ABSTRACT
If you fi nd yourself overly absorbed in details and small isolated sections of the fi gure, neglecting the real objective of drawing, you might try imagining you are a creature from some distant planet … one that has a different form of life. So everything you see here on earth is new to you. You can’t name anything…that is a button, this is a collar, etc. You join a drawing class, and the model assumes a pose and all you are aware of is the broad shapes. So you start drawing these shapes. All your senses reveal to you are the bare essentials, while the earth student next to you is struggling with the “recognition syndrome,” seeing all the hairs on the eyebrow, the clasp on the belt, the bumps and wrinkles on the cloth, the etceteras ad infi nitum. If he had had a scientifi c background he might be looking for cells and atoms and other minutiae. Granted, the details of a subject are a part of it, but without that solid foundation, the essence of the pose, the details mean nothing. It’s like the ingredients that go into a chocolate chip cookie, by themselves they are merely details. Only after the proper amount of each are mixed together and baked can they be called, “cookies.”
