ABSTRACT
Gibson (1972) wrote on the act of depiction that “the act of representing is more complex than the act of perceiving, not less. For the artist has to perceive his own display, as he is making it, as well as whatever he is displaying. He has to have a dual experience, not a single one.” When a painter is drawing something, such duality of awareness should not be static but evolve over time as a blank surface of paper gets modified to represent something other than the surface itself. The current study explores the dynamics of the act of drawing from life, more specifically, how the acts of visual exploration and trace-making manipulation are organized into a coherent act, and how the organization evolves over time as the surface of the paper bears new meaning.
