artist theory - scientifically unproven

My poor old blog. Totally deserted. I guess I'm getting enough drawing time at work these days. So if you crave carnalizer art, get in on scrolls.com, you perv.

Anyhoo, here's some art theory for you. If you're into drawing and painting you must've heard the tired old "It's about learning to see" phrase. What the f does that even mean? The way I see it, one or more of these things are probably true for you:

* Your mind simplifies what you see into symbols. You must look closely at the lines, shapes and their proportions of your motif and, through using devices or your visual measurementaion, so that you can copy what really is there onto the paper.

* With tons of practice, you internalize this process to a degree where the time between measurement and mark-making is short and accurate enough to resemble skill. When you are used to this, you might feel as though your eyes are looking at things differently. 

* The fun one, and the reason I'm writing this post, is one that I can't recall having seen mentioned before. That makes me feel like I've discovered something important. That feeling will go away soon enough, I'm sure. Chances are I won't even be able to explain it. I'll try: My way of drawing has always been about "That doesn't look right, I better change that.." repeated over and over again. I have gotten pretty skilled at seeing flaws. That doesn't mean I always know how to fix them. One idea that works for me when I can remember to use it is this; Reverse Evaluation. Wow cool term. (TM) Henrik!! What you do once you've done enough on a drawing/painting to start to feel you are hopeless, is to look at your drawing with the same measuring eyes, but this time instead of trying to figure out how to translate the real world into lines/shapes, you try to envision what form you've actually drawn. Typically, if you're drawing a head, you'll find that the edge of the forehead makes it look like the person in the picture has a bulging forehead. You can look at your lines, shadows, colors, body proportions and everything separately. Whenever the forms you see in your drawing looks mutated and distorted, you're on your way to finding something you need to fix. 

Maybe this is obvious to everyone. It looks obvious reading it now. Still, when I stumbled upon this particular way of seeing, it was a eureka moment to me.

Oh and if you look at the post before this one, it's about my miniatures game. The rules are available online now, with a forum and botteu's most excellent army builder: shieldbreaker.net

Here's a speedpainting of a greenish chick in a swamp: