How Our Eyes See: Part 1

Many times I tell my students "It is not about how to draw, but how to understand what you see." It is critical to know how our brain processes and evaluates everything we observe. The brain has a lot of power, especially in the area of sight. When we are born, our eyes naturally see everything upside down. Over time our brain is able to flip that so we can process things right side up. Yet your physical eyes are still seeing upside down, even as you read this!

How the Camera Sees
Contrary to popular belief, eyes do not function in the same way as the camera lens. They are much, much more complex than that. The camera lens sees everything in focus from left to right and top to bottom. The photographic images we see in magazines, books, movies, videos, television, computers, digital phones, and tablets have been taken through a lens of some manufacture. Cameras do create other distortions, but we will save those for another time. Photography has become the ruler that most people use to measure realism. 

How Our Eyes See
Our eyes are quite different from a camera lens. They have both central and peripheral vision or acuity. Our central vision observes what we are looking at directly with clarity, focus, and contrast within a small area of about 5°. Moving out from our central vision, our peripheral acuity covers the remaining 175° or so, seeing larger shapes, movement, and general colours but observes no detail or strong contrasts. 

Integrated Observation

What I term "Integrated Observation" is, in essence, seeing the forest AND the trees in their proper visual relationship in terms of how our eyes see. It is being conscious of how our central, and peripheral vision works together to understand the subject in front of us. Seeing the overall picture as it were. The task at hand is then to translate that understanding to create a visually comprehensive drawing or painting.

A Practical Exercise
Look at the photo of the coins below. Due to the camera lens, this whole image is in focus, from left to right and top to bottom. Now concentrate on the coin with the hole in it. Keep your eyes fixed on that point and observe what happens to the rest of the coins. Even though they are close in proximity, you cannot read the text or clearly make out the images on the surrounding coins. Shift your focus to another coin, now this one becomes clear and distinct but the clarity you had on the first coin is lost. This is how our eyes see. This is Integrated Observation. 

Image by Uwe Baumann from Pixabay

Seeing The World Through Integrated Observation

Now, observe this effect in the third dimension. Place eight or ten coins on a table, and walk through the above exercise again. Repeat this with everything around you, everywhere you go. Remember to stay focused on a single point of whatever it is you are observing. Look at a bookshelf, a street scene, a landscape, the dishes in the sink, people in a group, etc. Take note of your experiences and think about how this could influence your work. 

In Part 2, we will expand on what we have learned here and look at how to apply this practically to our drawings and paintings.