{"id":2775,"date":"2011-01-10T17:54:18","date_gmt":"2011-01-10T17:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=2775"},"modified":"2026-03-26T17:12:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:12:54","slug":"drawing-as-thinking-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/drawing-as-thinking-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Drawing as thinking, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I have posted recently on drawing, particularly on drawing as a form of thinking (here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>).\u00a0 I have now just read Patricia Cain’s superb new book on this topic, Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

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The author is an artist<\/a>, and the book is based on her PhD thesis.\u00a0 She set out to understand the thinking processes used by two drawing artists, by copying their drawings.\u00a0 The result is a fascinating and deeply intelligent reflection on the nature of the cognitive processes (aka thinking) that take place when drawing.\u00a0 By copying the drawings of others, and particularly by copying their precise methods and movements, Dr Cain re-enacted their thinking.\u00a0 It is not for nothing that drawing has long been taught by having students copy the works of their teachers and masters – or that jazz musicians transcribe others’ solos, and students of musical composition re-figure the fugues of Bach.\u00a0\u00a0 This is also why pure mathematicians work through famous or interesting proofs for theorems they know to be true, and why trainee software engineers reproduce the working code of others:\u00a0 re-enactment by the copier results in replication of the thinking of the original enactor.<\/p>\n

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In a previous post<\/a> I remarked that a drawing of a tree is certainly not itself a tree, and not even a direct, two-dimensional representation of a tree, but a two-dimensional hand-processed manifestation of a visually-processed mental manifestation of a tree.\u00a0\u00a0 Indeed, perhaps not even always this:\u00a0 \u00a0 A drawing of a tree is in fact a two-dimensional representation of the process<\/em><\/strong> of manifesting through hand-drawing a mental representation of a tree.<\/p>\n

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After reading Cain’s book, I realize that one could represent the process of representational drawing as a sequence of transformations,\u00a0 from real object, through to output image (“the drawing”), as follows (click on the image to enlarge it):<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Because this image does not seem to always render properly, I repeat here in text the 6 boxes shown in the figure:<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  • 1. Real object<\/li>\n
  • 2. Internal visual representation of object<\/li>\n
  • 3. Internal intended outcome image of object<\/li>\n
  • 4. A collection of hand motions aiming to generate the intended outcome image of object (aka “A Plan”)<\/li>\n
  • 5. Execution of the plan (drawing as an action)<\/li>\n
  • 6. Resulting image of object (aka “the drawing” as a noun)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n
    <\/blockquote>\n

    It is important to realize that the entities represented by the six boxes here are of different types.\u00a0 Entity #1 is some object or scene in the real physical world, and entity #6 is a drawing in the real physical world.\u00a0 Entities #2 and #3 are mental representations (or models) of things in the real physical world, internal to the mind of the artist.\u00a0 Both these are abstractions; for example, the visual model of the artist of the object may emphasize some aspects and not others, and the intended drawing may do the same. The artist may see the colours of the object, but draw only in black and white, for instance.<\/p>\n

    <\/blockquote>\n

    Entity #4 is a program, a collection of representations of atomic hand movements, which movements undertaken correctly and in the intended order, are expected to yield entity #6, the resulting drawing.\u00a0 Entity #4 is called a plan<\/em> in Artificial Intelligence, a major part of which is concerned with the automated generation and execution of such programs.\u00a0 Entity #5 is a label given to the process of actually executing the plan of #4, in other words, doing the drawing.<\/p>\n

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    Of course, this model is itself a simplified idealization of the transformations involved.\u00a0 Drawing is almost never a linear process, and the partially-realized drawings in #6 serve as continuing feedback to the artist to modify each of the other components, from #2 onwards.<\/p>\n

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    References:<\/em><\/p>\n

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    Patricia Cain [2010]:\u00a0 Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner.<\/em> Bristol, UK: Intellect.<\/p>\n

    <\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I have posted recently on drawing, particularly on drawing as a form of thinking (here, here and here).\u00a0 I have now just read Patricia Cain’s superb new book on this topic, Drawing: The Enactive Evolution of the Practitioner. The author is an artist, and the book is based on her PhD thesis.\u00a0 She set out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,20,33,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-creativity","category-hands","category-human-intelligence","p1","y2011","m01","d10","h17"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2775"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14139,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775\/revisions\/14139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}