Ironically, many artists have lazy eyes:
By examining photographs of artists, Livingstone and her fellow researchers found that Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper, Marc Chagall, Jasper Johns, Frank Lloyd Wright, Robert Rauschenberg, Alexander Calder and others all had misaligned eyes. (And by studying the self-portraits and etchings of Rembrandt, she found he also seems to have had a strong lazy eye.) Why this pattern? She proposed that people who have less detailed three-dimensional vision of the world might have an easier time translating what they see onto the two-dimensional page — whether it was for a painting of a diner scene, sketch for a mobile or plan for a building.
But there is a difference between a dining scene and a plan of a building: a plan is a 2D representation and a scene is 3D. The fact that a paper (or other receiving medium) is itself 2D has nothing to do with the image that the artist transcribes onto it. The image in his head is what important; if that image was distorted due to physical limitation of “input” vision caused by lazy eye, and then translated into similarly distorted representation of the artistic image, then the hypothesis would make sense. But it is not.
The dining scene in real life is 3D. The dining scene in the finished painting is 2D. The artist’s job is to transform the one into the other. Apparently this job is easier if the artist already sees the 3D scene more like a 2D painting.
As someone who has drawn both 2D architectural plan views, and 3D art views, I would agree. Most of us have to learn to see, to overcome the brain’s natural desire to represent items as the shapes we know they are. For example, the top of a round stool is not round when viewed from the side, at an angle of maybe 30 degrees, only when viewed from 90 degrees above. Learning to acurately scale and overlap is difficult, and some people seem to have a better “eye” than others.
With whom are you agreeing, Rebecca?
I, too, am “someone who has drawn” 2D and 3D shapes; in fact, I have been doing it for over 30 years — first as a student, then engineer, then as commercial interior designer.
Dining scene on a 2D media is still a 3D image. The plane of a canvas or paper or monitor is just a media for transporting the 3D image the artist or drafter already has in mind. Without having an image in 3D in your head you can’t draw in 2D, be it in CAD, 3D Max or by good old pastels and charcoal.
Field of vision is significantly less important for a skill of drawing correctly-proportioned images, in 2- as well as in 3D, than ability to “animate” an object in your head — to rotate it, to see how the shape intersects other objects or relates to them, to continue its movement — in other words, to create in your mind a very detailed animation.
I would say, the opposite to what the Livingstone says is true: a diminished visual capacity will afford an artist less observation of detail and correct proportion, and thus — his transcription, through mental recreation into artistic image will be more distorted than another artist with perfect vision.
I have to add there might be miscommunication issue where terms are concerned.
Isegoria, you talk about “2D painting”: there is no such thing.
2D is a technical term, it means projection of 3D object on a 2D plane that cuts it in specific direction. There are 3 main projections: top view, front view and side view. And then there are limitless sections of an object, which is a 2D view of a cutting plane.
It is an acquired skill, to be able to quickly imagine projections in your mind — but that’s what every graphic artist or drafter has to develop as part of profession. To do that, however, you gotta have a 3D object in mind when you’re dissecting it.
Isegoria said, “Apparently this job is easier if the artist already sees the 3D scene more like a 2D painting.”
I agree that it is easier to arrive at a convincing 3d scene if you can see the general shapes, proportions and relationships in your mind first. The beginning of a work of fine art relies on that ability rather than details. Like a building, the final product relies on a good foundation. While DaVinci dissected cadavers and understood the underlying skeletal and muscular detailed structure of the human body, a convincing representation of a figure requires getting the parts in the right place and relationship to each other. I just finished a figure drawing class, where while we did study the skeleton, we spent most of the time drawing and measuring (the pencil and eye squint method). The researcher suggests that the physical construct of the eye improves the ability to see the big picture first, which is interesting, if not proven. It is said everyone has a dominant eye, and just by using the method I described, it does help train your eye to see the big picture (proportions, relationships) so there may be something to how a lazy eye is kind of like a natural squint and measure method of seeing your world. I know squinting (with both eyes) at artwork helps me see the light/dark areas in a work much better (kind of like photo copying a color picture in black and white to understand values).
We’re obviously using the terms 2D and 3D differently, if you consider a painting of a dining scene to be 3D. Apparently you’re using 2D to refer solely to orthographic projections, while I’m using it to refer to any projection of 3D onto a 2D plane, including perspective projections and representative paintings — which is also how the article uses the terms.
It’s a perfectly reasonable hypothesis that better 3D perception would lead to better projections, and thus to better 2D paintings, but the research contradicts that notion. Rather, artists who already see the world projected onto a 2D plane seem to depict the world on canvas more accurately — which shouldn’t be too surprising, because that is what a camera does, with zero 3D model of what it’s depicting.
Projection of 3D object onto 2d plane, like a dining scene, is done for the purpose of representation of 3D, using visual illusion devices — perspective, light+shade, color difference. In drafter’s mind it is still a 3D he’s transcribing. 2D drawing is technically an orthographic projection. There is no evidence that a person with lazy eye sees in his mind’s a flat 2D picture they then simply transfer onto another 2D plane. What they see is still 3D — because their healthy eye compensates for the one which sees a blur instead of clarity.
Ophthalmologist description of lazy eye explains that it is not an eye condition, it’s a neurological process:
Also,
I will risk this explanation for the phenomenon of enhanced representational 3D ability in people with lazy eye: their brains are constantly exercised in compensating and suppressing the signals from “blurry” vision’ eye. It’s not that they are seeing a 2D picture in their mind — its the opposite: they see enhanced 3D picture. They exercise their “animation” ability like an athlete exercises a leg muscle or a triceps.
They become more observant because their brain is always on alert.
Isegoria, while I did not articulate it well, I think we agree. The terms are confusing to me, and think there is a difference in fine art and technical drawing/seeing.
Having an ability to see things spatially is significantly more important in technical drawing, for the drawing is not the final product; the physical object produced off the drawing is. The ability to see things like a camera would be much more valuable in producing fine art, which is a good analogy.
An unthinking, uninspired, one-eyed device — a camera — can project a 3D dining scene onto a 2D plane — film or CCD — with no clever recourse to visual illusion. Where a thinking, inspired, two-eyed artist needs to cultivate the skill of ignoring the mental 3D model his mind constructs, a physical device has no such handicap — and, apparently, lazy-eyed artists share some small part of that advantage too.