Keys to Drawing: Knowing vs. Seeing
Keys to Drawing has a very Zen lesson about the difference between seeing and knowing:
Seeing comes first. When rules conflict with seeing, forget them and draw what you see. This is what is meant by retaining an “innocent vision.” That is, to look at something as if you have never seen it before, and to be unclouded by assumptions about how a thing is supposed to look. The one simple rule to follow is: at each point of frustration or confusion, ask yourself, “What do I see?” (p. 17)
If you’ll excuse me for veering off the topic of drawing, this idea has been very important to me recently even though I didn’t think of it specifically as a conflict between knowing and seeing. One of the exercises illustrates the conflict. I first drew a green pepper from memory:
Then I drew a green pepper while looking at one (actually half of one) that I had available:
Our memories are only symbols. We walk around with preconceived notions that contain only a fraction of the information available in our first-hand experiences. Our memories are not our experiences. They are only derivative and shallow. Those prejudices based on memories get in the way of drawing because they separate us from what something really looks like. It is important to be able to suspend what we think we know in order to see clearly.
When I read this in the book, I immediately thought of my deconversion from Mormonism and theism. That process was driven in part by looking at my experiences with innocent eyes.
Anyway, back to drawing. This drawing is of my hand. The book said that if my drawing actually looked like a hand that I hadn’t done it right. Mission accomplished:
Then we have my eyes, or a crude approximation thereof. I really want to be able to draw human beings, but I have a long way to go:
A bottle laying on the table:
And an exercise bike:
Tags: art, drawing, Keys to Drawing, knowledge, zen
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Nice niece said,
January 1, 2008 @ 8:54 am
Drawing the human body is difficult to master, but I think you are well on your way. You definately have command of drawing inanimate objects, which is the foundation of drawing. If there is anything I have garnered about art during my 7 and 1/2 years as the wife of an artist, it is this: sometimes something starts out looking funny, but through the artistic process it becomes awesome. Keep up the good work!
January 2, 2008 @ 8:56 am
Thanks, Nice niece. I’ve seen what you’re talking about. That exercise bike, for example, started out funnier looking than it ended up. Working on it somehow massaged it, smoothing out the funky parts. BTW, in case anyone wonders, I was supposed to trail off the details on the bike like that.
January 2, 2008 @ 6:06 pm
“It is important to be able to suspend what we think we know in order to see clearly.” As you know, that is true not just of drawing but also of learning new ideas and concepts. Intellectually speaking, there are many aspects of Zen, for instance, that are very simple and easy to understand if you approach them with an open mind. But many Westerners have enormous difficulty understanding those very things precisely because they attempt to fit them into the only religion they know well — Christianity.
January 3, 2008 @ 3:13 pm
One thing that I struggle with is that I’m trying to achieve something in the future with Zen. The fact that I “struggle” with it also seems to be a problem.
This, I believe, comes from my Mormon/Christian background with its emphasis on progression and achievement. I’m not conditioned to just let things be as they are.
January 4, 2008 @ 2:16 am
That strikes me as very insightful. Some time ago, I was reading Krishnamurti on a daily basis. Each day, I was trying to make progress and achieve something by studying his words. It took a long time to understand how counter-productive that was.