Drawing from Life: Perceiving and reproducing complex, naturalistic curves C McManus, P H T Lee, R Chamberlain |
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Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, United Kingdom
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| Accurate representational drawing underpins many aesthetic and scientific disciplines. Many studies of drawing use simple stimuli based on straight lines, circles or ellipses. Artists, though, know that living objects are made of complex, subtle curves, best exemplified by the nude human body used in art school ‘life drawing’ classes. Fourier synthesis can generate complex curves in two dimensions, combining sine waves of varied frequency, amplitude and phase in X and Y dimensions. When log(amplitude) linearly relates to log(frequency) then objects particularly resemble biological forms. Such abstract, curved stimuli can readily be generated so that they are ‘simple’ (i.e. the line doesn’t cross itself). In this presentation we explore our findings with this powerful, generic class of stimuli. In our drawing studies participants copy the curves, either directly or from memory. In perceptual tasks we ask how curves are discriminated perceptually and are remembered. Analysis of drawn curves is not straightforward, but ratings of accuracy can be made by judges. The theoretically elegant approach of Michael Leyton in his Symmetry, Causality, Mind (1992), which he has used to analyse paintings and drawings, can also be used to parse curves according to their M+, M-, m+ and m- maxima and minima. |
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