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       In last month's blog I mentioned that some artists may be put off by trumpet shaped flowers due to issues with foreshortening. When we are looking at something our brain has a certain knowledge about but the visual cues don't match what it knows, the first reaction is often to panic and avoid dealing with it if possible. However, these situations are going to keep coming up regardless of what you choose to paint or draw so a far better solution is to make a game of it and tackle the challenge head on. The good news is this: The solution here is so simple and effective that it's hard to come up with a faster way to make a dramatic improvement in your observation skills. 

    Foreshortening is everywhere. It's the same problem whether it's a lily, a nose in a portrait, a stream meandering towards us in a landscape or a cloth laying on the floor in a still life. Life is in 3 dimensions and with the exception of sculpture, we have only  2 dimensions we can work with to interpret it. For the purposes of explanation, let's take the example of a figure standing with their arm stretched out and the hand coming straight towards you. The brain knows that arm has some length to it and it really, really, really  wants to put the whole arm in the drawing. So... it's a battle between your brain and your eyes. The brain is so desperate to draw the full length of the arm that in a beginner's work, it's common to see a limb pointed down in a drawing, when in real life the arm may actually be somewhat elevated and the hand at or even above eye level. The answer to this seeing dilemma is negative shapes, and when it comes to dealing with foreshortening are they absolutely essential. The reason why negative shapes work so well for determining what's actually in front of us is equally simple --- our brains don't have any preconceived ideas about the parameters of those shapes around the object we are trying to draw so it lets us observe them without giving us a running commentary on how we are doing it all wrong. In short, it's a workaround for our brain, which is never as infallible as it thinks it is. Looking at the arm with an artist's eye, these abstract patterns between the body and the arm or the angle of a shape in relation to the head will become an anchor for breaking down the problem of drawing the arm into some workable steps. Slow, contemplative comparisons and trusting the eye are key to making this work. Eventually enough abstract shapes with no name are compared to the others shapes observed in relation to something else and the arm ends up getting drawn without any real focus on the arm itself. At that point you can bring back in the part of your brain that has been impatiently waiting on the sidelines and ask if it thinks you've created a decent depiction of an arm. Probably it won't think so at first, but I can assure you with practice this will get easier and sometimes improvement happens very quickly once the training wheels can come off.

        Aside from the almost instant progress, the thing I like about showing students this workaround is that it's exactly the same sort of observation skills that can allow them to learn to compare values in an accurate way. The process of detaching from preconceived ideas of what things look like and instead, patiently observing relationships, is exactly the same. Because values are often confused at first with hue and chroma (the other 2 aspects of color), learning to see values well is a much slower process for most people although I have watched a few students who have double-checked every note of paint in a black mirror and made miraculous advances rather quickly. In the same way that a regular mirror is a valuable tool for drawing, black mirrors allow us to see things from a different point of view and therefore can be immensely helpful for training the eye. 

      The go-to book I recommend for drawing is Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. She goes through all of the various ways that our brains trip us up in the observation department and the exercises presented in this book can be a huge help in learning when to trust and not trust this ongoing inner dialog we all have. One caveat in recommending this book is there are a lot of supporting quotes and statements along the margins and I've run into a number of people who have been put off by that. I don't think it's necessary to read the book cover to cover but from an artistic point of view, the concepts and exercises she presents can be life changing.

    Anyone who has taken a workshop with me or watched this webinar is familiar with 'the box' or more accurately, the rectangular shape I use at the beginning of my paintings to establish the placement and proportions of a key object or group of objects. This habit has its origins in the concept of negative shapes and finding ways to envision more clearly what my eye is seeing as opposed to what my brain thinks is there. Once I've established a few key shapes/values/colors that I can reasonably trust to be correct, it's not as though the rest of piece will finish itself, but it's amazing how much more fun and how much more flow the painting or drawing will have going forward.