should be made from observation. Use a 3B pencil and allow 20 minutes per drawing.

obscuring with dramatic light and shadow

1 Take some photographs of your subject under a strong light.

2 Create a simple map by tracing the photo on a light table.

3 Add a second element in front of the face — in this case, a pair of hands.

4Fill in and darken the tones. Try several variations.

5Posterize: keep details to a minimum…

6… but capture the dierence between hard and soft edges.

7 Here's a different e ect, using a tangled piece of clothesline rope …

8… positioned so as to cast strong shadows on the face.

9 With only selected background shapes lled in, the drawing appears more abstract.

sketching the unusual

Any subject that catches your eye is a good subject for your sketchbook — but it may be time to get bolder in your range of choices. We are trying to build neuron bridges between the eye and the mind's eye — perhaps more accurately, between the visual centers of the brain and the visual imagination, which happen to share much of the same equipment. For this work, a good subject is one that jolts you out of your habitual way of seeing. These are subjects that in some way appear compelling, vivid or strange.

Sketching your dental X-rays, a tray of plastic utensils, or a dead fly under a magnifying glass could trigger a shift in your seeing habits. Like the images in your dreams, the “new reality” you draw should include the odd, the illogical, the ambiguous and the absurd.

ARRESTING PATTERN

I liked the shape produced by the black of this young woman's hair meeting the black of her shawl.

COMPELLING STRANGENESS

Early Mexican art often combines the grotesque with a wild, Baroque quality. Copying work from other cultures can be liberating — you can feel their boldness and difference. This Mayan solar god was sketched from a sculpture in Mexico's National Archeological Museum.

IMPROBABLE SOURCES

This was drawn from a photograph in a medical textbook depicting how a baby's head passes through the birth canal. I liked the abstract qualities and the odd archeological feeling.

IMAGINARY STORIES

In Mexico City, I drew this American businessman sitting with his cigarette beneath a Diego Rivera mural. I was struck by the contrast between the iconic mural and the laconic smoker. I kept wondering,” Who is this guy? Is he a ruthless capitalist, in town to exploit indigenous workers like the noble but distressed peasant family in the mural? Or is he just a gentle retiree from Ohio?” I never found out.

AMBIGUOUS OBJECTS

I like drawings that look vaguely familiar but not fully recognizable. I think this was of a Spanish cement mixer, but I don't remember for sure.

ODD SCENES

Once, on a ferry ride, I took out my sketchbook to draw people lounging in the sun. I focused on a father and son sitting in deck chairs. As soon as I had begun, they pulled their T-shirts over their heads and the father turned backwards. This scene would be totally ordinary if it weren't for the goofy T-shirt-over-the-head look. I also loved the kid's shoes!

EXTREME FORESHORTENING

End views, especially of people, force you to let go of your ideas about how a person looks and to draw only what your eye tells you. This is an ordinary drawing of three young women on a beach, but I like to view it upside down. It gives the drawing a futuristic, sci-filook.

UNEXPECTED COMBINATIONS

I put this rubber frog on a beaded mirror because I liked the reflection. Somehow it looks like an illustration for a fairy tale.

DRAWINGS OF YOUR DRAWINGS

Occasionally, I make little sketches, in a bold pen, of my previous drawings. The crude simplicity of the patterns sometimes gives me new ideas. The two little drawings in the middle are so simple that I no longer remember the originals. But I can make something new out of them.

TIME ON YOUR HANDS AND NOTHING TO DRAW

I did this drawing of my feet while on a long plane trip. It became an almost abstract exercise in drawing shapes and textures.

SO UGLY IT'S BEAUTIFUL

It's interesting how people and objects get more attractive when you begin drawing them. This prehistoric fish in London's Museum of Natural History looked woeful and forlorn. Initially, I felt sorry for him. But as I drew, I came to appreciate his craggy, handsome face.

COMPLEX TANGLES

An old apple tree offers excellent practice in observational drawing because you need to keep finding your place when you look from your paper to the subject. I took care to draw even the small branches as shapes, not simply lines.

PROGRESSIVE STRETCHING

For many of us, the best way to alter an image is in stages. We make several drawings of the same subject, each one a little more exaggerated than the previous. By degrees, we get bolder, freer. Each drawing expands our idea of what is possible.

Here I made three drawings inspired by the figure in Jean Antoine Watteau's Mezzetin. The proportions in the first one are normal. In the other two I elongated the figure. I've found that distorting in stages allows me to work up nerve. The exaggerated proportions in the middle drawing made the extreme version possible.