THOUGHTS: Color

So touch is a crucial part of how we relate to the world around us. It affected the progression of drawing through history and it visible in the way people first learn to draw. Color, too, is categorized by people in a similar way as shapes are, but they can't be lumped together. You can't really feel color, you can only see it, and even though Harold Speed lumps it into the same discussion on touch (Chapter 3, Oil Techniques and Materials), I don't see how it applies. It has more to do with how the brain works and the differences between the two hemispheres. 

So when an inexperienced person is asked to paint a red apple they'll reach for the red without really looking at the colors in front of them even though the actual color of objects fluctuates enormously depending on the lighting. They'll paint the shadows as a darker red, when in fact there's tons of other color in them. I mean sure, the apple's still red and going to be painted with red but there are many other colors involved, especially in the shadows. 

It's due to the left brain categorizing things as they appear in "standard lighting" (kind of vague, you know what I mean). So we know that such and such object is this color and we remember it that way, along with that shape and texture we learned from our sense of touch. It's pretty much a system to put a name to all the information hitting our senses. It's completely necessary for language, which is centered in the left hemisphere. 

The right hemisphere processes and understands visuals in a more pattern-based way and doesn't categorize like the left hemisphere. Learning to see (read: draw/paint) is a lot about learning to use that side of the brain. Sure, you won't have a name for that color, but you'll know what it is.

THOUGHTS: Sense of Touch

OK, first post. Gotta make it good.

Lately I’ve been reading my way through Harold Speed’s book Oil Painting Techniques and Materials (which, by the way, is the most awesome book ever). One interesting point that he makes is that vision as a sense is a much less important than touch is in how we understand objects and the things around us.

Take a wooden box, example. If you’d never seen a box, touching it would give you the best idea of what a box is like. It’s square, and that’s not going to change. On the other hand, when you just look at a box, everything depends on the angle, distance, and so on. So mentally, we tend to categorize objects by how they feel rather than how they would actually look, which is why when people are not trained to draw, they generally draw what’s in front of them in a very diagrammatic way. They’re drawing the touch-based diagram in their mind rather than the visual plane they see.

Also according to Speed, Ancient Egyptian art is a prime example of touch being more dominant as a sense than the others. Egyptian art is mostly concerned with outline, which directly relates to touch, since it equates to the border that you can feel. This also explains the diagrammatic nature of Egyptian art.

Greek and other ancient art is also outline-based (think pottery). It took a long time for other elements of drawing and painting to be fully understood.

More thoughts…

• My instructor mentioned in my écorché class (anatomical sculpture) that the reason toddlers are always putting things in their mouths is because the lips have a lot of sensation.
• When I think about it, I have an unbearable urge to touch things if I’ve never encountered them before. New textures, shapes, all of that. I hadn’t really noticed before, though.
• I think the importance of touch is why sculpture was such an early art form.

Example