4

Visualizing Ideas

Evolving Ideas / Joining Two Bags / Variations On a Theme / Reversing / Associating Ideas / Making Metaphors

Technically, an idea is something that happens in the mind, and a sketch is something that happens on paper. In most drawing, however, these two processes are merged. Ideas inspire sketches, and sketches trigger ideas. You go back and forth.

Unlike the cartoon ideal, ideas are not usually like little bright lightbulbs. More often than not they are fragments — bits and pieces that need to be assembled to create a cohesive whole. Because a mental image often fades quickly, capturing it on paper is key to visualizing. This often means that you start drawing before you know your exact destination. The alternative — thinking long and hard about what you're going to draw — has the effect of erasing each little idea as you wait for the big one. This is not a good creative strategy.

It is true that every once in a while you will get a clear vision of exactly what you want to draw. That's lovely when it happens, but most of the time drawing is about generating and transforming. You take something and do something to it. You get comfortable knowing that things will not end up just as you planned. You can't predict where it will take you. You need both a vision and a willingness to depart from it. That's the nature of creativity.

Words and Pictures

Where does a visual idea originate? Does it start with an image or words? The answer, in my own view, is that it can start either way. Ideas are part words and part image. Words and images together constitute a kind of double description — the same concept available in two different modes and located in two different parts of the brain. Song lyrics like “blue eyes cryin' in the rain” or “she keeps her face in a jar by the door” create an immediate mental image. Your image will be different from mine, but we will each create a distinct personal picture from those lyrics. Appreciating this link between the visual and the verbal enhances creative freedom. Your visual sense takes the lead as you draw, but from time to time words will help.

I started this drawing with just the airplane and chorus line. Then I added the guy on the trapeze, then the cowboys, then the horse. I might have gone further, but I ran out of paper.

the evolution of an idea

Creating could be summed up as having a plan accompanied by a willingness to depart from it. Most people think that an artist's vision must be clear and fully formed before he or she begins to draw. Not only is this rarely the case, it is actually based on a misunderstanding about how creativity works. Creativity is an open dialogue between you, the artist, and the particular piece you are executing. The lines you put down on paper often tell you what to do next. Each stage feeds the one that follows.

You start with an idea — some sort of thought or vision about what you're going to do. It can be something quite simple. Once you've drawn a few lines, your image begins to speak back to you. You get new ideas. You may begin to modify your original vision, or you may think of a more vivid way to capture it. In either case, the original concept is only a starting place. You surrender to the process, and therefore you never know exactly what you're going to draw until you draw it.

So what qualifies as an idea? In its broadest meaning, an idea is any thought that gets your pencil moving. Another definition is combining two elements in a novel way. This definition gets to the real power of ideas. Ideas are about creating relationships — about linking things in a fresh way. Your idea can be about anything, but it seems to work best when it's about two things. As the dancer Twyla Tharp puts it, “you don't have a really good idea until you combine two little ideas.”

1 I like to start with loose, tangled sketches or little iconic figures. If it's a subject I've drawn a lot, like these monkeys, I make an effort to draw them in some new way — some new angle or position. If I can think of something, I like to add some new element, such as the unicycle.

2 The first sketch leads to a simple idea — a monkey on a bicycle.

3 Continuing to play with the idea, I silhouette the figure.

4 Next, I think about adding a background. I place clouds, a road and … perhaps something precarious, like a cliff.

5 I notice that the cliff looks a little bit like fabric hanging on a rack. Neckties? I draw the pointed ends and fill in the patterns.

This is how an image evolves. “A silhouetted monkey on a bicycle, headed for a cliff of decorative neckties” was not my original vision. Such ideas may occur now and then, but they're generally too complex, too elaborate to visualize all at once. More often, drawings like this arrive in stages.

joining two bags

Here's another way to think about connecting different things and building fresh ideas. Imagine that you have one bag containing x, and another containing y. Let's assume that these two items don't really go together, at least not in any obvious way. You need to go beyond logic and into the world of strange, creative associations. What if x was huge and y was tiny? What if y was swallowing x? What if xy were combined into a single shape? What if x was background and y was foreground? Joining two bags is simply a metaphor for evolving an idea out of two things that seem incompatible using experimentation and creative play.

These two different subjects might be labeled “people”and “face,” but you could also call them “content” (the subject) and “context” (the framework or environment).

I made this drawing for a book I co-authored with distinguished biologist Mahlon Hoagland. Its purpose was to metaphorically show that complex living creatures are themselves made of smaller living creatures (cells) and that, astonishingly, each individual cell has a life of its own.

In a symbolic drawing such as this, I like to make the elements distinctive. Instead of drawing generic people, I put them in ninteenth-century attire. The face is the well-known profile of the late British film director Alfred Hitchcock.

From The Way Life Works, Times Books/Random House

Making the Familiar New

One of my favorite words is context. I like it because I can never quite grasp it. It means something like “how the parts fit together to make a whole.” Drawing a strange idea often means presenting familiar content in some new and unexpected context. That is, the drawing has realistic parts, but they're put together in an unconventional way. This fresh look stretches the viewer's imagination.

exercise 20
Unlikely Mixing
Make a list of five objects (including people or animals), such as clock, asparagus, clown, etc. Then make a list of five locations or environments, such as junkyard, ocean, theater, etc. Choose one item from each list and combine them into a single drawing in some unusual way. You may want to make several preparatory sketches to work out your idea. Strive for some believability in your final drawing. Make it look convincing, no matter how absurd the combination of elements.
Optional, for the adventurous: Make a list of qualities — adjectives such as soft, ominous, melted, etc. Choose one from this list and one each from the other two. Combine all three elements in one drawing (i.e., join three bags).

Here's another unlikely pairing of content and context. Two elegant dancers in the woods may not seem all that strange, but something about this drawing seems like pure fantasy. I think it's the spotlight.

variations on a theme

Generating variations may be the essence of creating. Ideas stand on the shoulders of earlier ideas, and a new idea quickly becomes source material for subsequent ideas. This is one of the core principles of creating, driving biological evolution and human invention alike.

Think of a theme as an arena for creative play — an arena that's broad enough to encompass possibilities yet narrow enough to impose constraints. To play in this arena is to make a series of sketches that depict the theme in alternative ways. Typically, you begin by making small and subtle changes from one drawing to the next. Then at some point you jump out of that set and strike out in a bolder direction.

It's generally best to explore a theme over a period of time rather than in one sitting. Many years ago I did the sketch below as an illustration for the popular story (and movie) The Birds. But the visuaI possibilities of this theme stuck with me, and I have returned to it several times in subsequent years.

IDEAS FOR VARIATIONS
While there is no formula for generating variations, here are a few useful strategies:
1. Change the viewpoint.
2. Change size relationships (play with scale).
3. Change the context (time period, surroundings, framing).
4. Intensify (greater contrasts, more drama, exaggerated forms and actions).
5. Do a reversal (switch roles, positions or characters).

THE ORIGINAL IDEA

This was my original sketch, done years ago. I kept it because I liked its energetic quality, and something appealed to me about birds getting revenge.

CHANGING VIEWPOINTS

A simple way to create a variant is shifting the viewpoint. Pictuing how things might look from another viewpoint stretches the imagination.

In this variant, the drama is intensified with a stronger, bolder image.

Bad Company Pencil

This is what I call a reversal. Logic gets flipped, and elements take on opposite characteristics.

Birdman Pencil

Radical cropping, reflections and an exotic background combine to suggest an interesting story.

Reflections Pencil on coquille board

Does the man flee something real, or just his own imagination? The birdlike clouds put this story into a new context.

Killer Clouds Pencil on pebble board

exercise 21
Variations
Do four diff erent variations of a previous doodle or drawing. As you move from one drawing to the next, consider changing one or more of the following: viewpoint, scale, mood or context. See if you can make each drawing progressively more strange.

GIDON STAFF

Variations on the Face

Gidon Staff draws almost exclusively from his imagination.

One of his major themes is the human face — a subject with endless possibilities. He has made hundreds if not thousands of drawings like the ones shown here. Where others might see sameness, even repetition, Gidon sees subtle and significant, sometimes even radical differences. True to the spirit of making variations on a theme, he uses each drawing as a springboard to try something new on the next. “I look at one of my face drawings and it gives me ideas, such as a new shading pattern, a stronger expression or even a different kind of hat.”

Gidon has a poetic fascination with his theme: “A face has a completeness to it,” he says. “It stands by itself, undaunted. When I draw one, I have a feeling of wholeness.”

reversing

Flipping an image or idea around and imagining its opposite can almost always generate an interesting variation. But deciding just what and how to flip is not always obvious. We all know that the opposite of night is day. But what about the opposite of hamburger? Is it hot dog? Veggie burger? Or is it regrubmah (hamburger spelled backward)? What is the opposite of a man standing on his feet? Is it a man standing on his head? A man lying down? A woman standing on her feet? Feet standing on a man? The more you think about it, the more intriguing the subject of opposites becomes. The poet John Ciardi once wrote a poem in which he wondered about the opposite of summer. He concluded that, for people living on opposite sides of the equator, the opposite of summer is summer.

SISYPHUS REVERSED

There are lots of ways to reverse an image. Here I've illustrated this using the Greek myth of Sisyphus as my theme. It's a complicated story, but the relevant part is that Sisyphus was doomed to push a giant boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down as he reached the top. The first drawing (below, left) depicts the struggle. All of the others are reversals, opposites of one kind or another.

SISYPHUS

NIGHTTIME SISYPHUS

PUSHING SMALL STONE

PUSHING BEACH BALL

PUSHING DOWNHILL

PUSHING CUBE

BUSINESS MAN PUSHING COMPUTER

FEMALE SISYPHUS

DOGGY SISYPHUS

Pushing Variations

The beauty of variations lies in the way one idea triggers another. These drawings are spin-offs of the reversal sketches on the facing page. But I stretched the concepts, pushed them further by subtracting, multiplying and adding elements. The more you draw a theme, the freer you get.

A HEAVY RELATIONSHIP

WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE

PUSHING THE MOON

SISYPUSS

exercise 22
Reversals
Choose a theme that conveys a strong visual image. This can be an existing theme, such as a myth, poem, fairy tale or nursery rhyme, or it could be a theme that you make up yourself. Do three drawings of the theme you've chosen. The first should depict the theme in a direct way. The other two should be reversals — they should flip some aspect of the drawing to its opposite. Choose different aspects to flip in the second and third drawings.

one idea triggers another

Ideas are fuzzy. Their boundaries overlap the boundaries of other ideas, and these shared similarities make it easy to slide from one to another. Have you ever cleaned out a closet or an attic? Each item that you find reminds you of some experience, person or place. A photograph of an old railroad station can evoke a childhood fear of abandonment, a time when you missed a train, or a memory of a movie you saw. Each of these ideas will then spin off into other images, so that soon your thoughts will be miles away from the original photo.

Imagination works in just this way — by association. Every idea has connections to other ideas. Some things have a similar function, some a similar shape, and some are related by your own personal experience. Associations make possible an endless stream of ideas. As you look at these examples, see if you can recognize the transition points where one theme slips into another.

exercise 23
Associating
Make four drawings that are connected by some common association. For example, let's say you start with a dog sleeping. Your second drawing will spin off from the first — possibly a dog that can't sleep, a dog's dream, a person sleeping in a similar position, a sleeping robot, etc. Keep the drawings simple and without backgrounds.

making metaphors

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a similarity between them. In metaphorical drawing, objects are stand-ins for the real subject, showing that something has the qualities of something else. When we think and draw metaphorically, I suspect we do a kind of mental mapping. We overlay two distinct ideas as if they were templates. If we find some commonality, a metaphor is born. Example: A bed has legs. Legs walk. Hence, a drawing of a walking bed.

It's really quite simple, and yet this simple idea lies at the core of art, poetry and even humor. Metaphor is an archaic language. It lives very deep within us. It makes connections beyond logic, connections that logic would find absurd. And that's why we love it.

These examples artfully demonstrate how an object can be itself and something else at the same time. Any subject can be turned into a metaphor, but the subject of metaphor is always relationship.

In a world obsessed with answers, this tragic figure is doomed to struggle with the question. The endlessly inventive Saul Steinberg (1914–1999) created this psychological interpretation of the Sisyphusmyth.

Eerie, sinister and beautiful, these scificanines were drawn by combining dog images with motorcycle parts.

Mechanical Dogs R.J. Smith

Paradox arises when logic resists what the eye sees. Guy Billout leaves us with a puzzle in this beautifully evocative work. And he adds a sinister touch — a large knife, stuck in the table.

Moonlight Guy Billout From Something's Not Quite Right by Guy Billout (published by David R. Godine, 2002)

Heinrich Kley (1863–1945) combined brilliant and fluid draftsmanship with a very playful spirit. Here, he offers a metaphorical variation on the novelty of his day, hot air balloons.

A Well-Rounded View Heinrich Kley From The Drawings of Heinrich Kley, Dover Publications, Inc.

Winsor McCay (1867–1934) depicts not just a walking bed, but a bed that ambles, climbs, floats and clings. It's a bed with a mind of its own. This graceful sequence comes from McCay's weekly comics feature, Little Nemo in Slumberland.

Nemo's Walking Bed Episode Winsor McCay From Winsor McCay — His Life and Art by John Canemaker, Abbeville Press

STEVEN GUARNACCIA

A Fertile Thinker With a Deft Pen

Some thirty years ago a very young man came to my studio with sketchbooks in hand. He was looking for work, possibly as an assistant. After one look at the first sketchbook, I knew that he wasn't going to be anyone's assistant for long. Sure enough, in less than a year he was illustrating for The New York Times, New York Magazine, Esquire and other leading publications.

His witty, economical lines, often combined with his trademark cast shadows, is widely admired and frequently imitated. Steven is currently the chair of the illustration department at Parsons School of Design in New York.

Rather than spending time thinking out an idea, Steven goes right to work with his pen and lets the idea emerge as he draws. He draws rapidly and fearlessly. If the drawing isn't quite what he wants, he simply starts another, quickly generating a number of variations on the same theme. His object is to capture an idea quickly and move on to the next.

WATCH DESIGNS

In addition to graphic arts, Steve sometimes designs clothing and accessories. These are designs for a playful line of watches for Swatch.

“My goal here was to generate as many watch-strap and face ideas as possible. It was a fun challenge, but also I was afraid that none of the ideas would be accepted. It was about idea survival — sort of like animals that have big litters. Some are bound to make it. Though only one idea had been contracted, two of the sketches were eventually made into watches.”

END PAPERS (OPPOSITE)

These end papers, drawn for the alternative comics magazine Drawn & Quarterly, play on the simple and whimsical idea of showing an assortment of people and things in the front of the book and their skeletons in the back.

“I tend towards the sunny in my work. This is sometimes a liability, as I don't often get asked to illustrate pieces that call for gravity. This image may have been an attempt to redress that — a chance to inject some dark humor into the illustration.”

REGALI DI NATALE

Abitare Magazine, Milan

NOAH'S ARK

For familiar stories, especially epic tales told on a grand scale, the challenge is to give the eye plenty to look at while keeping the design simple. In general, with complicated pictures, the viewer should be able to take in the whole scene at a glance.

This began as an add-on drawing in my sketchbook. I drew the animals a few at a time over a long period. It was much like a doodling exercise. Putting the whales on board doesn't make sense, but I liked the way it looked.