Drawing Conclusions: The Psychology and Neuroscience of Observational Drawing.

The drawings of Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo are paradigms of how to convey natural forms. They became experts of their art by developing explicit and implicit strategies for accurate depiction. This helped them to avoid a common pitfall of drawing: drawing what we know rather than what we see. However, drawing ability is often considered a gift you either have or (as many a frustrated artist will testify) don’t have. Do expert draughtsmen see the world in a fundamentally different way to non-artists? And if so, is this way of seeing present from birth or can it be influenced by practice? The proposed research project aims to provide answers to both of these questions by investigating how techniques for focusing on particular aspects of images impact upon how people draw them, and how artistic training helps the artist to see the world with an ‘innocent eye’. We will study a group of developing artists throughout the process of their drawing training to look at how and why their vision changes with their developing skill. We will also see if we can emulate some of the tricks used by the old masters to ‘switch on’ a way of seeing that helps struggling draughtsmen to depict the world as it really appears.