Advantage or Handicap?

[Lon Haverly]

I was only joking when I posted a statement about advising my viewers of my artwork to "close one eye and squint the other because that is what I did when I drew it." I don't know if my statement started this ball rolling. If it did, my apologies for a joke gone awry.

To tell you the truth, I do sometimes squint when doing creative drawing, to somehow block out what I have done and imagine what I want to do. But, I don't really recommend it at all for any particular advantage or useful purpose in any way shape or form. Two eyes are better than one. I have just been doing this stuff for so long that I have a plethera of bad jokes for any drawing occasion.

Lon

[Karin Wells]

Gosh, don't apologize Lon. I think that this is, at least for me and Marta (who started the whole thing), a subject that we are really curious about .

If you are uncomfortable that I confessed that I only have one functioning eye....don't be. I honestly don't give a damm that I am this way (especially because I never really wanted to be a Navy pilot anyhow) .

Besides, I squint too...it helps sometimes.

[Marta Prime]

I vote for 2 eyes too. However, one of mine got replaced by a very strange sense of humor I'm afraid. Having one eye is not as bad as it may seem. I only have to buy one contact lens. Cheaper on Mascara. And I can often fall asleep at a boring seminar and look wide awake!

I have often had the sensation that I am seeing things better in some ways now. Although it took some getting used to, I also am a very good driver. Don't, however stand on my right, because if I am talking, I might accidently slap you as I am a "talk with my hands" person.

Lon, you were only joking, but there was an element of truth in your statement. Sorry if I got carried away on a subject I found interesting. Thanks to everyone for their comments.

[Steven Sweeney]

One last note on one-eyed viewing, and that relates to sight-size drawing (so I'll duplicate this "over there"). In order to view your subject "through" the plumb lines, you're going to have to close one eye. Because one eye is dominant (it may or may not be the one you decide to close), it's important to always close the same eye when you take your measurements. Don't switch back and forth. One of my instructor's first questons when beginning a drawing critique was always, "Which eye are you looking with?, because he'd do the same in order to assess my accuracy.

Incidentally, if you want to know which is your dominant eye, pick out an object across the room and hold out your arm with index finger raised and sight "through" the finger to the object, with BOTH EYES open. If, when you close your left eye, the relative positions of the finger and object stay about the same, your right eye is dominant. Keep the left eye open and close the right, and the finger "moves" some distance to the right of the object. The opposite effects with left-eye dominance. In a non-art context in which this really "matters", if you're trap shooting and you hold the shotgun on the right but you're left-eye dominant, you'll swear your aim is perfect but the clay pigeon will just fly away unharmed. Switch to the left side and you'll probably have much higher percentages.

Finally, this is important to know because the "'Artist's Perspective' Eyepatch" is to be worn over the nondominant eye.

Finis

[Peggy Baumgaertner]

Okay, okay, I have remained silent on this "'Artist's Perspective Eyepatch", but the time has come to come out.

I teach an advanced 3/4 oil portrait workshop. The idea is to work for 10 days on one model. I don't teach sight sizing in my workshops, I teach a variation of it that I call "brush sizing". Instead of placing and drawing the model exactly the size you see, an additional ratio calculation is done to enable you to draw the model any size you wish. In a 3/4 figure, you measure the model in "heads". A typical seated figure might be 5 1/2 heads down and 3 heads across.

My students make a grid of acetate with lines drawn an inch apart. This is suspended from a stand, and the artist stands in such a way that when he/she looks through the grid, the model's head fills one head box. The canvas is similarly gridded out, except the boxes on the canvas might be 7 inches instead of 1 inch. From the viewing stand, the artist determines what part of the anatomy is in each of the boxes, and transfers that information to the canvas boxes. When it comes time to place the features on the head, for more accurate small measurements, the artist reverts back to the "brush sizing" I taught in an earlier class. (Might I say this? I can think of no better way to draw in a dead-on correct figure in the shortest amount of time than this gridded technique....)

(Whew...)

The point to this is....the students are squinting through one eye for the better part of a day, the length of time it takes to do the gridded cartoon....and we wear eye patches. It started with the fatigue of closing one eye for such a long period. Some of the students began to make piecemeal eye pieces, taping black swatches to their eyes, or blocking off one eye glass piece. Finally, we went to the pharmacy and purchased a peck of peeper protectors.

Peggy

[Steven Sweeney]

Sure, Peggy, try to trump my patent history. I hope you've kept good notes. I'm exercising artistic license to create my own, "even as we speak", with remarkably realistic dating. Be afraid.

[Michele Rushworth]

I hope to be able to buy my very own "Steven Sweeny/SOG" logo brand eye patch at the upcoming ASOPA show. Maybe they'll become trendy fashion accessories like the blue hats the American athletes wore at the Salt Lake City Olympics!

[Lon Haverly]

I have heard that brown eyes are dominant, which is a factor to me, because I have one brown eye and one blue eye! (Which really relates to nothing said on this string, but is nearly as important as most of the above.)

[Karin Wells]

I suspect that many people "see" but they do not "observe" (if you get my drift).

Lon, do many people notice that you have one blue eye and one brown eye? I have never seen this before....but it could be that I am just never awake enough to observe it. How common is this?

[Lon Haverly]

They used to notice, but not much anymore. You see, since I have gotten older, I squint.