Blindness

Building a Bypass

The rules of art called, fundamentals are like a huge city you have to drive through to go on vacation.

You can drive straight through the center of town, stop at every light, and detour on the way.

Or you can take the bypass and enjoy the trip.

THE SYSTEM MODEL

• • The Creative Continuum

Our System Model, that resembles an arrow head has one main goal: to show ways you can tap the creative potential that comes with being made in the image of God. This will help us bypass difficulties and teach us to think and see like an artist.

It is called "The Creative Continuum to describe the imaginative, continuous universe of artistic expression" OR all the ways people use to try to draw. It is shaped like an arrow head because all the methods artist use are pretty much aimed at the same goal: creating something.

The Judge is the art critic inside you. He is so critical it makes drawing hard. Nothing is good enough for him. He tries to make up rules and cram the universe into them, but it just won't fit. He can criticize drawings, but he can't draw. He is on the left side of the pyramid because that is the side of the brain he is believed to control.

The Architect is the real artist inside you. He is creative, because he was made in the image of a creator. He instantly imagines something, and there it is; every brick, board and nail. He doesn't criticize. Creating is so easy for him, it's fun! He is on the right side of the pyramid because that is the side of the brain he appears to live and work in.

Julia Cameron compares these side to our nature to a Censor and a Child. The Censor only allows "safe ideas" based on pre-judgments or prejudices not exploratory blurts, sloppy squiggles or playful jottings. "Listen to your Censor and it will tell you that everything original is wrong/ dangerous/ rotten." The Child is fun, free wheeling and "...beyond the reach of the Censor’s babble, we find our quiet center, the place where we hear the still small voice that is at once our creator’s and our own."

• • Figure 1

The First through Fourth Dimensions (the left four stones on the pyramid) are the rules that the judge made up to deal with art. They are complex and have many exceptions. It takes a lifetime of painful critiques to scale the left side.

The Bypasses (the four divisions on the right side) are the fast, direct route to climb past the burdensome critical left brain rules of Art. We will glance at these rules just long enough to decide that there must be a better way to draw. Then we will abandon them and try the 'bypasses' for each one.

The center of the model with the light and dark face represents "the quickening" OR the giving of life to the whole work. It touches both sides because it draws life from both sides of the brain. The light left side is easily seen by the conscious mind. It can be easily evaluated by all. the dark left side is usually hidden from the casual observer. It is so subtle and subjective that it often defies evaluation. It is often mistaken for a mysterious gift of talent. In time your works will grow into a new, living thought process.

Sound complicated? It's not. You already do this with hundreds of other processes like reading, driving, cooking, writing, and probably even a lot of your drawing. I have taught this system to people from the age of seven to eighty six with the same wonderful results: brilliant colors, striking realism and instant confidence! Hang in there and you will like what you learn.

Art is not just the mechanical "drafting" of reproductions. It is communication by a wordless language. A picture is worth a thousand words because the infinite details of forms and objects quickly exhaust language. For Example: Try to describe a spiral staircase with words only (no gestures). This new visual language requires a different type of thinking you may not be used to. It is very difficult to teach this with words only. It must be experienced. That is the reason for the exercises in this book. They will empower you to fearlessly attack any subject matter with genuine confidence through the entire rough draft stage.

Mona Brooks says to her classes, "If you want perfection, buy a camera. There are no perfect pictures here, just artists." But I have discovered that these studies can decode and produce photographic realism in beginners with the first one!

Drawing is a process of seeing. The purpose must be to see what's really there. Many go through life for years and never really been empowered to see. Learn how to see, and you will know how to draw. Many never learn to see well enough to draw. Learn to see the way artist's sees the world and you will be able to draw it.

Science describes the universe we will be drawing as a "continuum" of 4 dimensions. "Real art always includes elements of science. They give us a complete idea of the world only when taken together." - Leonid Ponomarev The fundamentals of art naturally break down into similar dimensions.

Each dimension is a simple tool for discovering how you can break down your subject into easy steps to create your own interpretive style. Learning to draw is a lot like learning to write. In order to learn to write you must first learn:

The fundamentals must become so much a part of you that they demand almost no conscious thought. This freedom from distractions is not just a nice extra, it is a vital cognitive link to freeing your creative potential for communication through your medium. This is what is meant by "quickening" the continuum.

The fundamentals will be superseded by a second language, a visual language of sight. It is a wordless language because pictures won't fit into words. The drawing fundamentals must not become hard and fast rules. Rules are to art as a wooden shoe is to your foot. As your foot grows you must carve out a place that fits you or else cut off a toe! This outline is a ladder you can use to safely scale towering, high obstacles, but try not to skip too many steps or place to much weight too high until you are sure of the steps!

This mental palette will open a wonderful world each time you use it. Though it starts with mechanically tracing shapes like a child would, it ends up with a part of you living on the paper. "Today's preparation determines tomorrow's achievement."

Four types of blindness and steps to overcome them.

Challenge / Essentials / Obstacles / Blindness / Steps / Value
Style / Hidden Pictures / Troubleshooting / Copyright Information