You could probably get pretty good results without messing with complex equations, by first describing the full picture, then describing what’s in four quadrants made by drawing vertical and horizontal lines that split the image exactly in half, then describing quadrants of these quadrants, split in a similar way and so on. The artist could use their skills to draw the details without an insanely complex encoding scheme, and the grid discipline would help fix the large-scale geometry of the image.
Edit: A 3x3 grid might work better in practice, it’s more natural to work with a center region than to put the split point right in the middle of the image, which most probably contains something interesting. On the other hand, maybe the lines breaking up the recognizable shapes in the picture (already described in casual terms for the above-level description) would help bring out their geometrical properties better.
Edit 2: Michael Baxandall’s book Patterns of Intetion has some great stuff on using language to describe images.
Drawing a photograph with the aid of a Grid is a common technique for making copyinng easier, although it’s also sometimes used as a teaching tool for early artists.
I’m not in love with this explanation (Loomis does much better) but this should give you the essential idea:
As a teaching tool for people who can’t draw, I haven’t seen it be effective, but it’s awesome if you’ve got a deadline and don’t want to spend all your time checking and rechecking your proportions.I doubt it would be effective, since it’s so easy for novice artists to screw up when they have the image right in front of them.
There’s a more effective method which uses a ruler or compass and is often used to copy Bargue drawings. Use precise measurements around a line at the meridian and essentially connect the dots. For the curious:
This might work long distance: “Okay, draw the next dot 9/32nds of an inch a way at 12 degrees down to the right.”
This still seems like a bit of a cop out, though. Yes, there are ways to assemble copies of images using a grid, but it doesn’t help us figure out how such freehand images were made in the first place. We’re not even taking a crack at the little black box.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain seems to be the classic for teaching people how to draw. It’s a bunch of methods for seeing the details of what you’re seeing (copying a drawing held upside down, drawing shadows rather than objects) so that you draw what you see rather than a mental simplified hieroglyphic of what you see.
You could probably get pretty good results without messing with complex equations, by first describing the full picture, then describing what’s in four quadrants made by drawing vertical and horizontal lines that split the image exactly in half, then describing quadrants of these quadrants, split in a similar way and so on. The artist could use their skills to draw the details without an insanely complex encoding scheme, and the grid discipline would help fix the large-scale geometry of the image.
Edit: A 3x3 grid might work better in practice, it’s more natural to work with a center region than to put the split point right in the middle of the image, which most probably contains something interesting. On the other hand, maybe the lines breaking up the recognizable shapes in the picture (already described in casual terms for the above-level description) would help bring out their geometrical properties better.
Edit 2: Michael Baxandall’s book Patterns of Intetion has some great stuff on using language to describe images.
Drawing a photograph with the aid of a Grid is a common technique for making copyinng easier, although it’s also sometimes used as a teaching tool for early artists.
I’m not in love with this explanation (Loomis does much better) but this should give you the essential idea:
http://drawsketch.about.com/od/drawinglessonsandtips/ss/griddrawing.htm
As a teaching tool for people who can’t draw, I haven’t seen it be effective, but it’s awesome if you’ve got a deadline and don’t want to spend all your time checking and rechecking your proportions.I doubt it would be effective, since it’s so easy for novice artists to screw up when they have the image right in front of them.
There’s a more effective method which uses a ruler or compass and is often used to copy Bargue drawings. Use precise measurements around a line at the meridian and essentially connect the dots. For the curious:
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=121170
This might work long distance: “Okay, draw the next dot 9/32nds of an inch a way at 12 degrees down to the right.”
This still seems like a bit of a cop out, though. Yes, there are ways to assemble copies of images using a grid, but it doesn’t help us figure out how such freehand images were made in the first place. We’re not even taking a crack at the little black box.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain seems to be the classic for teaching people how to draw. It’s a bunch of methods for seeing the details of what you’re seeing (copying a drawing held upside down, drawing shadows rather than objects) so that you draw what you see rather than a mental simplified hieroglyphic of what you see.