Sketching Drawing - The Best "Artists Eye" Tool

Sketching Drawing - The Best "Artists Eye" Tool

There is an old saying "You never stop learning" and this is so true when it comes to developing your 'Artists Eye'. As with most skills of value, developing your 'Seeing' without acceptable help can take a very long time and so, when learning drawing, it is better to have a quicker method.

The 'Artists Eye'

What do we mean when we say "with an Artists eye"? Usually, we use this expression to differentiate in the middle of the normal, day to day, looking at the world (which all usually sighted citizen do) and that extra way of seeing the world that creative artists from all mediums use. When you look at the world through your artists' eye you see much more than you do when simply going about your daily routine. This is because a trained artist has learned how to precisely see the world colse to them in terms of: light and shadow, forms, shapes, lines, colour, proportions, perspective, negative space, and the whole gamut of optical perception tools. With our artists eye we see the world in all of its glory!

How to organize your own Artists eye

The qoute when learning drawing is that it takes time to understand and then operate the role of our dominant left-brain and its sway on our ability to see in that extra artists way. Someone else issue we have to articulate with is how we precisely see our surroundings. When we look at a scene we do not take in the whole scene at one go (like a camera does when development a photograph) but instead collect the optical facts in smaller units. These parts are then assembled in our mind to form the full impression of the scene. Our eyes precisely use a recipe of rapid movement called saccadic eye movement; your eyes permanently scan the scene to collect facts from the discrete parts to form the whole picture. This is perfectly natural and essential.

However, for an artist wanting to draw a scene or branch it is needful to join our concentration on a limited part of the scene, the area within our format limits, and collect the facts needful to make our drawing. Part of your development as an artist needs to be focussed on addition your observation skills. learning to precisely see the world; and not just look at it.

The best 'Artists Eye' tool

In my sense of teaching art subjects, and drawing in particular, I have found that the particular most superior aid to developing your artists' eye (and your ability to join on the needful part of the scene) is a viewfinder card. A viewfinder can be the simplest and cheapest tool you will ever use. The viewfinder is simply a rectangular (or square) piece of thin black card with a rectangular hole in the middle. The viewfinder card can be any size (I use a piece about 10x8 inches for drawing and a smaller 4x3 version for convention purposes) with an acceptable sized rectangular gap ,break in the center. Try the 10x8 inch card with a 5x4 inch gap ,break in the town (whatever size of card you use you need a fairly wide black border colse to your town aperture).

To use the viewfinder for training your artists' eye, simply hold it about 12 to 15 inches in front of an open eye (close the other eye) and carefully organize a pleasant scene within the aperture. Move colse to to convert your viewpoint and peruse discrete subjects and compositions. You will be amazed at how this uncomplicated gismo helps you join on what is foremost in the combination and exclude all things else surface the scene.

The viewfinder works because the black border isolates within the town gap ,break just the area of the larger scene that you want to consist of in your composition. Once you have practiced with the viewfinder for a short while, you will begin to see things that you hadn't noticed before. This indicates that your powers of observation and your artists' eye are developing.

Sketching Drawing - The Best "Artists Eye" Tool

The Artists

Sketching Drawing - The Best "Artists Eye" Tool

Sketching Drawing - The Best "Artists Eye" Tool
Sketching Drawing - The Best "Artists Eye" Tool

The Artists

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