Drawing from Life/ Observations

Observing the world around long enough you start to see patterns you didn't notice before, and we can take down these patterns to use later by daily recording what we see in the people, and the environment around us. Looking back at the recordings we begin to see cycles and a variety of patterns that we can use in our work.

Gestalt psychology is a theory that describes the brain as organised and parallel, taking in smaller parts of information such as lines and curves in a drawing and combining them to form an image, to see whole figures and forms rather then broken down aspects. The problem with this theory is that there is no explanation for it, why people see objects that logically have nothing to do with each other as more then they are, as a whole object.

Cognitive psychology is the study of the mental processes of problem solving, memory, and language, which stems from Gestalt psychology. In away it is the study of how the Gestalt theory works.

Through a journal people look to more then just note events and experiences, but actually try to comprehend what they are seeing and add meaning to whats around them. After looking at the extract from Jennifer New, it comes to my my mind that everyone who uses a journal for whatever reason reaches the same end use, and that is to express ones feelings through words to see not only how they view the world, but how they view themselves.

Observations

















A Tree with Eyes

Don't really know why i noticed this, just thought it looked like a giant man looking over my house, kind of like the marshmallow man from ghost busters. What people see depends on the person and their own experiences, it for instance it will determine what they see in the shape of cloud, or what pattern in the pavement. Like the Gestalt psychology i guess i did not see the smaller parts of the whole, instead of the leaves, the branches and sky i saw a man.
















My Dog

Patterns can be found all around in nature, including animals, for example, the colour of animals from dogs to parrots. Animals use patterns to survive, like a leopard who's coat allows it to hide in the grass.

Abstraction is the process of reducing an observation to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose, for instance abstracting a corgi cross with a beagle to simply a dog strips the traits of the that specific dog to the general traits of all dogs.
















Perspective

The point of this photo is to show the vanishing point, as the the bricks seem to grow smaller in the distance, and the angles of objects like the tables, pots and chairs. You can use the environment to influence drawing from 1st to 3rd perspective, as its all around us.

In the studio we looked at perspective drawing, and at looking at the results of different techniques at drawing perspective and comparing them to real life you can get a real understanding of how it works, and advance in skill.
















Depth

What i find interesting is how the wallpaper gives depth to the image, the balloons at different distances though its all on the same layer. This can be used as an example in drawing perspective.

Perspective has everything to with the focus of the eye, the variation in size of the balloon causes us to not balloons s different sizes but balloons at different distances, and in this way it acts like an optical illusion.
















Patterns

There are patterns everywhere made made and natural, on purpose or accidental. Patterns in themselves are no more then connected lines and curves, but our mind makes them into something more, into shapes, and from shapes into patterns. This is in my opinion the base of the Gestalt theory, our mind abstracts the smaller specific detail to create something greater, to put meaning were there is none.