In order to draw an object from memory two things are obviously
necessary. We must have at the outset an idea of the form we wish to
represent, and this visual image of the form must somehow translate
itself into a series of manual movements corresponding to its several
parts. In other words, it presupposes both an initial conception and a
correlated process of execution.
In psychological language this correlation or co-ordination between the
idea of a form and the carrying out of the necessary movements of the
hand is expressed by saying that the visual image, say, of the curve of
the full face, calls up the associated image of the manual movement.
This last, again, may mean either the visual image of the hand executing
the required movement, or the image of the muscular sensations
experienced when the arm is moved in the required way, or possibly both
of these.
The process of drawing a whole form is of course more complex than this,
each step in the operation being adjusted to preceding steps. How far
the movements of the draughtsman’s hands are guided here by a visual
image of the form, which remains present throughout, how far by
attention to what has already been set down, may not be quite certain.
Judging from my own case, I should describe the process somewhat after
this fashion. In drawing a human face we set out with a visual image of
the whole, which is incomplete in respect of details, but represents
roughly size and general form or outline. This image is projected
indistinctly and unsteadily, of course, on the sheet of paper before us,
and this projected image controls the whole operation. But as we advance
we pay more and more attention to the visual presentation supplied by
the portion of the drawing already produced, and only realise with any
distinctness that part of the projected visual image which is just in
advance of the pencil.
It is evident that the carrying out of such a prolonged operation
involves a perfected mechanism of eye, brain and hand connexions; for
much of the manual adjustment is instantaneous and sub-conscious. At the
same time the process illustrates a very high measure of volitional
control or concentration. Unless we keep the original design fixed
before us, and attend at each stage to the relations of the executed to
the unexecuted part, we are certain to go wrong.
Practice tends, of course, to reduce the conscious element in the
process. In the case of a person accustomed to draw the outline of a
human head, a cat or what not, the operation is very much one of
hand-memory into which visual representations enter only faintly. The
movements follow one another of themselves without the intervention of
distinct visual images (whether that of the linear form or of the moving
hand). There is an approach here to what happens when we put last year’s
date to a letter, the hand following out an old habit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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