The Artist, the Cup, and the Saucer

The artist, John Torreano, and I were talking one day about the difficulty of learning to draw and paint from observation. We agreed that the task challenges most beginning students. John observed that they have a much easier time with sculpture. He said, “If I put on the table a cup and saucer and then give my students each a lump of clay, and then ask them to make a cup and saucer that looks like the one on the table, most can do that. But the task flummoxes most students, when I give them a piece of paper and a pencil and ask them to draw the cup and saucer.” So why is this? 

I suggested, the cup and saucer on the table exists in a three-dimensional space, the same kind of space as the ball of clay. Forming the clay requires three-dimensional, tactile, physical actions that are like the actions and experience of holding and using a cup and saucer. These actions are not the same actions required for drawing. 

To draw or paint a cup and saucer it is necessary to use tactile, physical actions, and to make marks on a two-dimensional surface. To draw from observation, a practitioner needs to first suspend judgment and to see the cup and saucer as if it were two-dimensional. This is no easy task.  And why is this so? Knowledge and 3D experience get in the way of seeing. Drawing the cup and saucer on the paper requires practitioners to suspend what they know and pay attention to what they see. 

As STUDIO SEEING argues, what everyone sees, physiologically, is a two-dimensional experience, but the visual sensations constantly change every time one moves their eyes, head, or body. The slightest movement of the observer changes the way the stimulus looks. Each human eye sees a monocular, flat world. With two eyes we can see spatially. But we all have had to learn to see spatially, learn about ourselves and about objects and spaces. We have had to learn that we do not see the world as it is, nor do we see it as it visually appears—the world is not always changing every time we move our eyes, head, or body—but we have had to learn this fact. This is constancy.